For reasons that even I can’t adequately explain at present, I have changed my writing focus. The novel I was working on, Battle for Odana, has been put aside because I can’t stop thinking about my fantasy romance trilogy Balance of Power. Book one, Love in Control, is currently trawling the publishers, looking for some fertile soil within which to be planted and bloom. After some recent feedback, I had another look at it and damn if a) I didn’t still like it and b) it kicked off a desire to get books two and three (currently in a draft form) up to scratch.
So I opened up book two, only to discover that I had actually started working on it last year, but had stopped when I got to the point where I realised changes were afoot and I wasn’t sure where it was going to go. Thanks to my recent re-love of the series, however, I now do know where it’s going, and I can write it.
I’ve decided to combine this with a new approach I want to take to my writing – setting myself smaller targets. I work well on deadlines – it’s the journalist in me. I’ve always naturally set myself deadlines, but they’ve been rather fluid and loose and long-term eg I want to have this draft/rewrite finished by the end of *month* but really, the world won’t end if I don’t reach it. However, I want to be more professional about this, and so I’m going to do something different.
I’m not just setting fluid monthly targets, I’m going to set definite weekly targets. And the target at the moment – 10,000 words a week. People who have written with me (Hi FWOR!) will know that this is eminently doable for me, especially since the hours at work are starting to settle down again – I can do 10,000 words in a day if I want to. The strength I see in this is that if I get ahead, then I get to have time off, but it’s not an onerous task to do 10,000 words a week and so the risk of falling behind is minimal.
With book two, that will get me to my target of 110,000 words well before the end of August, my self-imposed deadline to have this re-write completed.
So, having said that, I’m off to re-immerse myself in the story of Ione and Stephen and the increased threat to every living creature on Earth :)