Looking ahead

I should have ordered two proof copies. Because while someone else is helping proof my book, I can't work on it.

That's the situation now and will be for a couple of weeks. I have one willing victim highly valued volunteer currently reading my book and another lined up for afterwards. Then I'll finish my editing.

But in the meantime -- well, I did take a vacation, but now I'm back. If I'm serious about writing besides publishing this one book, there's plenty I can work on.

For instance: I started writing the sequel to Just Like Magic many years ago, and I have several chapters written. I could insert that material into a CreateSpace template, format it, and generally get inspired to keep working on it.

Then: If I'm going to be writing first drafts, I need to make a regular time for it. That sort of intense writing has never been something I want to do after work, when I'd rather collapse, eat, surf the internet, read, or do something fun. (I actually find formatting manuscripts fun, so I have done a lot of formatting for Just Like Magic in the evenings.) Writing takes more psychic energy (it's scarier), and I'm a morning person. I need to stake out a time each morning to write.

Here's my plan for the week, then. Today I'm going to insert The Wicked Stepsister (that's the sequel's working title) into a template and format it. Monday-Friday this week, I'm going to write from 5:45-6:15 a.m. daily. Half an hour isn't much, but if I also use some of my daily hour of walking to plan how I'll use my writing time, I ought to be able to get a lot done. It all adds up, it really does. Even if I write only two pages a day, five days a week--well, Just Like Magic is about 180 pages long. That's 18 weeks for a rough draft. I can live with that.

Tune in next week to see how it's going!