This March I accidentally challenged myself to do something I’ve never done before. To write, revise and polish to submitting in less than one month. To be accurate, in eighteen days.
Why you might ask, would I want to complete this feat. Well, it certainly wasn’t intentional (see the heading ;D). As I’ve mentioned in several previous blogs, I’m really good at getting ideas for submission calls very close to the due date. Well that happened again. I got in idea for an anthology request that was due on March 1st. To complicate the issue further, I promised Owned Forever, the sequel to my Christmas release, Owned for Christmas, to my editor by 1/31. Which gave me only a month to get this new story written and submitted. The shortest timeframe I’ve even had to work in before. But I decided, if I want to be a fulltime writer, I probably have to work in this kind of time frame every month, so I ned dot learn how to do it.
Well, as you might have guessed, my revisions for Owned Forever took longer than I anticipated. I ended up rewriting two whole scenes, delaying when I could start this new story by ten days. But I was determined to try. So I vanished into my writing cave to make this happen.
The good news: I did it (or at least I will). It’s February 27th and I have every confidence I can finish this work in the next two days. I’m through writing and the first revision (which is always the hardest for me). I just have to finish the second revision and one more read through and it will be ready to submit.
The bad news: It’s about 6k larger than the submission call asks for, and on rereading the request I don’t think it really fits what they are asking for.
Not that either of those bits of news are really lemons, but I’m going to make lemonade with them anyway. I’ve decided I’m going to double, or triple, this challenge by turning this story into a series. And I plan to write one book each month for the next few months.
Many of you may know I’m not great at writing series. I love starting them, but then a shiny idea distracts me and it takes me months to get back to it. It took me three years to write all five books of the Naughty Holiday list series, and there was almost a year between the two published Snowedin Fantasy stories (and believe me I have plenty more to write). I haven’t even finished the next book in the Fairytales bound series.
In order to prevent another series full of lag time I’m going to dedicate the next three months to writing this whole series, or at least making a good dent towards it. I’m going to write one book a month, giving each the deadline of the 1st. I know myself well enough that if I try to write them all at once, I won’t end up finishing any of them. Not to mention, revising three works at once (or even one right after another) might send me over the edge.
This weekend I’m going to focus on coming up with outlines for the first three or four books, to make sure they all make sense together, and we’ll see where we go from there.
I’ll keep you guys in the loop as to how I’m doing on this challenge. I really believe if I want to work towards writing fulltime I need to work on producing more better works for all of you out there, and this is a great first step.
I hope you’ll follow me on this journey, and get ready to spend a few nights with the Hot Tamales.
Why you might ask, would I want to complete this feat. Well, it certainly wasn’t intentional (see the heading ;D). As I’ve mentioned in several previous blogs, I’m really good at getting ideas for submission calls very close to the due date. Well that happened again. I got in idea for an anthology request that was due on March 1st. To complicate the issue further, I promised Owned Forever, the sequel to my Christmas release, Owned for Christmas, to my editor by 1/31. Which gave me only a month to get this new story written and submitted. The shortest timeframe I’ve even had to work in before. But I decided, if I want to be a fulltime writer, I probably have to work in this kind of time frame every month, so I ned dot learn how to do it.
Well, as you might have guessed, my revisions for Owned Forever took longer than I anticipated. I ended up rewriting two whole scenes, delaying when I could start this new story by ten days. But I was determined to try. So I vanished into my writing cave to make this happen.
The good news: I did it (or at least I will). It’s February 27th and I have every confidence I can finish this work in the next two days. I’m through writing and the first revision (which is always the hardest for me). I just have to finish the second revision and one more read through and it will be ready to submit.
The bad news: It’s about 6k larger than the submission call asks for, and on rereading the request I don’t think it really fits what they are asking for.
Not that either of those bits of news are really lemons, but I’m going to make lemonade with them anyway. I’ve decided I’m going to double, or triple, this challenge by turning this story into a series. And I plan to write one book each month for the next few months.
Many of you may know I’m not great at writing series. I love starting them, but then a shiny idea distracts me and it takes me months to get back to it. It took me three years to write all five books of the Naughty Holiday list series, and there was almost a year between the two published Snowedin Fantasy stories (and believe me I have plenty more to write). I haven’t even finished the next book in the Fairytales bound series.
In order to prevent another series full of lag time I’m going to dedicate the next three months to writing this whole series, or at least making a good dent towards it. I’m going to write one book a month, giving each the deadline of the 1st. I know myself well enough that if I try to write them all at once, I won’t end up finishing any of them. Not to mention, revising three works at once (or even one right after another) might send me over the edge.
This weekend I’m going to focus on coming up with outlines for the first three or four books, to make sure they all make sense together, and we’ll see where we go from there.
I’ll keep you guys in the loop as to how I’m doing on this challenge. I really believe if I want to work towards writing fulltime I need to work on producing more better works for all of you out there, and this is a great first step.
I hope you’ll follow me on this journey, and get ready to spend a few nights with the Hot Tamales.
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