Now that work has returned to (still rather busy but) normal, my hope is to begin writing again.

And by that, I mean take back writing by the throat.

What I’d really like is to have a full first draft of this book done, then let it sit for a month or so, and then edit it by, say, September. Labor Day is a fine deadline. End of summer, etc. That’s the deadline for revision. September 5, 2011. And then maybe it will be strong enough to start sending out.

Not sure how much revision time I need, but let’s guess…two months. I would start back on The Black Hour (this title still works for me, and for the book, hurrah) on July 5. Which means to give it a month, I’d have to be done with the first draft by…JUNE 5.

Gulp.

No, I can do this. Right? Tomorrow I begin in earnest, and I have two days set aside this weekend for momentum-building. I’m at 51,429 words right now. If a novel is (approximately) 100,000 words, then I’m just over halfway there. That’s 48,571-ish left. Tomorrow is March 17. If I just did my math right (snort), that’s 74 days until June 5.

That’s 695 words a day, every day, until June 5.

Hmm. Every day.

Let’s be a little more…flexible. Nobody’s perfect, etc.

Seventy-four days is about 10 weeks, plus a few. Divide the 48,571 (ish) by 10, you get (yes, I used a calculator for this one) 4,857 words a week. But instead of counting all seven days, what if I could write a solid five days a week? That would be 971 words a day, five days a week.

That’s still ambitious, if you think about ten weeks in a row. If I pull this off, I will have a definite writing habit on the other side.

So let’s try this: 1,000 words, five times a week, ten weeks. My own little Mount Everest of words.

Starting tomorrow.

Or tonight, if I can stop talking on Facebook about how I got tickets to Oprah. Oh, yes, I did.

June 5, by the way, is the third birthday of my twin nieces. Aunt Lori is gonna give them a BOOK this year.