Unreasonable Goals
drafting editing science fiction
Despite having trouble settling back into my writing rituals, after so much time distracted by my day job's project (which is thankfully LAUNCHED and now confined back into the hours of a normal work day), I am attempting to stick to the deadlines I set myself.
First: Finish this revision pass of Salvage and submit it to Parvus on Saturday, October 28. I want it out of sight and out of my hands while I focus on my projects for NaNoWriMo. My husband has already given his blessing to let me abandon him in favor of extra writing sessions, and I will also be spending my lunches this week pushing onward.
I originally planned to draft Book Three of The Peridot Shift during November, but I realize that if I move directly into a big novel project, I'll never get to the smaller stories I also want to create.
So NaNoWriMo's projects will be those shorter pieces. At least five of them.
This will be new for me. I've never split NaNoWriMo across multiple projects, and I'm not sure how it's going to go. All I know is the intended length of each, and therefore how to set the due dates for each of them according to NaNoWriMo daily word count goals.
Except for one of them, I have my plots already outlined. I just need drafts. The first will be a redraft of what I coined "The Costco Cup Sample": a reader-magnet short story of about 5,000 words, a little taste of what experiences they might find in Flotsam. By NaNoWriMo pacing, this new draft would be done on November 3.
The second, a stand-alone novella to lead into my Patreon serial, Phantom Traveler, will be aiming at 20,000 words, and will take the next 12 days, hopefully draft complete on November 15. This needs an outline before I begin, and will be my focus once Salvage is submitted and off my plate. I will send my editor what I have before I begin, outline of the lead-in and text of my five vignettes, and ask him for his dev|editorial opinion on what might improve my plan before I begin.
Once the novella has been drafted, I suspect the vignettes I created will need revisions, and I will probably write new drafts, though I have five already written partially or in whole. These will be about 2,000 words a piece, bringing my total thus far to 35,000 words and my progress through the month of writing to Day 21.
For the remaining 15,000 words and final week, I will draft additional short stories planned in the world of Peridot. I have one main character's backstory to re-outline and re-draft. To follow that, a novella set in the world but apart from my main characters' lives which I've been calling Bad Apple for now. That has a rough outline, and I identified a 75,000-word masterwork off which to base its structure. I imagine mine will be about 35,000 words when done, so that should carry me well through the end of NaNoWriMo.
And give me plenty to work on while I wait for Parvus feedback on Salvage.
Then, provided Parvus doesn't make the case for major plot shifting on Flotsam's sequel, I can begin my full outline and drafting for Book Three in the new year. It will be odd, I confess, not to draft a new story during a NaNoWriMo, but I've no interest in waiting for April for their first 2018 event.