It began with just a touch of nostalgia. I was commenting to a long time friend of mine and co-author, Mina Carter, that I’d missed our time writing fanfiction for Star Trek. It had helped to inform a lot of my interests pertaining to writing and really laid the foundations of what’s in this book. So anyhow, my nostalgia turned into a conversation, which in turn, became an idea. The idea then grew into a mission.

My mission was to write this book. Success for me hasn’t been often or even occasional. Often, I start projects and either get writers ADD because of other ideas, or I burn out on them and drop them. I convince myself to fail because I’m too scared of succeeding.

So I did some looking and found Book in a Month By Victoria Lynn Schmidt. She basically lays bare the cold calculus of writing. She picks apart all the little nuances that stop you from finishing and keep you from succeeding. In ways it was almost like she’d been following me around and then wrote this book calling me out.

So followed her steps (for the most part. Some of it I didn’t do because well….I like to fly by the seam of my pants too much) and wrote up a contract with myself. A written commitment to my manuscript and laid out the process by which I wanted to approach it’s success.

And here I am thirty days later. Done. I’ve finished my grammatical edits and getting ready to push it off to my editor. Also sourcing material for the cover and so forth. Hopefully I can start considering when to release it.

And also, what the next book I write will be about. Goodness, I hadn’t given that too much thought lol.