It was Douglas Adams who said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” Unfortunately, deadlines are a necessity in publishing, and as a writer, you won’t get far these days unless you can meet them.
So, whilst it’s only a personal one, I have a deadline for this latest revision / draft of the novel of the end of July. And whilst a lot of work from previous drafts will remain as it is, there are a lot of new sections that need to be rewritten.
I have no idea how long the finished novel will be – I’m assuming somewhere between 90k and 125k – so I guesstimate I have 90k words left to do… over 30 days.
That’s an average of 3000 words a day, every day, which is a punishing schedule for someone who likes to take time off at the weekends.
So it’s crunch time. Twitter and Facebook have been turned off except for allotted times (when normally they run in the background) and even email is only being checked periodically for the absolutely vital stuff.
The next month is going to a pretty lonely affair, but I will have a novel at the end of it.