OK, I think I had the most obvious writing epiphany ever. Feel free to point and say, "Duh, Susan!"
It is more important to write this story right than to write it fast.
I know. That's the most obvious statement in the world. But if you'd pressed me on it before today, I would've refused to acknowledge that I couldn't do both. Because professional working authors of the type I aspire to be write a book or two a year, I couldn't allow myself to be any slower, no matter what else was going on in my life, no matter what kind of book I was writing. I felt like that if it took me much over 12 months to complete a book, I was showing myself to be a slacker, a dilettante, someone who didn't have what it takes. (And I know I mentioned some of this before a couple months ago.) Besides, I wrote The Sergeant's Lady in ten months or so, so I'd proved I could do it.
Anyway, I realized one reason I've been so worked up over the WIP is that the goal I'd set for myself of having a polished manuscript to my agent by Labor Day weekend is utterly unworkable, and I knew it, but didn't want to admit it to myself, because that meant I was a failure. Even that deadline felt too generous, because I started the WIP in May 2007.
So I sat down and tried to sort out why the WIP is taking so much longer than TSL did. And I came up with quite a list:
1. TSL takes place within a finite chunk of the real timeline. 2/3 of the book takes place within a two-month period, and the entire story spans about 15 months. The WIP is first in a series that'll span at least 5 years, and I'm spinning my AU off a "butterfly flapping its wings" type of event that occurred 25 years before the story opens. It starts with the first big honkin' obvious change to the timeline that no one who was awake in 11th grade history could miss, but there are subtle shifts before then. IOW, the WIP requires MASSIVELY more research and worldbuilding than TSL did.
2. When I was writing TSL, I was a stay-at-home mom with a baby who took two-hour naps every afternoon right when my own energy level and creativity peaked. Now I'm working full-time and rarely get to write before Annabel is in bed, at which point I'm already tired myself.
3. In TSL, real historical figures are occasionally name-dropped, but never appear onscreen. In the WIP, my frickin' PROTAGONIST is a real person. Of course, thanks to the AU he's not going to end up exactly the same as he did IRL, but he's built on the same foundation--as are all the other real people running around my plot. At least for me, researching real people and then making them my own takes a lot longer than building them from scratch.
4. TSL was a romance, with a straightforward plot focused almost exclusively on two people and their developing relationship. The WIP is an AU adventure story with multiple major characters and subplots, first in a series whose overall scope borders on the epic. Plotting is not my natural strength, and I'm having to learn as I go along.
5. Though I wrote TSL in 10 months, it had been stewing in the back of my brain for over 2 years while I finished my first manuscript and then stopped writing for a bit to deal with pregnancy complications and a newborn. I started the WIP about 5 months after I had the initial idea. So I knew a lot less about my story and characters going in, leading to lots of fumbling and false starts.
Looking at all that, I have no idea why I was being so hard on myself in the first place. I mean, other than being incredibly hard on myself in general.
I probably can and should finish my rough draft by the end of summer. That's realistic and attainable. But that draft is going to be half-assed and in need of far more polishing than I can do in a couple of weeks. And I owe it to myself and my story to be thorough, not fast, and make this story the best it can be. Because I'm a lot more likely to start a career as a professional working author by submitting an amazing story in, say, March '09 than by submitting a (continued...)