Seventy Days of Sweat

It's starting TOMORROW!

My main goal is to write the draft of the last book in my series about life in a resource-poor speculative future. I've struggled a lot with this final story, but since I gave Diana her happy ending in My New-Found Land, I really want to give Will his. I intend to keep torturing him for awhile, of course, but he deserves it. Stoic alpha males are very hard to work with and he's been a total jerk ever since I let Diana leave him.

But as much as I want to get this story written, I feel like I'm getting so much out of writing short stories lately that I've cut a deal with myself. I can write a short story instead of working on my novel as long as the short story takes no more than two days from first word to final edit. Two days may sound like a lot, but my writing time is actually pretty limited-- three hours each weeknight under the best of circumstances, and a little more on weekends. In actual practice I often have no more than an hour or two each night, or even less if I'm sleepy.

I would like to eventually have enough of these stories to make a book, with everything in its proper chronological order. The stories fill part of the gap between Tin Soldier (on a private blog, since it might be publishable) and Bella Diana, in which I torture poor Diana mercilessly. I always thought it would be fun to write vignettes about Will and Diana's years together, before he asked too much of her and everything went to heck in a handbasket. Hence the "Will and Diana Adventures."

So those are my goals for Seventy Days of Sweat: write my novel and/or finish my collection of short stories. Either way, I'm going to be learning a lot.

Can't wait to get started!