How Did Your #1000WordsofSummer Go?
This is such a great exercise in renewing focus. It comes at the right time for me, as I had a huge project languishing near the finish line, and a short story draft due. I committed to myself that I would finish both the novel and the short story during the two-week challenge… and I did!
The novel, THE WOLVES COME AT NIGHT, is the 9th in my long-running but temporarily on-hold Taylor Jackson series. I haven’t written a Taylor book in a decade. I spun off into the Samantha Owens series, then co-wrote a series while writing standalones, and kicked off a fantasy pen name, and all this time, Taylor has been gnawing at me. A patient woman she is not.
Interestingly, ten years is a VERY long time in the creative life. I’ve changed as a writer, as a person, and especially as a creative. Society has changed dramatically since I last explored the police procedural landscape, too. My main character was promoted out of her job, and that created even more changes. Everything changed.
I had a hard time with this book from start to finish. It was supposed to be a novella, a throat-clearing between standalones. Then I had some extra time, so it grew, until I found myself, 10 months later, with an almost completed novel that wouldn’t cross the finish line because I kept being pulled into other projects that were contracted, not just for fun.
Trust me when I say, finishing was especially delightful. I realized I had a thread to the end early in the afternoon, warned my husband I would need him to deal with dinner, changed into my battered Harvard t-shirt—which I’ve worn every finishing day since the beginning—and 5000 frenzied words later…it was done. Which saved the challenge for me, as I’d hit a wall and hadn’t hit my 1000 words the whole weekend.
The other project, THESE COLD STRANGERS, is a short story for Amazon Originals that will be out in January 2023. I love this one, a philosophical treat as well as a punchy, quick, spooky tale.
So many thanks to Jami for running this every year, and the community for the accountability, and for giving me the wherewithal to get through. Final word count for the two weeks: 16,296.
Did you participate this year? How did you do?