hrj

Shh, don't tell anyone. I have a plan.

I sometimes consider it a wonder that I ever manage to finish novel-length project. If there's something I'm not supposed to be working on, I can go all hyper-focus deep-dive come-up-for-breath-five-hours-later. If it's something I'm supposed to be working on...look, a butterfly!

While writing the first drafts of Daughter of Mystery and The Mystic Marriage, I addressed this with the principle of "write something--anything--every day, don't worry about how much." But as I discussed earlier this year, this time I leapt off the cliff of commitment and estimated just how long I thought it would take to finish the first draft of Mother of Souls. That estimate assumed that I could draft one chapter per week and that I'd finish by the end of the calendar year.

It was a nice theory. But I'm finding that I have a hard time settling down to work while traveling...and I did a lot of traveling this year. One chapter a week works when I can get 80% of it roughed out in dictation during my morning commute followed by transcription at Peet's Coffee before going to the office. Then on weekends I finish the rest and clean it up. You'd think I could get more done on weekends, but that's where the distraction comes in. The computer is open, the wifi is connected, and...butterfly!

So here I am drafting up chapters 22 and 23 (out of 32) with three weeks left in the year and I have A Plan. You see, I'm taking vacation for the whole week of Christmas and I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay home and write. I look good to get up through chapter 23 this weekend. I might manage two chapters next week as well, but let's not promise anything. But if I can get through chapter 24 by next Saturday, here's the plan. I'm going to try to write one chapter a day from December 20 through December 27, at which point I will have a complete first draft of the entire book. In terms of the actual time it takes to compose and type, this is completely doable. So what could possibly go wrong?

Distractability.

Once that vacation week rolls around, I will want to be doing anything except write. I'll want to clean my house. To take advantage of being home during daylight to work in the yard. Maybe to start a sewing project. Take in a movie or two. Surf the web. You name it. I need a plan.

So here's my plan: every morning I will get up, put on walking shoes, take up my little clip-on dictaphone that I use during my commute, and I'll set out on the recreation trail that runs by my house. I will dictate my chapter, just as if I were in the car and unable to do anything else. And when I have an entire chapter dictated, I'll go home. Just me, my walking shoes, and my dictaphone. (Well, and the cell phone, so I still have to have some will power.) Then I can do one around-the-house project and then go out to a coffee shop to do my transcription as a reward. Transcription is easier to stick to than composition. Then more time to goof off and then a session doing the clean-up at some point before I go to bed.

That's my plan; you heard it here. You are allowed to hold me to it. If I have a first draft complete by the end of 2015 (and this plan gives me 4 days slop-over) then I'm back on track with all my built-in delay allowances unused. (I.e., I still have a whole 6 months for revisions and a couple rounds of beta-readers before my turn-in date.)