My Year Begins In May

So I’ve done little to no writing this year so far and we’re 1/3 of the way through. To fix this problem, I’ve decided to look through my mammoth ‘word docs’ folder and pick out the stories that I’m still interested enough in to finish. For the sake of remembering this later, I’m going to put all their titles here.

4
Afterlife
Anora
Ashlyn (2-7)
Hunted
Nightvale
Flyhorn
Mythology
Serasi
That’s Charming
The Answer
The Daisy
The Rose
The Thistle
The Seven Commas
It’s the End of the World
When Your Novel Strikes Back… Again

17 projects out of 120 word files isn’t so bad. It’s a good enough lot to get started with anyway. All of these are in various stages, and I’m trying to think of the best way to work through them all. Ideally I would finish one novel a month until I had at least a first draft of all of them, but I somehow don’t see me being able to finish an entire novel every month. I’m still going to work with the most popular idea from my polls first. So Hunted is going to be the first thing I work on.

May

I’ll write a brief outline for Hunted – I have a rough idea in my head. I know how it ends because I wrote out the ending shortly after I started the beginning, so it’s just a case of filling in the blanks and not making it too stupid. Taking the feedback I’m getting for Ashlyn (which is slowly turning more and more negative – probably published it too soon, but you live and learn) I’m going to really focus on getting this novel right before I even think about publishing.

So, with that being said. Hunted will probably have a title change before this is over. I also want it to come in around 75k (although it will most likely either be way shorter or way longer). I’ll spend all of May planning and writing it.

June

For June, I think I’ll work on That’s Charming. I received editorial feedback from Hot Key Books about my novel and I need to do a major rewrite in order to take on their advice. I think June will be a good month for this, and since I know what I’m doing and already have the basic story, I should be able to stick to writing every day for this. That’s Charming will hopefully come in closer to 75k after the rewrite, but it will most likely still be around 65k like its current draft.

July

For July, I’ll go back to Hunted and edit it using comments I will hopefully have gotten from beta readers during June. I think I’ll also work on Anora during this month. I know Anora’s plot inside out, it’s just a case of writing it all out. Anora will definitely get a title change, and I’m hoping that it will be close to 100k when it’s done – although I suspect it will be far shorter than that.

August

Writing Anora will most likely spill over into this month. I’ll most likely use this month to finish editing Hunted, and probably edit That’s Charming too. Hopefully by the end of this month I’ll have two relatively finished novels and one first draft.

September

I’m going on holiday for two weeks during September so there won’t be much time for writing. I’ll probably use this month to write The Seven Commas, which is a novella that is really only for one person but I think a few people would like it. It shouldn’t be more than 30k.

October

In October I’ll most likely have another round of edits and revision done on Hunted and That’s Charming. I may even start querying That’s Charming with a few agents. Writing wise I might take this month off to prepare for NaNoWrimo in November.

November

Since it’s NaNoWriMo, I’d like to use a relatively unstarted novel for the month. So I’ll probably write Afterlife or Mythology this month.

December

For December I’ll most likely just edit and revise all the novels that I’ve written since May and see what stages they’re at.

I’m pretty sure I could stick to this plan. It’s finding motivation each day that will be the hard part, but I’m still positive it’ll happen. I guess we’ll just have to watch this space.