Just get it done!

The Silver Spoon will have been out a year in two days. TWO DAYS! I can't believe it's been a year already. And still, I don't have another book ready to go. I have four (count them, FOUR!) manuscripts in various stages of development, all of them past the first draft and read-through.

I have:
-The sequel to The Silver Spoon (title TBD),

-Bitter Pill, the first Rennie Harlow mystery,

-Sleep Tight, the second Rennie Harlow mystery, and

-My mystery project (which, coincidentally, happens to be both a mystery and a project that I'm keeping under wraps for the moment).

My problem has been, I think, that I always enjoy starting something new rather than struggling with revisions on an existing draft. So, in following the method Stephen King outlines in On Writing (an excellent book--if you haven't already read it, you totally should), which involves starting on a new idea to give yourself the required mental and emotional distance from what you've just finished, I've managed to make quite a mess for myself because even after getting the distance needed, I can't seem to go back and make the necessary fixes. I'd rather just start something new, and following this method gave me permission to do so. Over and over again. Not good. I just don't have the willpower to follow this method even though it's a good one. So now I have a new rule: no new projects until I'm sending out queries or I've sold one of the above projects on my list.

And I've decided, I just need to get something DONE. Just get it done. That's what I keep telling myself. Because I, for whatever reason, will continually invent reasons why I can't get something done. I can't fix this chapter until I know this information. I can't do this until I do that. And then I'm going in circles trying to find something I can do that's not connected to a half-dozen other things. And basically, that's just my self-doubt finding ways to keep me down and securely under her thumb. So, forget her (my self-doubt is definitely female because she can be very bitchy at times), it's time to stop screwing around and get something finished. It makes me wonder what I've been doing all year long already!

So, here's my plan. It's ambitious and definitely *nervous gulp*-worthy. My 30th birthday is October 7. By that date, I want to have the sequel to The Silver Spoon (damn, I have to think of a name for this book so I can stop calling it that) to my first readers. That gives me a little over a month to complete my current draft, make minor edits, clean things up and send it out to them.

By that same date, October 7, or before, I want to have a complete story synopsis for my mystery project. I've found the synopsis I wrote for the sequel to The Silver Spoon to be invaluable in writing this most recent draft. I'm hoping that same method will help here as well.

By December 31, 2005, if not before, I want the sequel to be in review by RuneStone, my publisher. I also want the mystery project to be completed and actively in the query process.

So, my key phrase to myself for the rest of this year is going to be:

Just get it done, Stacey!