💻 lisa writes a lot of stuff 📚issue #52 Wanted: Romance Includes You
Give me seasoned! Give me age-gap! Give me hot sex that makes my toes curl!
Dear Internet,
I just deleted 1000 words on this issue. I wrote it last week and thought “Hey! I’m on top of getting this issue out!” But it turns out that when I read this morning, I decided to dump it.
It is what it is.
Monday night I sent my editor the beginning (5600 words) of one of my novels. I’m submitting it to Harlequin’s Romance Includes You which is due this Saturday (May 31).
(The max word count for the contest is 5000 words so my editor has a lot of work to do!)
The thing is, I have been aware of this contest since last fall; I had at least six months to write, get it edited, and submit it during the call. Yet, YET, I decided to fuck around and wait until the last minute.
It’s just like grad school all over again!
The big thing is that you don’t have to have the novel finished, which is huge, but for the other Harlequin lines, you need to have a finished manuscript, which I don’t have.
Here’s the interesting thing: On Sunday, I ran a two-hour writing sprint and cranked out 900 words on top of my 1000 existing words When the sprint ended, I then added another 3500 words (roughly) with the ending of 5700 words the same day.
When I get where I’m going, I write fast. I don’t expect it to be perfect but it needs to provide the outline of where I’m going. Once I start the story, I create a plan (of sorts) on how the rest of the story/book will follow.
This is known as the panster method, which a lot of writers are not fans of. On the other end of the spectrum are the plotters who do sit down, write out a plot, and follow it (more or less).
I’ve tried being a plotter but my brain was going all over the place and I got too many ideas. But in my old age, I realise that being a pantser isn’t working for me either. The middle is plantster which is where I’m heading.
For my unnamed novel, I have changed the plot at twice and the story five times.
(I have 12 Document Tabs and could only screenshot the first 10.)
The version keeps changing because I read my notes and see the direction I planned for my characters in do not match what I’ve written. I have Big Ideas and I want to incorporate them all!
But you can’t because then you’ll get a hot mess.
I’ve also got some projects I need to work on and haven’t so there is that.
Writing to Completion
If you’ve followed me for years or know me personally, you know I have Big Ideas and spin up a lot of projects except those projects never come to fruition. I either burn out, lose interest, or do not want to put in the work.
Last years entry for Romance Includes You is a perfect example.
I had 20,000ish words written but the first 5,000 (for the contest entry) changed in editing so I knew, KNEW, that I would need to scrap the rest of it and pick up where the threads lay off.
Time ticks on and now it’s January 2025. I plan my writing projects for the year, write that shit down, and declare I will finish that novel by my birthday in June.
My birthday is 2.5 weeks and I’ve not even opened that project to work on.
A woman posted on one of the places I crawl on the internet that she worked the same way I did: She’d start a new project, leave it for another project with the intent to come back to it, and then let the first project languish. She did this over and over again on the idea that having started so many stories gave her a leg up.
Guess who that sounds like? 😃
So, I made a decision. While I will submit to the Harlequin contest, regardless of the outcome, I’ll finish this book by December. That gives me six months to finish the first draft of the novel.
First draft. It won’ be perfect nor will be salable but it will be finished.
The scary thing is if I know where I’m going and how to end something, I can write a lot faster. Scarily fast. I just calculated that if I’m shooting for a 75K word novel and I write at 3K words a clip (I’ve written as much as 8K words in one day so I know this is feasible for me), I can get the novel done in 25 days.
But I’m not going to give myself a time line of a month because I can’t write every day and also, that’s fucking ridiculous.
So, here, in this newsletter, I’m declaring that I will finish this unnamed novel by the end of 2025. And in every issue of Lisa Writes a Lot of Stuff, I’ll track my word count at the end of that day.
Unamed Maeve Fletch Project Word Count
Monday, May 26 5649 words
(P.S.: I still need a working title for this thing!)
Published Pieces
Ha, I was wrong! I did have something come out recently. I did a graphic novel review, Victory Parade, over at No Flying, No Tights that came out in April. The graphic novel is told on various time lines about a Polish immigrant who settles in New York and how her life is affected by WW2. It is not a pleasant topic to write about but it must be done.
On wards and up wards!
lisa x