Writing Update...That's right, a day early

I managed to complete the rough draft of my WIP a day early so I thought I'd update the blog a day early to celebrate. I was just bragging to someone last night that I've now proven I can do a novel in 6 weeks, but I realized this morning that I made this WIP (a Mystery/Thriller) my focus for both NaNoWriMo (November) and Camp NaNo in April. So technically I worked on it closer to 10 weeks. In my defense, those were both hellacious months so it's a miracle that I got as far as I did in November, and I did actually win Camp NaNo by passing 30k on the project. (I set a goal I knew was challenging for that month but I also knew I wouldn't get the whole book done and move in the same month. So I also have to confess that I'd written a little less than half of this book as a screenplay in April 2011. I wanted to try my hand at mysteries and screenplays so I did both at once with mixed results. If you are tempted to think that it was an unfair advantage to have half done in another format, then you've never novelized an unfinished screenplay. It wasn't awful but it was slower than just drafting the darn thing from an outline, which I discovered when I finally ran out of script to convert and started drafting the back half of the story. The other big hold up was actually taking the time to read a book on how to write a mystery so I had a chance of completing the outline. I've never outlined a book before (I'm a pantser) so this was still a twofer (first novel from outline and first Mystery/Thriller). I set out to write a straight mystery but I'm an action junkie so I ended up with a thriller. It works sooooo well though. I have an action climax followed by a riveting denouement where the mystery is resolved at last. This book really transcended my hopes for it. I can't wait for it to come out. So if you're following along at home here's the updated plan, modified to accept the fact that I took two weeks longer than I'd planned to complete this draft. I still need to let this project cool for a bit so that when I clean it up I'll have fresh eyes. I'm really happy with the voice in back half of the book (the part I drafted after I ran out of screenplay to convert). So I don't want to do another novel length revision before I get back to this book as I'd originally intended. That's okay though. I've got plenty of projects to tackle for the remainder of May. I'll complete my revision and send The Vancouver Scooter Club Mystery off to an alpha reader in June. The back half of may will be consumed by... I've got a yard sale this weekend, (perhaps the first of many) so I can clean out my extra belongings. I'm still dropping about 5lbs a month due to dietary changes (and prayer). I'm going to finish reading through research I've collected and finish compiling that research into my final customized diet plan. I should get the finished edits from the audiobook of "On Becoming a Man" soon. They've been promised for a while now. I'm fixing up my short stories and compiling an anthology called "Denny's Tales." I will be releasing several of these stories individually on Kindle only so the complete anthology won't be out just yet, but look for those stories to start appearing about one a month for the rest of the year beginning in June. Those last two items mean I've got about 10 covers to design. For those who think this a crazy amount of work for two weeks, this about my normal approach processing through things. I'm essentially a small business owner between my personal writing and the gigs I get freelance. The difference between that last two years and this year is that I've doubled the volume of output I expect of myself, I've implemented some of the project management techniques I've discovered and refined as well as implementing some of the health and writing techniques I've discovered. That's why I'm blogging about this years adventure. Well, I have two reasons. 1) I think the goal of taking a 6 month tour to sell books (some of which I haven't written yet) is an interesting challenge and deserves to be chronicled. 2) I'm experimenting with and refining techniques that I've been working on for a decade or more. I want to commit, publicly to this goal and the plans I've made to accomplish it and I want to record what worked and what I tweaked to accommodate the unforeseen. Upcoming challenges include finding a number of alpha readers willing to turn my books around in roughly one month, and raising the funds to pay editors this many books in one year. (I'm willing to swap edit for edit, but that means adding in editing two books and some short stories to the schedule. Maybe some of both. We shall see...