Making writing a priority

NaNoW­riMo is right around the cor­ner, and I’m champ­ing at the bit to get started. But while NaNoW­riMo is a chal­lenge, I’m tak­ing it a lit­tle bit far­ther than that. 50,000 words in 30 days is great, but in the spirit of kick­ing it up a notch, I’m going to do 500,000 words in 300 days. NaNoW­riMo times ten.

Here’s the plan. For NaNoW­riMo, I’m start­ing with Rev­e­la­tion, the first book in the Between Heaven and Hell Tril­ogy. This book intro­duces Daniel Cho and drops him into a web of intrigue, decep­tion and ancient secret soci­eties that make the Illu­mi­nati and Masons look like the 4-​H Club. I plan to write this novel through to the end, rather than stop­ping when I hit 50k or the end of Novem­ber. At a pace of 2,000 words a day, I expect the first draft to take me about 6 weeks, fin­ish­ing about a week or two before Christ­mas. And the day after I fin­ish it, I’m start­ing on Cru­sade, then Jihad to round out the story of Daniel Cho. Then we jump for­ward a cen­tury or two to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Chron­i­cles Tril­ogy: Mis­taken Iden­tity, the story of our dis­as­trous first con­tact with an alien species, The Neme­sis War, the galaxy-​wide strug­gle we get pulled into, and then a break to write Sins of the Moth­ers, a spin-​off novel of one human lead­ing the oppressed half of the alien race we fought in Mis­taken Iden­tity in rev­o­lu­tion after the Neme­sis War is over, before finally wrap­ping up the seven vol­ume saga (what am I, Tolkien?) with Uni­fi­ca­tion. If every­thing goes accord­ing to plan, I’ll fin­ish Uni­fi­ca­tion just before Drag­onCon 2010 on Labor Day Week­end, and I will make my trip to Drag­onCon a cel­e­bra­tion wor­thy of some­one who just fin­ished writ­ing seven nov­els in less than a year.

And because I can, while this manic man­u­script marathon of may­hem is going on I’m also going to record and release four pod­cast nov­els (Do Over and the three books of the orig­i­nal Between Heaven and Hell), file bank­ruptcy, set­tle into a new job, move into a new apart­ment and try to lose 50 pounds. My only regret is that I can’t get mar­ried, have a kid and get divorced in the same time span just to round out the list of Most Stress­ful Things A Human Can Go Through. Maybe I’ll get hit by light­ning instead.

Why am I doing this to myself? Good ques­tion. Clearly, because I’m stark rav­ing mad. Or maybe I’ve just decided that with my high school grad­u­a­tion twenty years ago this past sum­mer that in two decades of coast­ing by on as lit­tle effort pos­si­ble, I’m tired of half-​assing my life. I’ve never really pushed myself to my lim­its, even in Basic Train­ing. As far back as I can remem­ber, I’ve done as lit­tle as I could to get by. Clint East­wood once said, “A man’s got to know his lim­i­ta­tions,” and I don’t know mine. I’ve never really come close. I feel like my whole life I’ve been dri­ving a vin­tage Porsche 911 (my writ­ing abil­ity) around the block to the gro­cery store and back. I want to know what I can really do once I get out on to the high­way and really open this baby up.

Twenty years ago, I was liv­ing with my par­ents, work­ing a McJob, and dream­ing of being a famous writer. And now, twenty years later, I’m liv­ing with my par­ents, work­ing in IT tech sup­port and still dream­ing of being a famous writer. I’ve achieved more than I had any right to expect, don’t get me wrong. I’m deeply thank­ful for every one of my fans, and in a lot of ways, I’m return­ing to Daniel Cho and the world he cre­ated for you. But I’m also doing it because while I’ve kinda sorta set out what I intended to do, I haven’t done it really. What I really want is to be a speaker at Drag­onCon, for peo­ple to fill a room to hear me talk about writ­ing. I want, when I’m old, for peo­ple to look back on the giants of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion and name out Hein­lein, Asi­mov, Kirvin.

Can I get there? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s the point. I still don’t really know, because I still haven’t really been tested. I’ve taken the quick and easy path (the Dark Side, if you recall) ever since ele­men­tary school.

That ends right now.

Start­ing Novem­ber 1^st, I’m going to get up every morn­ing at 6 am sharp, regard­less of how late I dragged myself to bed the night before. I’m going to wake myself up with a shower and think about the novel I’m work­ing on. Then I’m going to sit my ass at my desk and write until 8 am. I’m going to do this every day, seven days a week, no days off and no vaca­tions. If the muse is with me, I’ll get my 2,000 words for that day in that 90 minute ses­sion. If I don’t, I’ll write on my lunch hour or after work, but I’m not allowed to go to bed until I have my 2,000 words. Fol­low­ing the advice of Anne Lam­ott, Stephen King and Mur Laf­ferty, I do not care how good the words are. If I’m “blocked” and the muse just isn’t show­ing up, then I’ll get 2,000 words of gib­ber­ish or some­thing later in the book or any­thing I can think of. The words don’t have to be usable, they just have to be there. I think most of them will be good. But I’m not going to sweat those that aren’t. That’s what rewrit­ing is for, after DragonCon.

And that, dear read­ers, is the dif­fer­ence. That even though I’m going to have all this other stuff going on in my life, even though I have so many non-​writing things to accom­plish, writ­ing is going to by my num­ber one pri­or­ity, com­ing before all else. Writ­ing is the most impor­tant thing in my life. It has to be, or the next twenty years will be just like the last twenty, and I won’t have that.

Every­one I’ve told about this plan thinks I’m nuts. I don’t think that’s true. Stephen King writes 2,000 words a day, James Rollins does about 1,500. The quota itself isn’t all that much more than the 1,667 words a day every NaNoW­riMo par­tic­i­pant shoots for. It’s only when I phrase it as “writ­ing seven nov­els in a row” that it sounds crazy. But if I pull it off, if I suc­ceed, I will have finally Accom­plished Some­thing that no one can take away from me. Is it the end of the road? Hell no. As men­tioned above, there’s rewrites, find­ing a pub­lisher, agent, pro­mo­tion, etc. and that’s if I go the tra­di­tional pub­lish­ing route. I could also go self-​promotion podcast/​CreateSpace/​Amazon route, self pub­lish­ing in tra­di­tion of Walt Whit­man and Henry David Thoreau. (Walden was orig­i­nally a pod­cast. Look it up.) But those are wor­ries for another time. First, I have to write. I have to get these sto­ries out of my soul, so I can make room for new ones.

And I’m tak­ing you, dear read­ers, along for the ride.