Twelve Days of Christmas

This morning, with my short story near to completion, I knew that I'd have to motivate myself to pick up The Curse where I left it, at around 16,600 words. And then I realised that we only have 12 days till the eve of Christmas, and a challenge formed in my mind.  

It started with a very simple concept  - 12 days until Christmas, 12 days of writing. And then I thought if I used this opportunity as a countdown to Christmas, using a daily multiple of 1,000 words, i.e. producing 1,000 words on day 1, 2,000 words on day 2 and so on until day 12 itself with a target of 12,000 words, I could well have myself a rough first draft by Christmas.  In twelve short days I could accomplish a wordcount of 78,000 words, and adding that to what I've already done, I'd end up with a first draft of around 94,000 to 95,000 words.

Sounds exciting in principle, right?  But I know that if I am going to achieve this master feat, I will have to sacrifice certain things - watching Masterchef and Grey's Anatomy, surfing the net, and most of all, sleep.  I also appreciate that as the wordcount targets increase, I will struggle to get the words down without some kind of technique. But this is the funny thing - I came across another blog post today, was referred to it by a WriteWords friend - http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html

It's written by author Rachel Aaron and explains the methodology she adopted to go from 2,000 words to 10,000 words. Now I'm not one to ignore the synchronicities in life, so I'm going to give her system a go. And although I may not have gone to the same extremes of plotting as she has, I think I have a decent plot and structure to give me enough of a steer to work with.

I think I can do it, or at least try. Call me ambitious or foolish but 12 days of sacrifice will I think be worth it, if at the end of it I have not only a first draft, but can wake up Christmas day knowing that I've done it and can enjoy time with family and friends, eating turkey and Christmas cake, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. And when the Christmas break is over, I can sit down, print out my first draft, and look at it with fresh eyes.

So it starts tonight. It's late, and 1,000 words seems a long way off but I will at the end of each day report on my progress.  If you are working on a wip and want to join me, please do. You can join me on Fast First Draft or simply comment on this blog on your progress. Your mulitples can be in the thousands, or hundreds. At the end of the day, whether you write 7,800 words or 78,000, you'll be that much further on.

Wish me luck. Lorraine x