In about 24 hours, I’ll be loading up the car to drive to Palm Springs to crank out the book.

Believe it or not, I am ready. I am prepared. I am exactly where I want to be. This weekend, I synthesized four complicated databases into one, categorized (and subcategorized) more than 200 free and bargain online tools, created a mail merge template, sorted the tools by category, then merged the data into 9 chapters.

Now I need to calmly, coolly, methodically work through the tools in each chapter to produce the nuts and bolts of the book. As I write, I’m going to keep a running list of the tasks that need to be completed in the 2 weeks after I return from the trip, and my assistant and I are on track to click through them to turn the thing in before the deadline.

Holy crap. It’s working.

When I say “believe it or not,” I expect many of you may not believe it. My mother is amazed I didn’t just rush into this and get overwhelmed. I am pretty sure my father has a pool going at his work on whether or not I’ll pull this off. And I’m kind of flabbergasted that I’ve made a plan and am sticking to it.

I expect the next week to be a bitch. It’ll be boring, grinding, exhausting. There’s nothing inherently fun about pounding out page after page after page with a concrete deadline staring at you.

I’m probably not going to dress much. I’m going to sit in a dark condo with just the computer screen glowing. I’m going to keep weird hours, eat unappetizing food, panic that I’m not going to finish, take for granted that I will and waste some time. Oh, and there will be chocolate. You can bet on that. And as soon as I get there, I’ll use Layar, a free tool that people recommended, to map out the location of the nearest cupcakes.

The reason I’m escaping is so that I don’t have to be a girlfriend, a runner, a copywriter, a daughter, a friend or even a friendly human being for the week. I’m going to morph into a moody, intense writer with a sole purpose: finish. the. book.

Although I am dreading the grind somewhat, I’m so excited I can hardly wait for my adventure to begin. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I think it’s going to work. Everything else about my plan to write this book in three months has gone well, and I have no reason to doubt that I can pull this off. Ok, I actually have a THOUSAND doubts, but no real logic behind them!

Woohoo! Off I go….