Stick to a writing schedule

I hold myself to a pretty strict writing schedule when doing a first draft: at least a chapter a week, preferably a chapter and a half. Though with this book, I'm trying to treat myself to a night off once a week, IF I'm not behind. If I'm behind, no night off for Lisa.

It's not a set day each week, it's either when my day job has worn me out and I know that writing productivity just ain't gonna happen that night, or when I'm ahead of schedule. If I'm ahead of schedule for that week, my "night off" will be spent taking care of various book business stuff, catching up on my writer magazine reading, coming up with future blog topics, cleaning out my email, etc. THEN I get the rest of the night off. Or I might take a few hours one night to brainstorm the next few chapters, since I'm essentially writing Bewitched & Betrayed without an outline. By writing without a net, I'm getting a lot of very interesting and completely unexpected twists. Most cool. ; )

But to keep to a schedule, I must make some sort of progress each day, and progress comes from steady work. Meaning, I apply my butt to my office chair and I do the work. It's as simple (and as difficult) as that. If you want it badly enough, you do the work so you can get it. That applies to every facet of life, not just writing.

Ideally, Bewitched & Betrayed will be 25 chapters and no more than 15 pages per chapter. This is my way of holding length of the the finished book to be not much more than 100K words. The Trouble with Demons turned out a wee bit long according to my publisher. For binding purposes (here comes that "book writing is a business" thing again), my publisher likes books of 90-100K words. So to do my part to help keep printing and production costs under control (and make my publisher happy), I'm going to write B&B to word count -- 100K or not much more. Actually being the structured person that I am, I really like this approach. It's like, this is how many words you have, now write your story. ; )

Doing the math on that will have me finishing the first draft of B&B by the end of February which will give me two months before my May 1 deadline to go back and fix everything.

There some nights that I feel what I'm writing is crap, and I know I'll have to go back and fix it, but I've found that to get to the good stuff, I've got to wade through the crap. Because crappy though they may be, those are the core ideas that turn into the "good stuff." Much like my garden metaphor of the other day -- it takes a lot of crap to grow a good garden.

Some of what's coming in the few weeks:

• How to keep a story believable
  
• Writing yourself out of a plot hole
• Need inspiration? Look into your characters' pasts and air that dirty laundry. ; )
• Listen to your readers
• Keep the action going
• Real dialogue for realistic characters
• Say no to "info dump"
• Start with a hook, end with a cliffhanger
• Let every scene advance the plot
• Talk to yourself on paper

Happy Friday!
Lisa