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 ;)