Pitching a Fast Book

How fast can you write a book? Seriously, how fast?

This week, about as fast as a turtle can scuttle from Austin to Anchorage. But once upon a time, I wrote a novel — a really fun romantic comedy – in less than eight months. Sure, novels have been written faster, but for me it was akin to tornadic activity. I accomplished this feat while working 30+ hours a week and learning to live life in a new town in a new state in a new house with an incredibly cute one-year-old distraction. How did I do it? I had momentum from beginning to end, from the germ of an idea through full-blown plot development. I loved my characters, embraced their story, cheered as they triumphed over their biggest challenges, and giggled at every crazy, torturous scenario I stuck them in. That’s a book I believed in. That’s the book that got me jazzed enough to sit down and write everyday — every single day, regardless of what else was happening.

Unfortunately, my story wasn’t without problems, the most important of which was my protagonist’s likeability. To the outside world, she wasn’t nearly as lovable as I thought — at least not in the beginning where she needed to establish a connection with readers who could root for her. So it was extremely difficult, but I finally put my pride and joy down for a nice long nap, while I digested the characterization problem, “got some objectivity,” and in the interim went to write some other stuff.

Only, if you’ve read any of my blog, you know I’ve had trouble getting energized about the new projects (any of them), despite that I think they’ll be fabulously fun, publishable stories. While my novel-writing pace has slumped, my blogging pace has jumped – exponentially! I never blogged before last month, and I went from zero to sixty in ten seconds with the after-burners on. It’s an exciting new venture. The instant gratification quotient is super high. And I like looking at the little line graphs that show a steady climb in visitors, week after week. That’s nice, but I’m a novelist at heart, and now I’m royally pissed. I’ve wasted too much time — not on blogging, but on hemming and hawing about the blank spot in the new plot I’ve chosen to work on.

About a year ago I took an online course with some fabulous and prolific women about writing a book in thirty days. I mean, just the title sucked me in like a stopped-up toilet to a plunger. The 4-week class was challenging and thoughtful and taught me some interesting ways to track my daily output by amassing word counts in a spreadsheet. In addition to being quirky, I’m quite anal (to continue the potty metaphors), and there are few things I like more than watching charts fill up with pretty numbers. However, my charts remained empty because when the course ended, though I had some awesome tracking tools, my production was still hovering at ground zero. Many months later, I’m still screwing around with Novel #3, Chapter One.

Tonight, I think I’ve finally hit on the problem. I think the, um, technical term for it is brain clutter. When I wrote my rom-com in eight months, though my life was very busy, I didn’t have a lot of life stressors. I can’t say that now. Not even close. As much as I love my life, I see pretty clearly now that I need to simplify. To focus on writing a story with complex relationships, you have to be able to shut out everything else and immerse yourself in that imaginary world, in each characters’ head, and in their hopes and dreams. Only then can you pitch that fast book across home plate to clinch the game and a new contract.

All right, then, who can I – er, what can I get rid of?

© 2008, K. Jayne Cockrill