A Chapter A Week

I am a woman on a mission. I mentioned that I have a 30,000-word book by the end of the year. Me being me, I of course drew up a timeline, to-do list, and flight plan to ensure everything occurs on time.

So far, so good. The plan calls for me to write a chapter a week which sounds intimidating, but each chapter need only be 3,000 words each. Which breaks down into 600 words daily. It's still an aggressive schedule, but breaking it down into baby steps makes it doable.

I'm three chapters in. On this schedule, I'll "finish" writing the book in November, which gives me a month to go back through and polish and tighten and add humor wherever possible. I'm almost spooked by how well the writing is going at this point. Like, since it's so natural it must be really, really BAD writing and I just haven't realized it yet.

The master plan calls for me to spend my morning hours on the book - say 7 AM to Noon. As I'm writing this blog at 9:43 AM you can see how well I'm sticking to that plan. I still have the hardest time saving e-mail, blogging, and social networking sites until the afternoon. E-mail especially. I still hold out hopes that someday soon I'll sit down to work in the morning without first checking to see what's arrived during the night. Willpower. That's all it takes.

Afternoons are for "work" work - magazine assignments, corporate work, etc. What I'd like to do is also start setting some afternoon or evening time aside to work on my growing-cobwebs-in-the-corner novel. It's a challenge--too much computer time and I run screaming from the room. But I'm wondering if I might do a little pen and paper writing for the novel, just to mix things up.

I'm falling behind on PR tasks. I need to add a calendar or "appearance" page to my website. Sounds ego-based, but it's all in the name of platform. I have a number of speaking engagements lined up and it's good to be able to show potential publishers of my book that look, people come to hear her talk! And she has bookings! Maybe we should publish her book! It's all in the pitch...

Speaking of websites, I need to update mine... and start work on the magazine class I'm teaching in October... and prepare for my radio interview next week... 

Hope you're having a productive week.