At the beginning of the year, I started writing a new book. Convenient timing, that. I thought I’d give an inside look at how that was going after two weeks.

If you follow me, you may know that recently I finished up all of my contracted books and that those two books will be out this year (THE MISFIT SOLDIER, 2/22/22, and THE WEIGHT OF COMMAND, On audio in fall of 2022).

And while we haven’t officially announced it, last fall we came to an agreement in principle with Harper Voyager to write a book that I am, for now, calling Generation Ship (That almost certainly won’t be the final title). Agreement in principle, in this case, means that we’ve agreed on the major items — that they are, indeed, going to pay me a specific amount and that I am going to deliver them a manuscript that looks something like the outline I provided by the middle of September. We will sign that contract in the next couple of months, once my agent and the HarperCollins lawyers work out the details on the smaller bits of it.

So I get to write my dream book. I’ve been thinking about this since the summer of 2018, and have pages of developmental notes about the ship and the science. I was supposed to start writing it in November, but for personal reasons ended up taking all of November and December off. So on the first working day of 2022, I got started.

Here’s how it’s going. And my ubiquitous caveat that this is not the only way to write. There are a hundred ways to write. This is how I do it.

I think the only way to measure the progress of a book is against one’s own goals, so let me first lay out what I’m trying to do. I try to write five days a week. I take weekends off. Lately, I’ve been trying to have my butt in the chair at about 9:30 AM, even though I don’t write in the morning. But I do work. Specifically, these days, I’m working on promotion. I’m either lining things up, preparing for my many upcoming promotional events (Such as my TBRCon panel on the 26th or my virtual seminar about querying at the Orlando Library on the 29th, or writing one of the many promotional posts that will accompany the release of THE MISFIT SOLDIER on a variety of different sites. I usually work on that stuff until about lunch time. And by work, I mean kind of work. Because that “work” also includes emails and social media posts, so…you know how that goes. It also includes writing posts like this.

I would be remiss if I didn’t add that while I have a lot of things planned, I’m still booking more, so if you’re a blogger or a podcaster or content creator/provider and you’re looking for an author guest, hit me up via my contact form.

I try to start writing by about 1. On a good day, that’s what happens, though often it slides closer to 2. My goal is to write 2000 words a day, though I do allow some flexibility on that, so it’s more like 10,000 words a week. In practice, a lot of that looks like me writing a bit extra early in the week after my brain has refreshed over the weekend, and then writing maybe 1200 or 1500 words and cutting out early on Friday.

Sometimes, if I do come back to work in the evening, I’ll work on research or outlining future chapters (and by outline, I mean a few bullet points), but sometimes I do that as I’m writing, too.

After 2 weeks/10 working days, I’m right on track. As of opening my documents this morning, I’ve got 20,367 words. Here’s how that breaks down into real terms. Generation Ship is told from the point of view of four different characters with alternating chapters. I’ve written nine chapters, which means three from the first POV and two from each of the other three. It’s a total of 77 pages so far, so the chapters are fairly short. Simple math shows them at an average of 2200 to 2300 per chapter. And I’m happy with that, as I feel like with four POVs, I want to keep them short so the reader isn’t away from one POV for too long.

In terms of the entire book and my style, the 20,000 words I have will probably be 25,000 at some point in the future when I arrive. I draft thin, often leaving out the scenery and some of the necessary bits to understand the character motivations, and I add that in on later drafts. I don’t know how long this book is going to be in the end, but I do know that I haven’t reached the end of the first act, yet, which is, for me, at about the 25% mark of the book. My estimate going in was somewhere between 125,000 and 150,000 words, but guess is probably a better word than estimate. All I really know for sure at this point is that it’s going to be the longest thing I’ve written.

Subjectively, it’s going really well. Beyond getting the right number of words, I’m really happy with the words I’ve got. (I say that now. I’ll still blow them up multiple times later when I’m revising.) And it’s coming pretty easy. My strategy for getting 2000 words a day is to write as long as I need to. Sometimes it takes 90 minutes. Some times I have to come back and finish after dinner. But so far, it’s been a lot closer to the former than the latter, and I’ve finished each day with time to get a workout in before we eat.

And with that, I’m off to work on a guest post for another writer’s blog. Check back in a couple of weeks and find out if I’m able to keep it going.