A New Challenge

Tomorrow I am going to start writing a new book. I still don't have my first book done. Or my second, or my third. But I'm going to start another one. Why? Because I have been challenged.

For the second year, my writers' group is issuing a challenge that we call Winter Nano. It's loosely modeled after the National Novel Writing Month, which occurs in November. Most of us have too many family obligations to participate and complete a novel in November, so we decided to do this in a slower month. The challenge is to write 32,000 words in 28 days, or 1143 words per day. That's a lot of writing, especially since most of us have jobs and/or school to take up the bulk of each day. But we're taking it on.

Last year, I completed the challenge by doing a lot of planning. I outlined my story, decided on not only the characters' names, but their issues, and wrote it all out. And then when the time came, I simply followed my outline, fleshing it out into actual scenes. And the writing happened. I loved it!

So this year, I'm working on a sequel. I have characters, and a conflict. I'm not sure it's a strong one, but I'm adding to the outline each day. And tomorrow I will open a blank document and start writing. I hope. At the end of the month I will have three stories completed, and needing editing. I'm about halfway done preparing the first one for submitting. (That was supposed to be done by January, but life got in the way - I'm still doing it!) And then if I get on a roll, I'll work on the second, and then the third, and then somebody will love all three books and publish them!

Dreams are wonderful. Making the dreams into reality requires work. Right now I've got the momentum, and that makes me happy. Wish me luck!