Okay, for all of you still with me, all of you chipping away it every day or as often as possible, it’s time to finish the fucker. I’m hip deep in revisions and setting August 1 as my goal. I’ve also cleared my calendar for June and July (besides ye olde day job) and will do everything in my power to resist dinner parties and lunch dates, which I hate anyway. I also hate travel, cooking and talking on the phone.
You don’t have to finish your project by August 1, but what can you commit to?
Photo Credit: Pixels
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Betsy Lerner 
This is timely. I’m trying to FTF but I’ll say this – this book has been so damn hard to write. I’ve been working on it almost two years. It’s due on or before Oct. 1st to my editor, so YES, the Aug. 1 date for me is a “must have it done,” and I better be well on my way with the self-editing part. I have to have it in my agents hands at some point for a read through to boot. I still have about 15K to write to The End. Not quite panicking, but . . .
Gosh, Betsy! How can you possibly hate lunch dates?! I adore them!! You must be having lunch with the “wrong” people. I had surgery in March, and had to move my office upstairs…which is like moving to a new house. I mean, I’m still working on my office and am now getting very close. I already have my writing tasks laid out on my desk and am hoping to start soon. It’s been so very hard to not be working, but I couldn’t anyway, while recovering. I’m excited to be coming back! Yahoooo!! Let us all know how it’s going! I would love to have lunch with you…I promise, we would laugh uproariously! Enjoy. Luvs, Jude deL
Ditto on all counts. Lunches – time sucks, cooking – a fucking chore (even though I used to love it) and the phone a distraction.
But.. after “chipping” away for I’m embarrassed to tell y’all how many years, my book is in final edits. I couldn’t be prouder of publishing my debut book at a very certain age. It’s a narrative nonfiction medical legal drama. LIVING TO DIE: A Resolute Young Woman Fights for her Life and Justice for All Women. Coming August 25.
Diane Melton
CONGRATS!!!!! Please keep us posted!!
Will do and thanks!! I’ve been both a lurker and a participant here, Betsy, and I don’t remember how I wound up in this nutty writersphere in the first place, but I’ve needed this community to believe in my own nutty self and plug on.
You’re in the right place. The nut house for sure!
That’s a timely question. I can commit to drafting the second half of the first draft of my MS by June 30 if I stop with the spring fever social shenanigans by Monday May 25. So I had better stop. Thanks for the reality check.
I love that you still post for us sometimes Betsy! I’m aiming to finish my novella by the end of this year. I got about 80% of the way through the first draft 10 years ago and stopped when an agent loved it but said there was no market for novellas for a debut author. I asked that exact same agent about novellas earlier this month, when I’d decided to finish it anyway, and she’d changed her tune and said ‘your book is as long as your book needs to be’. I wish I didn’t get swayed too much by feedback, it has stymied me many times before, but this time, I shrugged to myself, and thought – just keep doing what you’re doing.
Lily King was here in New Zealand last week for the writer’s festival and talked about how she logs only when/what she writes, as her ‘punch card’. I’ve spent decades punishing myself with the Seinfeld method (work every day, mark it off on a calendar, don’t break the chain) and now I see that I could have been creating something much more generous : a record of the writing I actually do, not a reminder of the days I miss.
So, by August 1, I’d like to be happy with the first 2/3 of my novella, and have a plan for finishing the last 1/3 by the end of the year.
And I want to have a little time log I can look at and celebrate the days I did some writing. Here’s more on how Lily does it: https://readherlikeanopenbook.com/2014/10/19/pencil-and-paper-author-lily-king-on-her-hand-crafted-creative-process/
My birthday is August 3. So I like August 1 as a deadline for the revisions on my book manuscript, Desert Eros.
I’m pretty sure I’ll have a portfolio of new work online (aka, a website) by August 1. Meanwhile, I similarly loathe dinner parties and lunch dates. Must we really be eating all the time? And I would rather light myself on fire than have a phone conversation.
I don’t mind travel, so long as I’m traveling alone.
You know I drop by every day, just to see what’s up.
“You don’t have to finish your project by August 1, but what can you commit to?”
Never giving up.
I’m committed to finishing revisions by July 12, two days before I head for Sewanee. Just for context: I had planned on finishing six months ago but got sidelined by (insert anything here) life stuff. I made a spreadsheet and divided the number of pages by the number of weeks I have left. Normally this would freak me out but it worked and I’m actually one chapter ahead of schedule (don’t want to jinx myself, so my fingers are crossed).
Thank you for the encouragement! I find your posts about your writing journey to be so inspiring, as well as all the comments. I’ve been obsessively checking email as I query what would be my debut, and I want to switch back to my next project. I want to finish the planning stage by the end of June, and start writing in July.