Next year I will write a book. A fiction book with characters and a plot and everything.
I have published my intent so now it shall be done.
It’s basically done already isn’t it?
Here’s the plan:
60 – 80,000 words fiction book.
80,000 / 300 days (I’m leaving a lot of wiggle room) = 266.66 words a day.
Manageable. So my target is 300 words a day for a year. I will then need to edit it but I’ll worry about that later. 300 words a day for a year on characters and plot and stuff.
I’ve actually already done a lot of work on it. For about 6 months I have nurtured a little idea into a slightly better idea and then come up with some other half-decent ideas to pad it out a bit. That sounds like a book to me. I just need to write it now.
So although I have obviously just been thinking about it here and there and making notes as I go, that is how these things work. Ideas don’t come the more you push them, they are like a faint outline in the mist – the more you squint the more you distort it, the more you make it something that it is not. You have to relax, not let it get to you, be confident enough to leave it for a while, come back later to see if the fog has lifted. Ideas can creep up on you and emerge silently from the darkness. I have been mulling it over, massaging and manipulating it for quite a while and I think it has genuine merits.
So I’ve written a whole lot of backstory, basic plot, character profiles etc. but I’ve held back from actually starting it before I am happy with where it is going.
As soon as 2012 is here I am going to be typing away like a crazy thing. I might even see in the New Year with a laptop in hand ready knock out my first 300 words. May as well, wont be doing ought else but lying in a 2/3 sized bed with a numb arm and a spasmic neck telling my 2yr old to try to ignore the explosions outside and go back to sleep.
So, 2012, suck my pen.
// Nov 17th, 2011