Well, Advent has arrived and we are officially into the Christmas season. This happens to be one of my personal favorite times of the year. My wife and I sat listening to A Charlie Brown Christmas music (my favorite Christmas album and listening to it as I write this) yesterday and now it’s back to the blessed grind.
With the release of Blackson’s Repentance, I learned some things about myself and about the book launch process. I mentioned this a little in the last post. With those revelations come a slight change in how I will approach my calling as a writer in its evolution.
One of the things I’ll do, starting today, is right 5000 words a day every day for 40 days. Now if you do the math, that ends up being 200,000 words. That is at least two full-length novels at 80,000 words piece. Whether the novels will be that long, I don’t know, but the goal is to do this consistently every single day. That includes Sunday’s which is going to be a challenge because I preach ever Sunday and this writing is going to be outside of sermon prep. Someone is going to have to get up really early in the morning in order to accomplish this goal.
I’m excited about the new direction I’m on because it is pushing me as a writer. It’s not staying in the same place trudging along but there is always a new challenge. A new goal. This kind of regularity is exciting.
There is going to be a lot of writing going on in this next month and I know it’s entirely doable for me. That is important, to know your limits. I’ve heard of people who can write 9000 words a day. There are other people who can write 10,000 words a day. I had to push myself to get to my 6000 words a day during NaNoWriMo but I knew I could pull off 5000 words a day pretty comfortably. Do I wish I could write 9000 words a day? Yeah. That’s not where I am right now and so I have to know my limits, be comfortable within them, then push myself later on when I know I have surpassed that with flying colors. That is why the challenge is here. It is to get into a mode of consistency and to be highly productive at the same time.
Another thing this will do is put me ahead of schedule. The release between Blackson’s Revenge and Blackson’s Repentance was way too long. I’m beating myself up over that because it was a year between releases. The surprising thing is that the vast majority of my mailing list did not bail on me.
Which brings me to a major reason I want to keep up a steady release of material. For my fans, those people who support me in this endeavor. I don’t want them to have to wait a year between releases because that’s kind of ridiculous being an independent publisher. Armed with the knowledge I have in terms of what I can write from last month, there is really no reason for that. How fast my releases will be with this schedule, I’ve still have yet to get nailed down. However, to have something released every six to eight weeks is something I would like to do and now I know I can do. It’s a matter of working out the logistics and two other things: consistency and discipline.
So what’s the point in telling you this? Because I want you to join me on my journey. How are you going to be able to do that? Through the online program called WriteTrack. It’s a free online tool for writers to keep track of their word counts every day. I have an account there and it is what I use during NaNoWriMo. I also use a personal diary that I write all of my progress in as well. But I wanted to get those who were interested in on this as well to hold me accountable. Or maybe just give me a little bit of encouragement. Either way, it would be good to have others join me on this journey. So if you want to go over to WriteTrack and make an account then look me up, Easton Charles Livingston (all ran together) when I see that you have requested to be my friend, I will go ahead and approve you and then you can watch my calendar as I progress every day. The words that I will be recording in my word count are words that are actually for books I’m writing. So it won’t include any blog posts, world-building, or anything like that. This is going to strictly be work on novels.
Looking forward to seeing some of you.
Until next time, dear citizen, I will see you in the Tapestry!
