Starting the New Year Write

In my interview over at A Cozy Readers Corner, I was asked about my New Year's Resolutions (for simplicity's sake from now on this will be referred to as NYRs). First, let me say that I firmly believe in NYRs. I believe in goals. I believe that in order to succeed at anything you have to aim high. Really really high. And you have to work hard in order to make those goals a reality. My NYRs for 2011 were to lose weight and get more organized. I also said these were works in progress. I don't believe that I will ever be thin enough or organized enough to suit me, hence, these are life long goals that I will struggle with forever.

Since writing that Q&A column, I have set another goal. And that's to finish a new book in 6 months. For those of you who write, you know how daunting it is to complete a novel. 6 months doesn't seem like nearly enough time. Yet in order to churn out a book a year, that's about the time frame you have to work with. So in order to make the goal seem less daunting, I've broken it down.

First rough draft goal is April 30. Which means I need to write roughly 6000 words (or 24 pages) a week). I think this is pretty doable.

The month of May is slotted for revisions. After which, I'll let some of my beta readers read the manuscript. These are the fabulous Guinea pigs who read my stuff and tell me what they think. Then, I'll take what they tell me (plus, I've been editing on my own during this time frame), put it all together and hopefully deliver a polished manuscript to my agent by July 1.

In order to keep me honest, I'm going to chart my progress here on my Writing Romance in the Closet blog. Every Monday, I'll fess up as to how much I've written and how the novel is progressing. I'm also going to be blogging about it in between Mondays (as well as other things) so if you've ever wondered how a book gets written (at least how a book gets written my me) just tune in.

So, first things first. I start with a title. Mel (my fabulous crit partner) thinks up the best titles. She never begins writing a novel without a title and I happen to agree with her. A title gets you in the right frame of mind for writing the book. Now... sometimes your title will get changed. The original title of Bunco Babes Tell All was The Church of Bunco. I loved that title. But the people at Berkley? Not so much. However, it doesn't matter that the title was changed because the fact of the matter is that the attitude of that book came from the original title. A title should be catchy and if possible, high concept. I thought up the title of my new novel after watching an episode of Real Housewives (can't remember which city!) which goes to show that you never know where you might get your inspiration.

The title of my new novel is The Ugly Girlfriend.

More on that later...