Zero to 85k in 60 Days

mood: boggled

pandora/ipod: "far gone and out" by jamc

Let me start by saying this not an April Fool's prank.  I kinda wish it was, but it ain't.

Last night at 10:12pm PST, I hit send on the first draft of GET DIRTY, the second book in the upcoming Don't Get Mad series, debuting this fall from Balzer + Bray with GET EVEN (September 16, 2014).  GET DIRTY had, without a doubt, the most insane writing schedule I've ever attempted, and up until about ten days ago, I wasn't entirely sure I was going to hit this deadline.

But before I explain, let me give you some backstory.

Back in mid-January, my agent and editor presented a plan to bump the publication of GET DIRTY up a season from Fall 2015 to Summer 2015, publishing the first book and the sequel roughly nine months apart.  Which is great!  Trust me, no complaints here.  With all the bumping back of titles in this industry, this is now the second time I've had a book bumped up, (POSSESS went from Winter 2012 to Fall 2011) and I consider myself incredibly lucky that both my editor and my publisher have such faith in me.

The caveat in all this was that I needed to turn a draft of the book in no later than April 1st, which makes it like the cruelest April Fool's joke ever.  At the time, I mere ten weeks ago, I had no plot, no words, no clue.

Of course, I've sort of done this before.  I had ten weeks to write TEN back in 2011 so, you know, in my head I'm like, "Yeah, I can totally do this!"  But TEN was a significantly shorter book (under 70k) and a stand alone.  GET DIRTY is a sequel (my first time writing one...) and I knew from the first book in the series that it would clock in close to 85k.

I spent two weeks working with my editor on a detailed synopsis, the only way I thought I could pull this off.  When you have to write a novel in 60 days, you don't really have time to pants around with the plot.  Then on February 1st, I began.  Here's what happened next:

I wrote the 79k words of the first draft in 52 days. Originally, I'd mapped this spreadsheet out for 75k in 50 days, but it went longer than I expected.  You might notice that there are only three days here with "0" word totals:

Saturday February 22 (we saw our current new home that morning then drove to San Diego for a family event)
Tuesday, March 4 (we went to the LA County family court house to witness my best friend's adoption finalization, and then I got stuck at my day job until late)
Sunday, March 16 (we moved into our new place - yep, I had to pack up and move in the midst of all this!)

Some days were small (Was it really worth it to write only 65 words on March 13th, Gretch?) and some of them were huge (March 5-7 was a writing retreat) but they were basically all writing days.

79k in 52 days left me exactly 8 days to edit this monstrosity into shape before turning it in.  I spent 4 of those days working on hard copy edits with my trusty red pen, 3 of those days implementing said edits, and 1 day writing the very last scenes which I'd skipped.

84,774 words in 60 days.  I went from nothing to what I feel is a halfway decent manuscript in two months.  And while I know other writers seem to do this ALL THE FREAKING TIME (how? are you guys insane or just masochists?) this was a first for me.

Today I'm kinda shell-shocked, kinda tired, and slightly lost.  But tomorrow I need to start finishing a proposal for a new book, so I can get that off my plate before I get my first edit letter on GET DIRTY next Thursday.

Cuz there ain't no rest for the wicked.