It’s been a while since I’ve tackled a big, scary project. For more than a year now, one idea has been nagging at me incessantly.
Writing a book.
I’ve been pretty damned nervous about committing to it. I usually dive into big projects by announcing them to friends and family, which means when I get buried in the work and want to quit, I can’t. It would be too embarrassing. Which means once I commit I have to do the work every day, no matter how hard it is, no matter how bad the suck gets.
Well, it’s time.
I will be writing my first book, starting now, with the launch of this post. I’ve created a Facebook group for the book where I’ll keep you all posted on my progress, boneheaded mistakes, “WTF’s”, and other fun tidbits. You can follow along, laugh at my nitwitty slipups, give me a good kick in the ass when I need it, and share your thoughts on the topics I’ll be tackling.
Speaking of which: what the hell is this book going to be about? I’ve been kicking around a few ideas for the past couple of months, and I’ve chosen a topic that’s near and dear to me. The current-but-not-carved-in-stone working title is:
The Simple Art of Getting Shit Done: The Lazy Ass’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Building Good Habits, and Getting Out of Your Own Way.
If nothing else it should get a record number of rejection letters.
Since it’s my first book I haven’t a clue how to estimate it’s eventual length, but my best guess right now is around 40,000 – 60,000 words, or 90-120 pages. I’ve deliberately kept this first book small in scale because I’m sure that it’s going to blow up like a hungry deer tick. If I’m faced with editing 300 pages after I’ve written the first draft I may just take up competitive day drinking.
The plan is to write about a thousand words per day, 6 days a week, which should have me delivering a first draft in about eight to ten weeks. I’ll plan on leaving the draft to fester for 4-6 weeks, and then I’m guessing it will take me another 3-5 months to rewrite, edit, market, and launch the book.
[Side note to my author friends: If you’re rolling around on the floor, holding your sides and laughing hysterically after reading the above paragraph, when you stand up and wipe the tears from your eyes feel free to drop me a note and let me know how far off my novice estimates are.]
Writing 1,000 words a day should be manageable, as I’ve been doing it nearly every day for the past 2 years for TryFailGrow. The hard part, I think, will be taking the first draft and hacking away at it. Typically it takes me 15-30 minutes to write a 1,000-word blog post, and then it takes a couple of hours to edit it into something that doesn’t suck. So that pile of 40,000 – 50,000 words is going to be a formidable mountain to climb.
My schedule will be 30-60 minutes of writing every morning for the book, accompanied by another 30 minutes of writing for the Facebook group and/or TryFailGrow.com, and probably another 30-60 minutes of research each night before bed to prepare for the next day’s writing session.
If you want to follow along join the Facebook group, and if you have ideas, suggestions, comments, complaints, or hollas, let me have it.
It’s Party Time folks. Let’s rock ‘n roll!