Book Keeping: Speed-Writing For Success

"All at once" is not the way most people write their first novel, but that's what Jessica Burkhart did.

In 2006, as a 19-year-old college student, Burkhart wrote a 50,000-word manuscript in 30 days, along with nearly 13,000 other writers. As a participant in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), it was quantity over quality. Most participants compare it to running a marathon; most participants shove their completed manuscripts into the darkest reaches of their computer files, thinking, 'Anything I wrote this quickly can't be good.'

When the month-long writing spree ended, Burkhart started revising Take The Reins, a story about tween girls at a competitive equestrian school. A month later, an agent found a blog post she'd written about the novel and asked to see the manuscript. The rest is history: The Canterwood Crest series is now five books long, with seven more to come. And it all started with a marathon, madcap, month-long writing frenzy...

[Rachel Kaufman / mediabistro.com]