Novel Dare Goals for 2010

The big goal right now is to get The Man Who Did Too Much done, and then rewritten and ready for querying in the fall. And perhaps to be ready to start querying my earlier novel Have Gun Will Play this summer. This will involve more than just fiction writing. I will need to get my author page up to date, and I will need to get my query materials all ready too. Plus some outlines for future books in both series.

I am also feeling the itch on short stories again. There are a lot of interesting small markets out there now, as well as the few major mystery magazines and anthologies. Plus I discovered, with Mick and Casey, that short fiction can indeed be a fun way to develop and play with series characters. I've got a lot of ideas coming at me right now.

The next dare is a two phase dare that will go through the end of February.

Part 1: Every Day From January 4-8

• Author website. I have to work on it for an hour every day. It has to be up to date.
• Plot outline for The Man Who Did Too Much. Not only the plot, but background info notes and most important: a missing scene list. Where are the gaps? Get everything identified so I can move forward quickly.

Part 2: January 9 - February 28 (51 days)

I will be retyping the whole thing from scratch, and will be aiming at at least 60k, with a minimum of 1000 words a day. The first couple weeks will be tough, but I will be mostly retyping existing material at that point, so ... I should be covered. I really think this will get me more than 60k. Unless it turns out to be longer than expected, I hope to get this first full draft DONE by the end of February, because I often have some reading jobs in March.

March and Beyond

The month of March will be devoted to reading, and perhaps to short fiction. Beyond that, I'll have to wait and see. I hope to get a lot of rewriting, plus another script and maybe another novel done by the end of the year.