I initially thought I’d start posting the novel on April 1. It would work perfectly as an April Fool’s Day post, and then end up being real (in the sense that I actually was going to write a novel one chapter at a time on my blog).
As I got into the planning process, though, I realized I wasn’t ready to start April 1. I didn’t have the story laid out well enough yet.
So I waited.
A month passed.
I planned more, but not much more. A week before May, I finally decided to start May 1, even if I wasn’t ready. At that point, I just started writing chapters. I wanted to get as much of a backlog of chapters written as I could, even if I didn’t fully know how I’d accomplish everything in the story, especially at the end.
As it turned out, I only wrote about five full chapters.
That helped me make the last second decision to post only Monday through Friday. Originally, I wanted to post every day for the month of May. By taking weekends off, it stretched the novel out over two months instead of one, something I didn’t realize until I was halfway through May and noticed I wasn’t halfway through the book.
Spreading it over two months made it difficult to keep the momentum going. Staying sharp for four or five weeks is a different mental proposition from staying sharp for eight to 10 weeks. It’s a whole other level of commitment. When it’s shorter, you can cut some corners to get through the month and then just deal with the consequences at the end of the month. Sleep, for instance, or household chores, some of which you can skip or postpone for a month, just aren’t possible to forego for two months.
Or maybe they are. Maybe my wife could tell a different version of this story.
