A while ago, I was listening to Adrienne Bell and Eliza Peake chatting on the Misfit’s guide to writing Indie romance podcast. %%
Honestly, podcasts are my new drug. So many to listen to, so little time…
But at any rate, Adrienne was talking about how she had set herself a large goal for 2020. She aimed to write half a million words, and she was really nervous about hitting that target. And she thought some other people might have the same issue.
In the spirit of supporting each other, and accountability and all those kind of phrases, she set up a group for it. Pick your own target. Pick your own method: plot/pantser, daily writing/weekends only … whatever works for you.
The symbol is a cute tortoise – slow and steady – and you join by invitation only.
It’s called Write Hella Words^^ and is a slack channel. [Not Facebook – thank GOD. I hate FB with the passion of a thousand suns.]
Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I sent her an email and asked to join.
And she said ‘yes’.
What on earth was wrong with me? I’m in a writing group with people and I buy their books! Rachael Herron, Sophie Littlefield and Adrienne Bell… and my brain keeps shouting at me:
YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE.
So I’ve got a massive dose of imposter syndrome.
[ Imposter is one of those words that confuses me: is it impostor OR imposter? I get it wrong, every time. Wait… is it both?]
But I digress… now the thing with half a million words is that it’s not only a lot of words; it is a lot of books. A romance novel is anything from 40k – 100k according to all the definitions. A thriller about 55-80k. So – if you do the math – 500k is 10-12 small books or five biggish ones.
It’s a LOT, okay? Like a whole series of books.
So I spent some time working out which stories to write and setting up a system which hopefully works to write them all.
I’m shooting for six books, so I guess that gives me two months to complete each one.
And it’s already February.
Wails: “I’m a fake; I shouldn’t be in this group.”
Excellent, thanks brain. Good to know its situation normal.
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