Letters to Kel: ORGANIZATION, PREPARATION -- THE LIFE YOU SAVE COULD BE YOUR OWN

An apology to those who were terrified by that howl that reverberated across the northern/northeastern US last week. That was not the Polar Vortex settling down around Ohio and spreading eastward. 'Twas ME.

What happened? Disaster. Tragedy. Frustration. Messed up organization -- or an unreasonable facsimile.

I had a book due March 1, the 7th Tabor Heights Year Two book. I thought I was doing so great -- way ahead of schedule, giving me the rest of February to devote to a book I have had in storage for years and plan to revise and turn in to another one of my publishers. Part of the responsibility of authors at Desert Breeze is to insert the cover page and copyright information and about-the-author info before we turn in the book. I copied and pasted all that information from the previous Tabor book, and as I glanced through the list of titles, I realized a BIG mistake. I was turning in "Truck Stop Angel" ... and the book due March 1 was/is "The Teddy Bear Dancer."

NOT a good scenario, on the 12th of February.

Fortunately, "Teddy Bear" is one of those books I've had in my files for years, revised and polished -- and submitted for sale -- multiple times before turning it into a Tabor Heights book. It didn't need much work at all to make it ready to turn in. WHEW! The up side to this disaster is that I now have both my Tabor Heights books DONE for the year. I can concentrate on the Quarry Hall books under contract for the year, and do more work on books for the Commonwealth and my new series coming out, Wildvine.

But I wouldn't have had a "rescue" in this disaster if I hadn't planned ahead, if I didn't do what a lot of writers advocate -- Write the book, put it aside, work on something else, come back to it and revise, put it aside, work on something else, come back to it, etc.

Always have several projects in various stages of roughing, revising, and polishing. Never focus solely on ONE project from start to finish. You might turn around one day and realize that you thought you were on schedule for one deadline, but another book was actually due.

When I have a series planned, I take time to rough draft the whole series -- when I got my contract for Year Two of Tabor Heights, I made sure I rough drafted all 8 books. This let me know what was going to happen, so I could make reference to what else was going on in town, or foreshadow what would happen from one book to the next, when I went back and started making revisions. This is a very helpful thing -- it avoids the tragedy of writing yourself into a corner and contradicting yourself because you said one thing in Book 1, but by the time you got to Book 4, the event or the people involved or the props ... weren't there anymore!

Always look ahead. Always plan ahead. Take projects in small bites. Work ahead. NEVER fall for the line that, "Deadline pressure makes me so creative and productive!" Nuh uh. The only thing deadline pressure guarantees is gray hair, stress-related trouble, and no rescue in sight when you mess up. Plan ahead. The writing life you save WILL be your own.