How Do you Write a Book in a Month?

What's my next venture?

Camp Nanowrimo.

This is a month-long writing challenge for July. You set your goal. The ultimate is 50,000 words. I set mine for 30,000 words. Usually, I began to fizzle out around there. Life happens. 

This year, I have written an outline. I hope this helps me get past the fizzle. I hope I break 30K and hit 50K. I hope I shatter 50K. But I know that I will also be planning for a new school year. 

Speaking of school, I dreamed this morning that I had to babysit one of my former students! I got paid, and the student was a perfect angel. Definitely a dream! It was really odd, but dreams usually are. 

Back to reality, I'm excited about getting this story started! It was an idea I wrote when I was about 12. I did add some details to it later in my life, but this story idea came out of me when I was young. It is not finished. I had some of the villain's backstory, and some of the first action, so I fleshed it out in an outline. We'll see how it goes! These stories always take turns I cannot predict and I give myself permission to stray from the outline and maybe find a new and better direction. Like a crazy dream, sometimes the story takes off on its own and there's very little you can do to get it back on track.

How do you write a book in a month?

1. Challenge yourself. Write a 1,000 words a day.  Set up a marketing plan and pre-orders and a deadline.

2. Outline. But give yourself permission to let the characters tell you their story, even if it goes off-script 

3. Set aside time to write. Even if you snag 15 minutes at a time, write! A couple or a few of those make a big difference. 

That's it. Just write. Don't worry about editing, that takes another month. It's okay to make a cover, write a summary, back page notes, one line tag, etc. But focus that first month on just writing it all down so you have something to share.