I have a confession. When I was in high school, I fell passionately in love with Regency romances, those sweet, silly, virgin-finds-a-man-in-the-early-1800’s novels that have fallen out of favor in recent years. I’m not sad that they’re gone. Historical romances set in the Regency or during the slightly longer period covered by the Napoleonic Wars have taken their place, and deliver a more realistic, grown-up view of the world that I find far more satisfying now that I’m thirty-six instead of sixteen.

God. Twenty years.

Back then, one of my favorite authors, one of the authors whose books lined my bookshelves, whose books I read over and over, whose books my best friend Doug would take down and use to test me by reading the description to see if I could name the title and author - one of those authors was April Kihlstrom.

She wrote books with titles like “An Improper Companion,” “Captain Rogue” and “The Nabob’s Widow.” I can still picture the demure heroines and buttoned-up gentlemen drawn in bright, comforting colors on the covers. No breasts or mussed hair or windswept landscapes on those covers, no sir. Just genteel women, descending from tidy barouches with one gloved hand barely touching a gentleman’s hand.

Luckily for me, though Regency romances, as such, have since disappeared, April Kihlstrom has not. In fact, she’s a member of my local RWA chapter, and I’ve actually met her and had the chance to hear her speak.

April’s an inspiring speaker, and one of her workshops, Book In A Week, made a particular impression on me. The idea is, you devote yourself to writing for a week. You still have your normal life - you go to work, eat, sleep, all that - but you spend every minute possible, writing. All forward, no back - no revisions, no pausing, no tweaking to make it better, just writing writing writing in order to get a draft done.

Of course most people don’t actually finish a draft, but no matter what, you end up writing a lot more than normal. There’s a technique to it, and a lot of tips and tricks that April shares which makes it more possible than im-, but them’s the basics. Write, write, write. For a week.

I’ve done it once before and wrote ~70 pages in a time period that would normally have yielded less than 20 at best.

It’s time to go again.