Sept Dare Day 24 - Shifting Into Gear

We had such extreme heat, I was unable to sleep at all last night - which kind of shot my productivity today. But I'm hoping the heat is done for the season. The marathon run I seem to be on appears to be at an end (fingers crossed!) and so maybe I can really knuckle down at last.

Tonight I sat down and went through the manuscript for gaps and sections that will need serious revision. It looks like this thing is 30 chapters long, and will come to about 80-85k. I like short chapters, myself. I'll be doing more work tonight.

I think I have about four chapters worth of new material to write, lots of revision, and 26 days to go before my deadline. After that, I'm aiming at a publication date of March 1, but I plan on doing something like an actual "book launch" for it, so I may postpone in order to get all the ducks in a row.

I'm going to challenge the writers in the audience to think about NaNoWriMo. (That's National Novel Writing Month - in November. It's a novel dare, something like what I try to do year around on this blog, except much more intense.) I myself never sign up for that officially, because imho their rules make it useless for real writing. However, I like to take part unofficially and encourage all writers to use it to light a fire under themselves.

I'm going to do something different for NaNo this year. A combination of essays and short fiction. This is a part of my plan to "launch" the book next spring. The essays I hope to turn into a blog tour and guest posts, and short stories ... well, I'll do with those what we always do - start submitting them. I'll probably focus on flash fiction.