As I sit here at my desk with a few extra minutes this morning (because, despite going to the chiropractor yesterday and feeling o so much better, my back is still kind of tweaky, so I left yoga early), I am going over my writing to-do list, with time line.
One of the items on the list–in fact, the next big item–is currently Seekrit, though I hope to be able to talk about it soon…it’s a fresh new drafting project (as opposed to being an edit or something), and it has an actual deadline.
Deadline (and word count) makes me think of NaNoWriMo, and NaNoWriMo makes me think of the Dragon Problem.
When I wrote the first draft of DEMONHEAD, I had a great idea, a cool vision of the world, and a fairly thin outline, as I always do. I started writing with great enthusiasm–everything was going fantastically, I was ahead of word count, etc.
Then I hit the retreat, with the word count wars, the all-day writing, the too much sugary snack stuff (NaNo, of course, being right after Halloween)… anyway, I ran out of story.
Enter the dragon.
Which, naturally, had to be removed from subsequent rewrites of the novel. All the damage the dragon had done had to be fixed. In fact, as many of you know, I’ve actually rewritten DEMONHEAD from scratch.
Twice.
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What I’ve learned, from NaNo, from the Dragon Problem, and from subsequent projects, is that I can safely manage about 40,000 words a month without ridiculous plot elements sneaking in (or roaring in, breathing flames and knocking over furniture with their big scaly spiky tails). So that is my plan. I’ll start drafting Seekrit on July 1 for a first-draft deadline of October 1.
Which means I need to get NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER revisions done by June 30.
Which means I better get started on them!