And The Winner Is...

Last week I posted a long diatribe about how I'd failed as a writer in 2012, and my plan for being better this year, and to make this the year of finishing projects. (You can read that drivel here.) At the end of the post was a poll for the readers to vote on my first project to finish for 2013. The poll was open for 6 days and the results are in!

After a massive voter turnout, with a whopping 67% of the votes, the winner is.....

Echo-13: From the Files of the X-Corps - 2
The Dytek Enterprises Field Agent Handbook - 1

Here's a little teaser of what Echo-13 is all about.

Somewhere in the depths of space resides a small band of men. Men who do the impossible. Men who take on the dirty jobs nobody else can or will do. This is their story...

Legends and myths have been passed on from generation to generation throughout time. Missing star fleets of mighty warships. Lost planets of unbelievable wealth. That the home of the human race was a small, undistinguished, third rate, blue-green planet orbiting the star Sol. Some say that these are just children's tales, to be told at bedtime and nothing more. But all myths and legends are somewhere based on truth. Over the past few years a new legend has arisen, about a group of men that run around the galaxy doing the impossible. Most credit these tales to drunken starpilots. But a few believe that the legend is true, that this mysterious group of men is real. You decide.

I"ll post updates as I go here, and on twitter.

January Word Count: 0 / 15,500

And The Horses Are In The Starting Gate

Well, It's Jan 1, 2013. We survived the Mayan doomsday. The world kept turning on Dec 22nd, and the 23rd... Guess they got that one wrong. Since we're all still here, I might as well get traction on this year.

New year. New goals. To that end, I've decided I need to get better at a writing schedule and sticking to it. The vast majority of my new writing last year happened in November. In the first two days. At that point, I really hadn't written anything since Nov '11, and very much at all going back to July before that.

November rolled up, and with it the annual NaNoWriMo - the National Novel Writing Month Challenge. For those who haven't heard of NaNo before, it's a challenge to write a 50,000 (or more!) word novel in the 30 days of November. I'd won this 4 consecutive years, a veteran. I'd hit 50K words in as little as 15 days one year. I figured I'd grab an idea and run with it all month. Been there, done that, I'd have it in the bag. No sweat. I failed spectacularly.

A couch slug does not simply buy brand new sneakers and then run the New York Marathon.

To go from so much inactivity to trying to crank out 1667 words or better a day to keep the NaNo pace just wasn't going to happen. After 12hr door-to-door days at the day job (You know, that thing that pays for life's little niceties, like food and internet), I didn't have the mental energy to write my name much less 1667 words a night.

So, I'm going to stretch this year before running that November marathon. Here's how:
January - 500 words/day for 31 days = 15,500
February through July I intend to add 250 words/day each month, ending up with 2000/day in July.
August I'm dropping back to 1000 words/day, building up again 1750/day in November. Notice, this is ahead of NaNo pace. December I cut myself a break and drop back to 1000/day.

Grand total for this schedule as presented is 464,500 words.

I want to prove to myself I can win this thing with a full time day job, and if I stick to this schedule I'll be in shape to win that marathon. I also want this year to be one not of new beginnings, but of finishes. I have stacks and stacks of projects with notes attached, and maybe a few paragraphs, or  WIPS (Work In Progress) with 5-10K words and a few notes for later. I've even got one WIP that, if I'd had a child when I started it, the kid would turning 21 in July!

The only snafu I have with this whole grand scheme is this: which of my (many) unfinished projects do I work on first? I'm going to let you, the readers decide. I'll post a short synopsis of each contended and let you all vote until Sunday on which I should start on first.

1: Echo-13: From the Files of the X-Corps - the oldest horse in this race. Ultra-deep top secret special forces action with the fate of the galaxy hanging on their next move. Lots of gun battles, space fights and explosions everywhere. I've said for the last several new years that I would finally finish it. Will this be there year?

2: The Dytek Enterprises Field Agent Handbook - Urban Fantasy. One man simply trying to clear his name at work. Oh, he works as a regional field agent for Death.

3: Jameson Hewitt Airship Mysetery - A Steampunk-ish mystery thriller set on an airship crossing the Atlantic at the beginning of a worldwide war.

4: Hunt Starfire Saga - Scifi, chronicling the birth of a mercenary startfighter unit. Book 1 of a planned 6-7 book series.

There they are! Go vote in the comments. I'm looking forward to seeing which horse wins this race.