How I Wrote My Book
I wrote a book called The God Catcher. See?
Writing is, in general, something I love to do, and I was thrilled to get the chance to write something that I’d be paid for and that other people would read. Signing the work for hire contract felt like a momentous shift in my life.
But there was one detail: 90,000 words and a due date six months from the signing date.
That, if you are wondering, is a lot of words.
I’d written long works before, but on my own timetable. I had time to scrutinize character arcs and rethink transitions, tweak dialogue to my heart’s content. When I started writing The God Catcher, the same way, it took me the better part of two months to get 10,000 words written.
Yeah. I took the remaining word count, divided by the number of days I had until my deadline (or rather, two weeks before) and figured I needed to write a thousand words a day in order to make it. Until then I’d been averaging close to that a week.
After a few hours of panic, I came up with a plan: Bribery.
I love brunch, but between my health-conscious husband and my body’s insistent desire to sleep in, I almost never got it. If I could write seven thousand words each week, on Sunday, we could go to brunch.
And it worked perfectly. I slipped occasionally, overachieved occasionally, and got my beloved brunch most weeks–though admittedly not all. And I finished the first draft on time and to a quality I was very pleased with.
Why am I telling the internet this? Well, it might be useful to someone. Now you know something weird about me that might be charming and intriguing (maybe). I might come up on a search as some restauranteur is searching for a food taster for this season’s brunch menu (Call me, Lisa Dupar!).
But more importantly, I have a similar problem with blogging. It’s a little overwhelming! What does one write about? What crosses the line into too much personal info and what’s too much self-promotion? I need to do it–I know I need to do it–to keep myself limber and to give people an example of how I write (I’m not going to lie, I want you–yes, you!–to buy my books). And it occured to me, I need to bribe myself.
Then it occured to me, writing about that might just fit the bill.
So this is what you can expect: me, posting once a day for now, talking about writing, editing, reading, and occasionally life (BRUNCH!). And periodically reminding you I have books you can buy.