I learned the hard way with The Watcher’s Daughter that I work much better with an actual deadline. I started off with the best of intentions for TWD, and got side-tracked too easily. Once I decided to enter the 2014 ABNA competition (sometime in Fall 2013,) getting those edits done became worlds easier. After receiving my reviews, I made the decision to publish the following spring, after taking those reviews to heart and hitting the drawing board again.
I have a goal to publish TWD’s sequel, Tracer, in January or February 2016. I’d love to get it out sooner, but I have to be realistic about the rest of the obligations in my life. Kids, farm, community efforts… these things are priorities, and everything has to take a turn in the back seat for awhile (except for the kids, of course.) I’m hoping that giving myself a deadline, but still providing breathing room, allows me to hit that next publishing goal.
As of last week, I finished a thorough read-through of Tracer, something that I hadn’t done since 2012. Tracer is the product of a fast, furious, and successful NaNoWriMo. I went in with a solid outline and came out with a novel I was quite proud of, especially for such a hurried first draft. It more than deserves the editing attention I plan to give it over the next ten months. Each chapter has received a solid summary, complete with notes on changes that need made, and even a few little sentence rewrites as I went.
I’ll begin applying those edits this week, with a goal to finish by June 1st. It’ll go off to my readers at that point, and once it circles back to me, I’ll work with it for about a month before getting a final line-edit. If I can have it ready before Christmas and put it up for pre-order, I will be very happy indeed.
Now you know the plan… keep my feet to the fire on this one. It’s worth it.