Making Plans

I'm a planner by nature. I thoroughly enjoy the process, whether it be for a vacation or a party, I really just thrive on organizing and researching, making choices, bringing everything together. Which surprises me that I started out writing as a panser, but in the end I did reform and become a plotter.

Thus far in my career, I have gotten by on making my own deadlines. I never had to finish a book by a certain date. It was all on me to make the plans. And I've been pretty damn good about sticking to them. It's really hard to be motivated to work hard to get something done by a certain day when no one is breathing down your neck. If you fail, there's no one to hold you accountable. But I do hold myself accountable. I mean, no, I don't reprimand myself or anything...that would just be weird. But I do feel pretty crappy when I let myself down.

I made a new plan for the rest of summer vacation and for the month of September. At the start of this week, I had four full weeks until we leave for our big California/Vegas adventure. I'm currently working on the second book in my Classy n' Sassy series. I don't have an official deadline for it, so I made my own. I want it done by September 30th.

In order to do that, I have decided to aim for 5,000 words a week until we leave. That's 20,000 over the course of 4 weeks. Now, my normal weekly goal is 10,000 words. But in the summer when the kids are home and we have activities and things going on, it's just not an attainable goal. I would be setting myself up for disappointment if I tried to reach that. So I made a far more accessible goal, and if I do more, fantastic. After those 4 weeks, we go on our trip, and I've allotted for recuperation when we get back. I plan to get back on the wagon on Tuesday the 3rd of September with a proper 10K a week word count goal. That should give me another 40,000-50,000 by the end of the month and should finish the book.

I also have a writing retreat in September. My local RWA chapter will be spending the weekend at a fabulous B&B. Last time we did this I wrote 11K+ over the course of 3 days.

So there's my plan! Do you make plans? Do you have deadlines put on you by others or just yourself? Are you good at meeting them?

If you ever want to sell on proposal....

When I started writing, I had no clue how to do it. I just wrote. There was a story in my head and it came out through my finger tips. But then I started learning there were rules. Basic rules about storytelling and characters. I read a couple books and found invaluable information. And I had to relearn all the grammar stuff I had forgotten. Boy was that tough!

I joined a writers group maybe a year or so after I started writing. The people were awesome and they really helped me figure out this writing thing. They helped me fix the things that needed fixing. They were great for bouncing ideas off of. And then we had a new member join our group. She was working on her novel, a mystery, and though she only had a few chapters written, she had the whole thing planned out. Every scene. At the time, that seemed so incredibly boring to me. I remember thinking it felt like all the creativity had been taken out of the process. I couldn't understand why someone would write like that.

Fast forward a few years....

I'd been through the publishing process a bunch of times. I'd written a few more novels. I'd met tons of people in the writing community. Many were pansers- people who write by the seat of their pants, like I did. And the rest were plotters, who plan their books, either in an extremely detailed manor or just a simple outline. I was a panser. And then one day a friend posted about her new book and how she was becoming a reformed panser. After selling several books to her publisher, they now only wanted a proposal before offering her a contract. She now HAD to write an entire synopsis for her future book before writing it.

That really hit home with me. I knew I wanted to someday sell to a big publisher. And if this is how big publishers did it, maybe I needed to take a serious look into changing my process too. So I decided to give it a try. A test. I decided my next book would be plotted out beforehand. I spent a couple weeks writing what was originally supposed to be a semi-detailed outline. But I ended up writing a very detailed outline, scene by scene. It was about 25 pages long, single spaced. When I finished, I started crafting the book. It took me only 35 days to write 82 thousand words. And not once was I bored or felt a lack of creatively. There was never a lull, asking myself "What's gonna happen next?" There were less plot holes. Since I had the book all planned out, it gave me the ease of just writing it and not having to stop and think about where the book was going. I already knew.

I am now a reformed panser! And proud of it!!

I know everyone has their process and everyone must do what works best for them. But I am honestly shocked by how at home I am with the new process I have adopted. My dream is to sell on proposal. I would LOVE to sell a book based on my ideas instead of spending months writing something that no one wants to buy. Fingers crossed that I get there!

So...panser or plotter? Any reformed pansers like me??? Were you shocked with the ease of the process once you started it?

Been MIA...but with good reason!! :)

I've been kinda quiet lately. Even my Twitter and FB presences have been limited. It's all because I've been busy at work!!!!

I FINISHED MY BOOK!!!!!!!

No, this isn't the first book I've finished, but this one set all kinds of records and goals for me. It was a completely different experience than I've ever had before!

I finished and perfected my last book the middle to end of March, and spent about two weeks sending it out to every agent I knew of. I knew I wanted to start a new book right away, but I decided to approach it differently.

First of all, I decided to plot. I have never been a plotter, other than a very short rough outline, like maybe 2 pages. But I'd heard from other authors who are published with bigger houses that after they sell the first, the editors will buy the next based on just a proposal of a synopsis and first 3 chapters. That got me thinking....I should probably learn how to plot. So I did. I spent a week plotting my newest book. At the end, I had 26 pages of outline...every single scene. Except the very end. I just couldn't plot that out.

So I started writing the book on April 16th.

The second thing I did differently was up my daily word count goal. I used to have a 1000 word daily goal, until I did NaNo. That proved to me I could do more...much more. So I upped my goal to 1500 each day. But because of my crazy outline, many days I wrote WAY more than that because there never was a moment where I stared at the screen wondering what my characters were going to do next. I'd already thought it all out!!

I wrote "The End" yesterday....day 35. I wrote about 80,000 words in 35 days! And in those 35 days, there was only one day I did not write at all: Mother's Day :)

I am so so proud of myself! I made goals and I smashed them. My original goal was to be done by the end of June. But then I started writing, and changed it to the end of May. I finished more than 2 weeks early!!!

And now starts the editing phase, which I am all ready for. I've already gotten some great feedback on the first two chapters and so far, the readers are loving it! YAY!!

I know fast writing is not for everyone and a book written this fast may need a lot of editing. But I am pretty confident in what I wrote....all thanks to my outline. There may be something to this plotting thing after all ;)