Why writing is like budgeting

Time and money never add up like I think they should. I’m always amazed at the amount of money my family spends. It seems like we should have lots of moeny left over at the end of the month, and yet we don’t.

This year I took on an insane amount of writing. Why you might ask?  Because I have no grip on reality. It’s like all those times when I walk into Michaels and see cute scrapbooking stuff on sale and suddenly think I’m Martha Stewart—or someone with scrapbooking talent.  Which I’m not.  But that doesn’t matter, because I see said cute stuff and I think, “I should buy that because one day I’m going to put together cute, touching scrapbooks that are a tribute to my kids and their innate darlingness.

No, no I’m not. What I’m actually going to do is buy the stuff and put it in a box in my closet with the rest of the scrapbooking stuff I will never use until Armageddon or the zombie apocalypse hits.  Yep, while all the electricity is down and we’re all holed ourselves in our houses with nothing else to do I’ll have plenty of scrapbooking stuff to keep me busy. (Assuming of course that I’ve previously downloaded pictures . . .)

Anyway, when my publishers both wanted a book within the same 6 month period, I thought I could do it.  Here is my reasoning: If I type two pages an hour and work an average of five hours a day, I’ll produce ten pages a day. If I work twenty two days a month, I’ll have the first draft of a 300 page book done in a month and a half—easy. Then I can take the other month and a half to revise it.  Bingo. Two books in six month.

Why is real life never like a math equation?

Perhaps because when all is said and done I write slower than two pages an hour. I actually average more like one page an hour (poof—I just gave myself ten hour days instead of five hour ones.)  And my books are closer to 400 than they are to 300. (Poof—there went my Saturdays) And you don’t have a six month period without things like family reunions, holidays, birthdays, conferences, school visits and other things that don’t allow you to write for ten hours a day.

So what actually happened is I was ensconced in myroom without showering, cooking or cleaning. I was frequently up until 4:00 AM. But the worst is over now, I think.

 Echo in Time is at the copy edits stage. I’ll have revisions for Slayers Two in a week or two. Masquerade's copy edits should be back to me any day now. And I’ll hopefully have revisions for The Wrong Side of Magic soon too.

And when I’m done with all of that, I’ll start working on the third fairy godmother book.