Me, Challenged Myself, in 2017

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My challenge to myself is to write a new novella and have it published by Christmas.

This will involve not only writing it, but also reworking it, rewriting it, getting it to the stage where I’m happy with it, having it properly edited and then working with the editor to polish it some more.

All of it done by the twenty-fifth of December.

That is the challenge I have set myself.

And it scares me as much as it thrills me.

I’ve never written that fast before, never given myself such a daunting deadline, but I think it’s a deadline I can meet. (Unlike – say – trying to write a whole novel by week Thursday. That fast I’m never going to be.)

It raises all kinds of interesting quandaries about how I can shave time from the process, while not losing any of the quality. The important and most crucial rule here is, of course, that I don’t do a shoddy job. In the end, I need to finish up with a story which – no matter how quickly or slowly I wrote it – I am intensely proud of.

But if – as I move fully into the indie realm – I want to write more and publish more, then the simple fact is that I’ve to get faster.

Already this year, I have made swifter progress writing a novel than I ever have before. But I need to be swifter again. Maximise my time, make sure that when I do have time to write, not a second is wasted.

I started on the novella on Monday, and so far, it’s all progressed well. I could say ‘fingers crossed’ that that continues, but then it’s all within my power. I just have to make sure I get it done!