Writing Diaries: The book, the writing, and the deadline.
AKA I need to get myself in gear and write When in December
It’s May.
Yes. It is May. For many of us, that means that we are basking in the first bits of almost summer where the sun is hot and the depression of winter is slowly melting off our shoulders. But for me, unsurprisingly, I am back on deadline.
I promised myself after I finished Call You Mine and likely the book before that, that I wouldn’t do this to myself anymore. I promised that I would chill out and just write. When I finished a book, I’d get a beautifully designed cover and call up my editor and I would publish it. Hopefully somewhat in that order.
Only, of course. You heard it. I’m back on deadline again.
It’s kind of sad that I can get nothing done apparently without one.
After I finished Call You Mine, I talked about how difficult it was to find it to write again and enjoy the process of writing. I have never been much of a drafter— or rather, I’ve never been someone who enjoys drafting. I like to revise. I like it when I finally have the story all in front of me how I somewhat want it (or at least good enough, like how I turned most of my essays in college in as), and I get to make it crisp and clean and add scenes that make sense that I might not have had before.
Revising for me, is magic. Drafting is like digging a trench and I have no idea what I’ll find in the dirt.
Eventually, sometime near the end of 2023, I settled that I needed to write either Barnett Witches #3 (which I have a cover for already and everything), or I needed to get myself down to work and write something else that I’ve left on the back burner of my story mind. Somehow, the latter option is the one I chose, bringing me to writing about an interior designer and grumpy man who doesn’t want her renovating and redecorating his house for some reason or another.
This, of course, is what we now know as When in December— coming to you soon this October.
Only… I haven’t finished a whole draft of it yet.
I just cringed as I wrote that.
Set around the holidays, I knew that I wanted to release WID by November this coming year so that I could publish something in 2024. Not publishing anything at all feels like it would be a major blow to the dream and thinking I’ll never be able to make it writing full-time in the future at all. So, for the past few weeks, I’ve gotten writing.
Then I stopped writing.
Then I started writing again.
Then I decided to work on a silly side project that you all will likely never see.
Then I started writing again.
And so the pattern went up until now. I send WID to the editor in mid-July. No sooner. No matter. This means that I have approximately two months to get myself in gear, but in a chair, chair at the desk, and get writing this thing.
Currently at 35k words (approximately 130 book pages give or take for those who aren’t writers obsessed with word counts) we have a bit of a ways to go until I can call this book done. I have all the things I need though to bust through this draft hopefully by the end of the month so that then I have one more month to do my favorite thing and revise and edit so that my editor doesn’t metaphorically look at me through her computer screen like I just handed her a big pile of dirt.
For goodness sake, I even outlined.
Me. Outlining to make this thing happen and be coherent now that I know what needs to happen.
When in December is happening.
Now I just need to write. And preferably, quickly.