Now, I need deadlines, and I’m always cutting it close. Too close. So close I panic in the last two weeks before a book is due and think I’ll never get it done, it’s crap . . . and sometimes it is, and I delete everything and start from scratch, like with SUDDEN DEATH which I write the first draft (after deleting 140 pages) in the three weeks between Thrillerfest and RWA.

I do believe in daily writing, but sometimes the writing doesn’t necessarily have to be on the WIP. (Though for me, it should be because I’m so behind . . . ) like last week I was stuck and so I wrote out a one-pager on my next trilogy idea. (Hmmm, maybe I should finishing writing the books for THIS contract before worrying about the NEXT contract???)

I do procrastinate, I do waste time, and I do write every day. But it could be one page or forty pages, and I never know at the beginning of the day how many.

I love revising and editing. I can do rewrite (and I mean new villain, entirely new scenes, new story arc) in a matter of days on a full 100,000 word book, but the first draft takes forever, and is painful because I keep perfecting as I go, and second-guessing. What I want to do is just write through to the end, then spend the same amount of time, if not more, rewriting.

That is easier said than done, although I know many great authors can do it.

Does anyone know?

I tend to do what I think of as suicides (old basketball practice terminology). I’ll race forward to a point and then sort of re-read (edit only a little), then race forward again, and go back and re-read (editing only a little), rinse, repeat, until I hit the end. At which point I am usually winded and sick of it and ready to throw up and go wander off to investigate an exciting career in growing grass or something, and then it’s time to re-read the whole damned thing and edit. Again. At some point, I start thinking, “hey, this is working,” and “maybe I don’t have to go be a rock quarry supervisor.” Hopefully that last stage lasts until I’ve turned it in.