If you followed my semi-regular blogging over the past two months you’ll know that I completed what I eventually called a “RelaxaDare.” This is a riff off the traditional Novel Dare where a writer does their best to complete a novel draft in a month. The “Relaxa” part of that was that instead of a novel in a month, I was shooting for a novel in two months.
Baby steps on the way back to recovery and all that.
The effort was successful, and as I progressed I found the biggest impacts were (1) life in general, (2) a pair of trips I took in the middle of the process—one of which was quite unexpected, and (3) the never-ending need to manage the publishing side of being an independent writer.
What do I do to top this off, you might ask?
Take a chill pill and go sip a few beers at the swimming pool? Well. Maybe. But no.
Enter the Double Dare, wherein I flip the polarity and rather than one book in two months I shoot for two books in a month. That’s right. What the heck, right? I admit I’m not 100% certain I can get it done. It’s a big ask. There is, after all, a five-day event in Vegas I’m attending in the later part of the month that will wipe out a big chunk of time. But I’ve also got a tiny bit of a hole in the schedule in which (I think) the production side of things might be a little lighter.
Run to the daylight, am I right?
Also on the positive side, both of the books I’m planning to work on are moderately well plotted out. It’s a lot easier for me to be reliably fast when I know what I’m trying to lay down. (Yes, I can writer fast when I’m on pure seat-of-the-pants mode, but I also tend to throw away a lot of words in that process). The two books in question are STARBORN (book 9 of my Stealing the Sun series), and a book with the working title of Happy Family Fun (which is the first of an incredibly fun multi-media project my brother and I have cooked up).
We shall see.
The best part of this right now is that I know the beat I’m writing at is pretty good right now. I know my priorities are in the right place. So it’s time I just let it fly and see what happens. If it doesn’t get done—well, there’s always June. It’s just that May would be … um … better.
In the meantime, this is me, strapping in and setting course.
Please read my emails in the order written!
Keep them coming. 🙂