What will you be writing in 2010?

For starters, it's only January 11 and I'm about to finish writing a 110,000-word novel this year! Woo-hoo! I am full of awesome and win!

Ahem. Note that I did not say “started and finished writing a 110,000-word novel.” I wrote the first 50,000 words of this novel during NaNoWriMo back in 2008 and blogged about the experience almost every day, which you can read here. My account is pretty funny, especially in retrospect, now that I'm not having nightmares about scrambling eggs for everyone in my high school marching band.

Note that I also did not say “finished writing and then sold a 110,000-word novel.” The selling part is sometimes (often? almost always?) a sticking point for me. That’s how I roll. Cross your fingers for me.

What’s next? Well, any day now I expect the copyedit for Forget You, my YA romantic drama coming out on July 20, to appear on my doorstep. (They really do just appear like that with no warning, with or without a green pencil.) The copyedit for Endless Summer, my YA romantic comedy (and sequel to The Boys Next Door!) coming out on August 3, will be hot on its heels. In fact, if 2010 is anything like 2009, both of these copyedits will be due on the same date, and I will finish them just in time and get in the car to take them to the last FedEx pickup of the day and discover that the garage door is stuck closed. That is also how I roll.

Then I’ll be writing my next YA romantic drama, which will be out in July 2011. I know, the only people who think that far ahead are the publishing industry and the Olympic Committee. This novel is called [SUPER-SECRET TITLE DELETED] and if you enjoyed my novel Going Too Far, you’ll like it because it’s about a [TOO SOON TO REVEAL DELIGHTFUL HEROINE AND TO-DIE-FOR HERO AND SUPER-SECRET PLOT]. It’s due in April.

And then what? Well, by my calculations, that’s eight months left in the year, which is a really long time for me to have nothing to write, read books about writing, whine to my critique partner, and obsessively redesign my web site. I guess I will have to write something else.