Of Deadlines and Commitments
After years of writing, editing, rewriting, more editing, and a protracted series of “revise and resubmits” for a string of agents I never signed with, I was giddy to have my second book under contract before it was finished. I celebrated having a deadline. True, I’d been asked when I could have the book ready and my answer became my deadline. But finally, someone cared if and when I finished a book. This was heady stuff.
I had the vague impression that I wrote fast and the deadline seemed achievable. I was still wrapped up in promotion for my first book. When that slowed down, I spent time with long-neglected family. I wrote some more, then came the holidays. Sometime during the holidays, in an unrelated email exchange with my agent, she mentioned how she couldn’t wait to read the new project. Full of holiday cheer, I emailed her back with a merry, “Soon.” On January 2, I had a panic attack. I was nowhere near my word goal and my deadline loomed. I buckled down.
I was at my computer every morning by nine. I read what I’d written the day before to immerse myself in my world, revising as I went. Then, I started the next chapter. Even though I wrote long into the evenings, my word count was not growing fast enough. I contemplated setting my hair on fire. Had I always written this slowly? Something was wrong.
I turned to my favorite tool for analyzing data–Excel. I tracked the number of words I wrote every day for two weeks. I was astonished at the variation. Some days I wrote 4,500 words. Other days I wrote 350. My daily word counts were all over the place. Some days I spent more time than I’d realized revising. And, oh yeah, some days I had other commitments–blogs, twitter chats, book festivals, signings, family issues, migraines. I finally figured out what I should have known to begin with. Even though writing is my full time job, some days that job means I’m doing things other than putting words on the page. I had to figure those days in. I also needed to take family time, holidays, and migraines into account.
The process of editing the prior day’s work to get started works for me, but I needed a more accurate way of predicting how long it takes me to write a book. I calculated an average number of words I wrote per day over time (with all variables included) and created a spreadsheet. I took my target word count for a project and divided that by the average number of words I wrote in a day. That told me how many weeks it would take me to write the book. I added in things like “draft cooling,” self-editing, beta readers, etc. Then I added columns to track my actual progress, so I could see each week if I was on schedule or needed to put in some time on Saturday. Now I have a template, and every time I start a new book, I just plug in my target and record my actual word count each day.
This method works for me, because I can no longer tell myself I have plenty of time when I really don’t. Scrivener users have a built in tool that helps manage targets, but for whatever reason, I haven’t been able to warm up to Scrivener–perhaps because I’m a creature of habit and have an outlining system I’ve used for years in Excel. I’m sure my accountability system wouldn’t work for everyone. Some folks hate Excel. But for me, anyway, having a system is critical.
How do you stay on track?
