So I am coming up with a schedule for writing my book(s). I am terrible at sticking to a timetable and I’ve been trying to take myself seriously as a writer for the past few years. And while I have been writing, I have not been actively progressing my writing career.
Right now, one of my greatest influences is the Self Publishing Podcast. I am completely and totally addicted to listening to Mark Dawson & James Blatch talk about the ins & outs of self-pubbing a book. The podcast is informational, inspirational, and motivational. They give away so much valuable information for free that you have to pay other creators who claim to hold the kingdom keys to get.
And I don’t know about you guys, but when it comes getting valuable information online, even stuff you pay for, I constantly feel like some bloggers and creators are holding things back. They keep the real tricks just for themselves and tight to the chest. But Mark Dawson literally goes over his income report in the podcast so that writers can have a good idea of how effective his marketing strategies are. Talk about putting your cards on the table. I highly recommend listening!
The Self Publishing Podcast has illuminated the path for me so moving forward I am going to use this blog as an accountability tool and I will share personal updates, tips & tricks, and the tools I use along the way.
I am halfway through my plan, that started Sept 1. The goal this month is to outline! I am using Save the Cat! to flesh out my story beats and I am outlining in the style of Rachel Aaron, who likes to make 5,000-word outlines that erase the need for planning during the writing process. She likes to write out all of the kinks in the story in the outlining process so that she doesn’t have to stop during the writing process to address structural problems (She says more about this in her book & in her interview with the Self Publishing Podcast (episode SPF-023: How to Increase Your Daily Word Count Exponentially).
So here’s the plan for the book:
- September – Outlining!
- Brainstorm – 3 Days
- Character Creation – 7 Days
- Story Beats – 6 Days
- Fine Tune – 3 Days
- Writing Prep – 3 Days
This is a 22-day schedule that allows for eight rest days throughout the month. Right now I am in the Character Creation process. I have a slew of characters already but they can be further developed to enrich the story & plot. So I will be searching for character exercises if anyone has any recommendations.
After outlining my book, I plan on actually writing the thing and following this schedule:
Coming Up:
- October – January – Writing! Plus NaNoWriMo!
- February & March – Editing!
- April 27th – Pre-Order Available on Amazon!
I developed this schedule after reading an article (I don’t remember where I will link if I find it!) that came up with a formula for these timetables. Their recommendation was the following:
- 1 Month- Outlining
- # Month(s)- Writing
- 2 Months- Editing
- 9 Months- Marketing
You’ll notice that there is no timetable given for writing. That is because everyone writes at their own pace and there are so many internal and external influences that hinder and help the act of writing. To figure out how long it will take you to write the book you first need to gauge how long you want your book to be.
You can do this by researching your genre and seeing how other authors write, but more importantly what your potential readers are reading. to do this, go to Amazon and find a book in your genre and scroll about halfway down the page.
On the left-hand side you will find the book’s stats including Publisher, ISBN, Page Count, and Rankings. Look here and get an idea of what people want to read lengthwise and you can outline and write your book with that in mind. Here is a chart for common word count lengths for various formats:
- Flash Fiction 53 – 1,000 words 1-4 pages
- Short Stories 3,500 – 7,500 12-25 pages
- Novelettes 7,500 – 17,000 25-57 pages
- Novellas 17,000 – 40,000 57-134 pages
- Novels 40,000 + words 134 pages or more**
** 134 pages for a novel is fairly short in the current market. Take a look at some popular fiction titles: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (322 pages), The Handmaid’s Tale (325 pages), Where the Crawdads Sing (375 pages), Little Fires Everywhere (347 pages). You’ll notice these are 300 pages and some change. There’s a reason why 300 is a nice sweet spot, and I’ll go into more detail here.
Once you identify a general idea of how long you want your book to be, establish a timeline for how long it will take you to write.
Most people can write about 300 words per day easily (This is just one page in Word). On the other hand for NaNoWriMo, the daily word count objective is 1,667 words per day. Most people find this challenging, which isn’t surprising as this is about 5.5 pages per day, but the idea behind NaNoWriMo is to write a book in a month (50,000 words / 167 pages / 30 Days).
Conversely, If you want to write a Novel by writing 300 words per day to get to 134 pages, it would take 134 days (a page per day) or about 4 and a half months.
To recap, figure out how long you want your book to be. Set a daily writing goal. Then divide.
Daily Writing Goal / Book Length = Time Needed to Write
Stay Tuned for next time! I’ll share my publishing scheduler tool & how to use it to schedule your writing, editing, publishing, and marketing plan!
Plume Fiction 