I can’t believe it, but I did it. Tonight I finished the first draft! It was shorter than I thought it was going to be. It’s got 18 chapters. But it’s done, and I have scheduled my editors to look at it so it will be available by the end of this month.
After this, I will take a brief break from writing to recharge. I wrote a little over 17,000 words in three days. This will give me time to finally finish editing a book for a friend. I know this friend will be relieved since I’ve been working on this for a long time. It’s been so long I don’t even remember when I started. I don’t make it a habit of editing other people’s work, just in case someone wants to email me their manuscript. Sorry, guys. I’m not a professional editor. I’m just doing this for a very good friend.
While I do that, I’ll also be cleaning up the mess I made in Patty’s Gamble. I have tons of misspelled words, lousy punctuation, repeated words, and other things that would make a critique group twitch. But at least the book is done and I have something I can work with.
Now I’m anxious to see how sprinting The Earl’s Secret Bargain will go when I get to it. I want to get Patty’s Gamble and this edit for the friend done first. Those are my two priorities. After that, I will see what I can do with The Earl’s Secret Bargain.
Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog 
I wished I’d asked more about sprinting when her hubby mentioned it. I thought it was a different kind of exercise that I stay away from 🙂
I don’t know if you already do this method or not because you do produce a high word count without even trying. I have the tendency to go slow and edit as I’m typing. But in this method, the way you do it is to free your mind to creatively think. You shove the editor out the door and don’t let her in until you’re done. That was the hardest hurdle for me. I’m going along and thinking, “This is not spelled right, a comma needs to go here. I put a period in the middle of my sentence. The quotation marks are in the wrong place. Wait, he’s still talking.” LOL Turning off the editor was a challenge, but since she had us do two exercises in the class, it was a lot easier to implement it when I finally started writing on Sunday. It was easier than I thought.
So you write for 10-15 or so minutes this way and take a break for 10 minutes. During this break, you’re out of the chair and moving around, but you’re thinking of what you want to write next so when it’s time to sit back down, you know what you’re going to write. You just repeat the process until you’re done for the day. During breaks, you can stretch, get some laundry done, do some cleaning, etc. I do like the breaks. I think the breaks is why I didn’t burn out or feel exhausted at the end of the day.
I don’t know if I can get as many words as you do in a day, though. You’re a writing power machine. 😀
The sprinting worked for you! Awesome! I haven’t gotten back to it yet, but I will this week. I just had too much excitement going on last night…what I emailed you about. Bleh.
Let me know if you try it again. I’m curious to know how it works for you. 😀
Also, I’m glad everything turned out alright, but it’s awful to go through that kind of scare.