You may remember the challenge from last year: 50,000 words, 30 days. The idea is to get a manuscript written in 30 days. Not a final manuscript necessarily you understand - this is as rough as it gets. The point is to get one writing every day.
My plan was messed up, of course. I had not decided what I was going to write until the last second - good heavens, I had not decided I was going to do it at all until the day before. I was waffling because I did not think that I had the time. It is ridiculous of course - you always have time to do the things you really want to do.
The second impediment was that I thought I was not ready to write what I was going to write. I had it all planned out in my mind: what I was going to write about, the research I needed to do, the plot. But I ran out of time: the book sat unread and the day was approaching. I had a second idea, more of an undeveloped thought than a real thing, that was laying in wait. I grabbed it and ran.
I am about 7300 words in now - like last time, the concept seems to have taken on a life of its own and the characters have started talking amongst themselves without needing much prodding from me. A good way to write, that - as a recorder, not a generator.
Will I finish? I will. I have no idea what it will look like -and having done this last year, I am far more willing to do major editing now that I know that writing all those words is not the same as having a good book (it is okay, I discovered, to cut things out).
But the exercise is good. And I feel better after it. That will make four books I have written in three years.
A bit of a surprise there - somewhere I turned into an author and hardly knew it.
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