And So It Begins...

So if you follow the romance community at all, you know about Nora Roberts. I'm going to admit something scandalous. Either I haven't read her or I don't remember reading her. Either way, that's not the point of this post. Her work ethics are however.

Nora was first published in 1981 by Silhouette. (My publisher too). That year she released one book, so far we are equal. The following year she published 5 books. Uh....now I'm behind. The woman is a machine when it comes to writing. It's not ideas that hold me back. Trust me I have plenty and the plot bunnies are always having uprisings. It's the BICHOK (Butt in chair hands on kayboard). Frankly, this was difficult for me due to my hip issues (which have hopefully been resolved and we can plow forward like a normal person).

Nora works 8 hours a day every day. Now, she was somewhat more constrained when she was first starting out. She had small children at home and I'm in the same boat, though I'm 4 years behind where she started from so my children are older. To this end, I'm beginning a new journey and fortunately I have friends who are coming along for the ride. Every day we are going to start working at 10 am and work until 12. The only things allowed during this time are editing and writing. No judging contest entries, no critiquing each other's work, no plotting. These two hours are for writing and only writing. Even if that means we spend the two hours staring at the cursor, blinking maddingly at us.

Eventually I'll be broadening my hours when the children are back in school, but this gives me a jumping off point. It's not quite up to Nora standards, but it's a start, which is what I need. Quite a few years, Nora had 10 books published during the year. That would be amazing, but I'm not going to get ahead of myself quite yet. We'll see how this month goes and then the next and then the next.

Tomorrow starts Project Nora!