I have been going to do it for ages but November 1 rolls
around each year and the calendar is usually full of the stuff of living and
the preparations for Christmas. Usually it is a time when less writing gets done,
not more. Which goes to prove that “ if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” as someone once wrote in advice to writers.
Fail? In the past, I didn’t get started. November 1 is too late to decide what to
write about. This year I am ready and I am clearing my life’s decks for a good
solid month of writing.
Why am I going to cancel just about all social activity,
cease house work and hope it rains so I
won’t have to water gardens?
Because I need a deadline.
I discovered that deadlines make it possible because without one, it is
easy to let other stuff push the writing out of the way. So I am making it
known that I am hibernating in the
writing cave during November, rather like the French novelist who told his
friends to “consider me dead until October” whenever he was about to write a
book.
By November 1, I will know my characters, I will have exercised my ‘what if’ muscle and
will have mapped out their journeys with enough flexibility to allow for
surprises. I might know the outcome, but
once the journey begins who knows what will happen?
On November 1 at 6am I will write the words… “…
But that would be getting ahead of myself. Let the planning
begin.
I dare you.
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