Back to the keyboard

My biggest New Year's resolution... ok, not resolution. That implies imminent failure. My biggest new habit for 2012 is consistent writing. Those of you who have followed this blog for awhile know that I did - and won! - NaNoWriMo in November, and that the book ended up being pretty good. And, more importantly I had a blast. So rather than letting that be a fond memory until the panic for NaNo 2012 starts around October 15, I decided to keep writing.

Solomon's Throne and my trusty MacBook Pro

What am I writing? you ask. Well, blogs, right now. I have actually been editing the NaNo book, Solomon's Throne, this month, and will continue to do so until I have a good 3rd draft printed out. But starting Feb 1 I am embarking on two separate (yet concurrent) writing commitments:

60 days, 60,000 words - February and March
365 days of writing with a group of WriMos

I'm not sure what my word goal will be for the 365 days thing - I have to decide by the end of the week, and I want to make it challenging but not impossible. (For instance, I know that I won't write the 21 days of the Uganda trip in May, nor the few days before or after it, so I'm not going to leave myself a month-deep hole.) I'm thinking maybe 325,000... but I'll let you know before the 1st so you can help hold me accountable. Fortunately, any kind of writing counts for the latter quest, including these blog posts. So they might just get longer, as I scramble desperately for word count! (Fair warning!)

Thinking. See the smoke?

The British woman who is coordinating it has pledged to do (I kid you not) TWO MILLION words in a year. Yep, that's right, 2,000,000. Words. In a year. She's doing it to raise money for charity, which is awesome. To save you the math, that's 5480 words a day. A day. On my best day in NaNo I wrote about 6400. I had a couple of days over 4000. Most were in the 3000s. And I wrote 88,651 in 23 days, and was exhausted (mentally) every day.

I may need a dose of this, too!

I will also be going to a writers group once or twice a month starting the 26th. We're not sure yet if it will be a critique group or just a "kindred spirit" group, but either way I think it will be good have some other writers to hang out with. I've never been in a critique group, so if we decide that's what we want I'll need a dose of courage!

Inspiration for a story???

So now, for the 60 in 60 challenge, I have to come up with an idea. I was pondering a sequel to my NaNo book... But a lot of advice online seems to be not to write a sequel unless the first book is sold, in case the first book is never sold. Which means I need a totally new idea. It's the 16th. Do I have a totally new idea? Nope. My backup idea for NaNo was a YA (young adult) treasure hunt set in Beaufort, NC, but that idea really doesn't have a lot of appeal for me right now. I need to find another weird history fact, which is what I did that led to the Solomon's Throne idea. Pray for me!

Maybe a children's book about Riley the lobster... Nah.

PS. This post, not including the postscript, was 553 words... See how much help I need??