I’m always giving myself new challenges and goals. It’s exhausting, but that doesn’t stop me;-)
My latest writing challenge is to write a book in two months. Since I already started it, I’m going to say “finish it” in two months. I’ve got 40 pages printed, some more in the notebook (not much) but really, I just wrote the set up. I need a middle and an ending.
Why two months? Well, searching around eHarlequin for the proper way to get a query to them the other day, I saw something that surprised me. On average, Harlequin authors write their books in two months and take another month to revise. Wow!
I mean, I wrote my last book, the one I’m shopping now, in a month with NaNo, but it took me until April to finish revising it. So that’s 5 months. So my thinking is “Do I have what it takes to be a Harlequin author?” and “Not unless I can write a book in two months and revise it in one!”
So that’s the challenge. I figured out today that really I only have to write 4 pages a day, 5 days a week, to meet this goal. How hard can that be? Since I’ve started back with the WIP, I’ve been averaging more than that. I wrote 17 today. Well, transcribed. But I did put in a new scene while I was writing. That had to be 4 new pages.
Cynthia Harrison 
Wow. I can’t even imagine writing a book in two months.
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Just heard a presentation yesterday by Janet Chapman at my writers retreat. She writes & edits her books in three months. She says she starts by reading & editing yesterday’s work, and then writes for the rest of the day. So she edits as she writes. But she also writes for twelve hours a day: 3am to 3pm. She was a stay-at-home mom before she became a writer.
Don’t kill yourself with insane goals. What I’ve heard is that it’s easier to grow your readership–and your sales–with at least one book a year. But for us schlubs who have day jobs–it’s going to take a bit longer.
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Cindy, you are primed and ready to go. You can do this.
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You can do it. I know it. NaNo is way harder being only a month…
What’s the reward for meeting the challenge? (Because there’s always a reward, right?? lol)
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