I passed the 70,000 word mark on the novel today. My pace has definitely picked up and I am certain that I will be finished with the first draft by the end of September. I plan on setting the novel aside for two months to give me the proper distance before I go back and read it in preparation for the second draft. But I don’t want to give up the writing streak I’ve built and I am still aiming to break my record of 140 consecutive days.

(Where things stand at the moment: I’ve written for 33 consecutive days, and I’ve written 176 out of the last 178 days.)

So I have started to think about my story rotation for the fall. Given the fact that I’ve been able to write every day, how many stories could I write in the months of October and November? Like a manager considering his pitcher rotation, I’m picking stories from my list of ideas that I think make up the best possible rotation. In a perfect world, during those 61 fall days, here is the rotation I plan on using:

• Alternate history baseball story #1
• Time travel story
• Alternate history baseball story #2
• Fantasy story

If I can manage 4 story drafts in two months, I’d consider it a perfect game. Given that my short stories tend to be in the 5,000 – 6,500 word range, I think this is perfectly reasonable.

It would be nice to have 4 stories to send out to various markets on December 1, since it has been a long time since I’ve submitted a story. (An unexpected, but not surprising side-effect of writing a novel.)

On December 1, I’ll begin reading the draft of the novel, making lots of notes. On December 15 or so, I’ll begin writing the second draft, which I expect will take me into the spring of 2014.

I’ve been avoiding this kind of looking ahead, but I’ve decided it’s worth planning at this point because I have this fear that the day after I finish the novel, I will want to celebrate by giving myself a day off.  Tempting, maybe, but as they say in baseball, never mess¹ with a winning streak.