My Destiny Awaits – Lance Schonberg

So as I look back through my writing log, I find that there’s been about exactly 275 words of new fiction since I finished a flash piece on May 29^th. Oh, I’ve written. Blog posts in the main, at least recently. Book reviews, scripting and show notes for Days of Geek. But not fiction.

The summer was weird, though it did have a fair bit of editing involved, most of it on a single project that’s now only a handful of days from being finished the third draft. I’ve got lots of other things to edit, too, but I suddenly, finally, desperately need to work on something new.

So I dusted off the fragment of an idea I had a while back and turned it into a super bare bones story kernel. Beginning, a handful of major plot points, and end. Stretching that out, I filled in a few phrases in between to get a very rough scene breakout. Voilà, a 255-word outline.

Okay, not exactly an outline, but the beginnings of one. I took a little time each day in the back half of September to turn that basic framework into a real outline. Over the course of the last two weeks, it’s grown from 24 Chapters to 26 and some of those will get broken up because I’ve settled out to 37 scenes and usually like those to be self contained chapters.

It’s now a 5200-word outline for a Science Fiction novel with a working title (Manifest Destiny) and I’m going to start writing it tomorrow. The catch: I want to finish the first draft by the end of the year.

My estimates show about a 60,000 word short novel. Based on past experience with my estimates, it should actually come in somewhere between 66 and 69k. So let’s assume the upper end of that 69,000 words / 92 days = 750 words per day. In the past, when I’m struggling to get the words out, that’s about 45 minutes. I think I can cover it.

I hope I can cover it.

Wish me luck, because I’m still doing the podcast thing while I’m at it and I have lots of editing to do. And plotting the next project. And a full time job, and three kids, and… well let’s just say a life.

But the next three months are a test. Can I get back into the groove, and can I get far enough into it that I go back to working on more than one project at a time? (Sooper Sekrit Projekt still a possibility).

The reason I need to know that is that I want to get to the point where I can replace some or all of my income through creative endeavors. Yes, I know that’s everyone’s goal, but I’m not getting any younger (who is?). Enough waiting, enough stalling, enough excuses. Time to get to work.

If the next three months are successful, I’ve got a serious year planned for 2014.

Manifest Destiny begins tomorrow.