I’ve had several very good conversations over the course of the past couple of weeks or so. Actually, they probably go all the way back to the end of April. Talking about writing, about editing, about what it takes to bring a book to market, any book, really, but more specifically a memoir about a twenty-year old college student who is diagnosed with leukemia.
No great surprise: the consistent advice I heard through all of those discussions was to finish the book.
Simple.
I don’t know exactly how far away I am from finishing the narrative. Feels like maybe halfway, maybe a little more. If I trust that I’ll want to do some extensive trimming of what I’ve already written, then I’m sitting at somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 words. So let’s say that 40,000 more gets me to where I want to be.
40,000 words.
Between now and the end of summer is just about 12 weeks. 40k/12 = 3,333 words/week. Divide that by six days of writing each week gets me to 555 words per day.
After crunching the numbers, I realize that this is absolutely within reach. Just this past week (when I wasn’t even thinking about a word count, or goals, or anything other than trying to write) I’ve had sessions of 1100, 650, 680, and 560 words. It’ll take some discipline, to be sure, to carve out time to write every day. But it doesn’t take much to get to 500. Heck, even though it won’t count toward my daily total, this post is already getting close to 300.
So that’s the goal: finish the manuscript before Labor Day.
