Thanks to a group I’m in, 20BooksTo50K®, I like to celebrate every time I finish a book, whether that’s a first draft, a re-write or a final draft before publication. Hence the beginning of this post, “Keyword: THE END”. It’s become symbolic of me to celebrate each completed book, and this one is no exception.
First, some background. The past couple of days, weeks, months have been hard. There’s been a lot of stuff going on. Not just with COVID-19 running rampant and driving people insane, but in my own personal life.
Let’s just say it hasn’t been fun…
So much not fun that I didn’t really want to write. At all. I had story ideas. Heck, I have three more novels I need to finish by June when their series starts releasing. But I didn’t have any desire to write them. None of them. And the “first draft” of all of them has already been written. It’s just a matter of re-writing them all from the perspective of a single character rather than two. The bones are there. I just need to flesh them out.
Still, because of everything going on in my personal life, I had no desire to write them. Nor any of the other 25+ story ideas I’ve already got covers for because… Let’s face it… I’m a cover hoarder. If you ever wanna see my pretties, I’d be happy to show you in a PM. I love showing off my covers. *insert gif of Will Smith holding out both arms to gesture toward Jada Smith* I love showing of my covers, even if I don’t want to show the whole world… yet…
So, what to do… I wanted to write… Just not what I had covers for. I wanted something new and fresh. Something different.
This is hard to do when your husband has placed you on a cover-buying ban because he knows you have an addiction you’ll keep feeding (AKA, buying more covers) without ever doing something with them. Yeah… I’m *THAT* person…
But, he made me a deal. If I could present to him a completed story that just needed a cover, I could purchase a—ONE—cover.
So, I started browsing through covers from my three favorite artists currently, seeing if any of them “sparked joy” as Marie Kondo would say.
I found one that had a story idea instantly jumping into my head, and I sat down and plotted it out over the course of two days. I meant it to be a short story—somewhere between 10,000-20,000 words—and I set the bar at 20,000 words just to be on the safe side.
On March, 20,2020, I gave myself five days to finish the story. By March 25, 2020, I wanted a complete story to show my husband (as well as myself) I hadn’t lost my touch. Plus, I really, really, REALLY wanted that cover.
Here’s how everything worked. Thanks to RJ Blain, I had created a spreadsheet the week prior that allows me to track my word counts. Thank you tons, RJ. I’m still tweaking it to do other things I want it to do, but so far, it’s been AMAZING!!!
- – Mar 20, 2020: 7,972 words
- – Mar 21, 2020: 4,929 words
- – Mar 22, 2020: 6,920 words (+2 for the words: “THE END”)
The final word count for this story is: 19,821 words, and I absolutely love the story. I’m already in the process of messaging about the availability of the cover (because I want it!), and I’ll be spending the rest of the year tweaking this story before I release it upon the wild in November or December. Just in time for Christmas hopefully.
This experiment proved two things:
One: I *CAN* make deadlines I set for myself, which is something that’s actually never worked for me in the past, and…
Two: I work best when I know there’s a reward at the end, and (for me) that reward can’t be, “You’ll get paid when this gets published.” I need a reward that’s there as soon as I’m done. My IBC root beers help. I’m only allowed to have one any time I complete a project, buuut… I need something else that I can look at over and over again and remind myself, “That’s what you’re working for. That’s why you’re doing this.”
It seems I have found that the best reward (for me) is a shiny new cover. Who’d-a-thunk? Not me… *looks over at 25+ covers I’m hoarding*
I’m gonna go celebrate while I bite my nails and wait for word back on whether that cover is available or not… *crosses fingers* Hopefully it is.