So a few months ago, I had gone out with a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while. At one point during the night, he said to me, “So, you work full-time at the magazine, you have the Damned Connecticut blog, the rayality thing, you’re married and have two kids who do all sorts of activities, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds about right.”
“So …” he continued. “When did you find time to write a book?”
I’ve actually been asked this question (or variations of it) at a few of my book signings, and I’d like to say, looking back, I have absolutely no idea how I did it. I mean, I know that the publishing company gave me a year to do it, and it got done and is now in print—and still available at Amazon.com, thank you very much—but it was definitely a challenge to say the least.
Okay, I do have *a clue* how I did it. About two or three months into the process, I woke up one night in a full-on panic attack. At that point, all I had done was about half of the first chapter, which is about Benedict Arnold, and I suddenly realized that at the pace I was writing, there was absolutely no way I was going to get it done by my deadline. I was totally overwhelmed, a feeling that only seemed more desperate at 3:17 a.m., as most things do at that hour. I was pacing around the bedroom, freaking out. I genuinely considered contacting the publisher and offering to send back my advance in order to be allowed to quit the project.
Obviously, it never came to that because despite my meltdown, the math prevailed.
And not the arithmetic involved with figuring out the money I would be paid (although that was a factor). No, I sat down with a calculator and figured out how I could write a book.
Essentially, I needed to have a completed manuscript of 70,000 words. Working backward, I wanted to be done with the original draft about a month ahead of the deadline so I could re-write it once or twice. From the moment I was freaking out to that target day, it was “only” 200 days away, thus, I needed to write 350 words a day to get it done on time.
Again, that doesn’t sound like a big deal—just a few paragraphs a day, right? But those had to be *researched* paragraphs since the book is a collection of historical biographies and just making stuff up is apparently frowned upon. (Note: Next book will be full of stuff I make up!) And that 350 words/day rate would be writing every single day with no time off.
Ultimately, that’s what I did. If I missed a day, or knew I was going to be busy and couldn’t write, I doubledowned and wrote 700 or, occasionally 1,050 words, if necessary. I know it’s maybe not the most romantic story, but hey, it worked. I was able to relax, stuck to the schedule, had no more freak outs and finished right on time. Sweet, right?
That being all said, this weekend, what with losing an hour to daylight savings time and other activities (like going to roller derby and The Connecticut Bride Expo; don’t ask!), is one where I would’ve been scrambling to make up missing words.
So rather than knocking out a long-winded and witty post, here are two things I’ve recently written for Damned Connecticut that you might enjoy:
The Dark Day – In Connecticut, we’ve been getting used to freaky storms and weird events over over the past few years lately—hurricanes, blizzards, Frankenstorms, tornadoes, even an earthquake—but none were unusual as the darkness that descended on May 19, 1780.
The Headless Horseman of Canton – New York isn’t the only state who has a legend about a headless equestrian phantom who terrorizes wayward travelers on lonely and dark back roads.
Now the trick is if you have time to read them …