I’ve always been an inspiration writer—not an inspirational writer, of course, as that’s a different thing. No, whether I was writing songs or academic essays or fiction or this blog, I awaited inspiration to begin or continue or finish a piece. I’m still like that to a large extent, I guess, but I started a new practice near the end of May 2022 when I listened to author Wiley Cash interview my favorite contemporary novelist James Lee Burke.

At the time of the interview, which took place on the 25^th of May, when my older granddaughter graduated from high school and I turned 63.5 years old, Burke was promoting the publication of his 40^th novel. Cash asked him how he managed to be so consistently productive.

I immediately said to myself, “I should try that.” So, I did, starting as soon as Leesa and I returned from the graduation celebration in Durham.

At that time, I was maybe thirty-five thousand words into the first draft of a novel that I’m calling Streets of Nashville. I’d begun serious work on the story in July 2021, and my goal was to try and finish an initial draft of sixty to seventy thousand words by the time the fall semester of 2022 began in the third week of August.

I got started with Burke’s 750-words-a-day plan by Friday, May 27^th, and I stuck with it, writing at least that many words daily and often a few more. By the time I hit mid-June, I was feeling good enough about my progress that I thought I could finish the first draft during my writing residency at Wildacres in NC, which was scheduled for July 4-10. I still thought this even when I blew past sixty thousand words and knew that the story was going to demand more than my earlier guesstimated word count.

The draft stood at something over seventy thousand words when I arrived at Wildacres Retreat on the afternoon of July 4^th. During my writing time there, from Monday afternoon through Saturday evening the 9^th, I finished the first draft—right around ninety thousand words.

Now that the semester is underway, writing time is limited, so I’m unable to write 750 words a day, but I’ve devised a schedule (of sorts) that is allowing me to write around three thousand words a week (750 X 4), and I’m okay with that. I’m into a fourth draft of Streets and beginning to send it out in search of a publisher, and I’m over sixteen thousand words into the first draft of another novel with the working title Avalon Moon.