Regrouping

There was a time, not so very long ago, that the word 'regrouping' made my heart race and my palms sweat. Teaching math was not my favorite part of homeschooling. (Old folks, like me, learned the same concept with the words 'borrowing' and 'carrying'; Alex learned it as 'regrouping' in second or third grade, I guess, before our homeschooling era.)

This regrouping, thankfully, doesn't have as much to do with math. It's cooler now, so I can think clearly again about writing. The numbers for July and August were abysmal, but I recorded them for posterity in my Excel spreadsheet. Then I did a little research and added a column for the average temperature for each month, and what I found was that my most productive months were between 50* and 80*F. Right now it's just raw data, but I'll keep tracking it to see if my theory holds water. What it might boil down to (hah!) is that September 1 deadlines could be a very bad thing, especially if they're tight. If I have to do serious writing in the summer, I might have to go to Val's and pitch a tent! Hmm, my aunt has a cabin in northern Michigan, too.

Moving forward, I do have clear goals for the next couple of months. Based on the advice of Scott's NYT Bestselling Author friend, I've started the outline for my NaNo novel. Since I need to be ready to run with that on November 1, I have to finish my current project* by Halloween. I'm maybe a third into that, so it's time to kick it into gear. That will put me in a place to start the edit in December so I can *gasp* start agent hunting and/or submissions, in theory, early next year. I wonder what it is about cooler temperatures that make me start acting like an author?


*The working title for this Christian fiction is Meg, which is the main character's first name. I have a hard time with titles and most of the time I'm more than half-way through the manuscript before the title comes to me. I'm considering "Big, Beautiful Things" or "Out Of The Valley" for this one, but it may end up being something different.