My novel-in-a-month challenge

Over at paranormal romance author Zoe Winters' blog, there is a post about short stories and the e-book market. Basically, Zoe had an idea to digitally publish short stories every once in a while because she seemed to think it would keep her name out there and give her regular readers something to chew on between Zoe's longer projects.

I thought it sounded like a decent idea, and it's one I've implemented somewhat.

But then Zoe backed off. She decided the idea about short stories wasn't such a hot idea.

You live and learn. Of late I mainly write epic fantasy, which tends to be action oriented, so for me writing a short story based in my fantasy world isn't that big a deal. For a paranormal romance writer, it's possibly a different situation. I don't know. And I'm not making any kind of judgments on Zoe's decision. Just outlining the bare basics of her post.

One thing, however, that got Zoe to thinking about getting out more material was the fact that indie author Amanda Hocking publishes a new novel approximately every two months.

Wow! That's fast!

But I have the same concerns as Zoe about wanting to give my readers a new "fix" on a fairly regular basis.

To that end, I've decided what I'm going to do.

I'm going to try to publish a novel every two months, at least for a while. Maybe I'll get tired of it, or maybe I'll find I just can't do it. But I'm going to try.

I have a novella to finish up, but I'm hoping I can have the first draft done by the first of March. Then, I'll start my next novel, which is tentatively to be a Kron Darkbow novel titled "Ghosts of the Asylum," or it might be a fantasy novella tentatively titled "The Slave Pits of Mogus Potere." I've got a couple of weeks to make up my mind on which novel to write next.

So, here's my plan.

Staring March 1, I'm going to try to write 3,000 words a day every day. That means in a month I'll have 90,000 words, which is a fair length for a novel.

That'll just be the first draft. At that point, April 1, I'm going to do one of two things. I'll either start sending out that novel to beta readers and doing some editing myself, or I'll go ahead and start the next novel. Why start the next novel? Because I generally like to put at least a month, preferably three to six between writing a first draft and the editing process, because this gives me a pair of fresh eyes on a project.

I'm going to try this, at least for the next few projects. Whether I succeed or not, only time will tell.

And I'm going to try to blog about this, possibly every day. Why? Because hopefully it will keep me motivated.

I've even come up with a little chart allowing me to keep track of my daily progress. Each day is broken up into five sections, each section representing 600 words. So, at the end of the day if all five boxes are checked, that means I've got my 3,000 words for the day. I decided upon 600 words because it's an easy amount of writing for me to accomplish in a fairly short time.

I'm hoping this will work.

Here goes.

Ugh. ;-)