When last we spoke, I was about to lock myself away in a condo in Palm Springs. My task: bang out an entire book on free and low-cost tools in a week. I arrived ready, with everything lined up to fly through the writing of the main part of the book. No problem, I thought. All that’s left is work.

Friends, it wasn’t pretty. I began with a fairly regular schedule: 54 minutes of work every hour, I planned. My alarm would go off (an old-fashioned car horn courtesy of my iPhone), and I’d run around the condo (like a ninny, if you want to know the truth), stretching my legs, getting my blood flowing, keeping the brain cells firing. The first couple of days, I worked diligently until about 6, then I’d change into workout clothes, take an orderly stroll down to the gym, and workout for an hour while watching very bad television. It was working exactly the way I had planned.

But I kept measuring my progress with a frown. Why was I not making my daily goals of 6,000 words? What was taking so long? This part of the book was supposed to be just cleaning up the database that my assistant and I have been working on for weeks. It was supposed to go so smoothly. Before I left I even told D.J. that I thought I could finish early.

As the days wore on, I felt more and more stressed. And more. And more. I had banned D.J. from calling, but I would call him in tears. I’d switch from a breakthrough to a breakdown in an hour’s time. I started talking to myself, pacing. I ceased wearing proper undergarments, except for super fuzzy hot pink socks that I wore everywhere, even to the lobby. I ate lots of cake (cupcakes weren’t enough) and drank 64-ounce Diet Cokes that I could buy for $.89 from a convenience store a block away. And time kept passing, and it felt like the book just wasn’t going anywhere.

And then, all of a sudden, I saw the end. Before I left, I had organized the book into 10 chapters. As I wrote, I kept breaking out sections of chapters into smaller groups and rearranging things. It took me days to get through one of the monster chapters, and when so many untouched chapters loomed, it seemed like the task was impossible. But I discovered that when I opened up the new chapters, they either had finished pieces and parts, or they were much shorter than I imagined.

I ended up pushing and pushing and pushing through, and I ended up staying an extra 30 hours to finish the job.

And finish I did. And I put it in the mail a week before the deadline. And two weeks later, my publisher wrote with his official acceptance. He also added something like, “I have to admit I thought your timeline was a little ambitious, and I was very pleasantly surprised to discover how polished it is.” Now the book is pretty much in his hands, and we’re going to move to the copyeditor and the designers and the other people who do things with books.

I did it. I wrote a book. In two months. Boy does that feel good.

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….

Let’s talk about someone else’s drama for once, shall we?

My executive suite falls between two partners in some kind of a financial business. These are two very, very angry young men without proper knowledge of their inside voices.

“What the EFF? You EFFING hang up on me, your partner? You EFFING [this] and you EFFING [that] and it’s my EFFING money, you EFFING EFF!”

And on and on. Sometimes there was banging of furniture and frequently slamming of doors. And of course, there was lots of storming out of one office then the other. After the worst squalls, my other neighbors would peek their heads into the hallway and whisper, “Is everything safe?”

I never really felt threatened by their fights, even though I was scared to knock on their door to remind them they were among professionals. When it first started happening, I tattled to the building management, and the guys received warnings. The other tenants, however, were very unhappy with the mayhem. Today the partners broke up, and one of them (the one I actually liked) moved out of the office officially.

What struck me about this situation was how very, very peaceful I am in my business. I don’t yell, and I don’t get yelled at. I don’t fight. The only drama is that sometimes I have too much to do and miss a deadline or have to stay very late or work over the weekend. At my last job, there was always drama. People fought, conspired, manipulated and backstabbed. When my email dinged, I would cringe, fearing my boss’ wrath. One of my best friends is a project manager, and she sometimes has to mediate when the heads of two departments with different goals get together with penis rulers to see who wins an argument about the direction of the project (but her colleagues also bring in donuts, which helps).

My wish for you in your workplace is going to sound disgustingly sappy, but here is my sincere hope:

May you find a job with peace. May you work in an environment where you smile every day.

May your feedback be constructive, not cruel, and your disagreements feel like opportunities, not opposition.

No one deserves to be abused by bullies at a job, and I hope if you’re in that situation that each day you find a few moments to take steps toward changing your environment.

So, the contract is signed, and the book is begun. Holy smokes.

The entire manuscript, complete with hundreds of graphics, dozens of contributions and about 200 pages, is due to the publisher May 1. That’s 54 days from today. Before I begin writing, I have to collect and organize an insane amount of data. I’ve been very busy with inquiries to free and low-cost tool vendors to get them to fill out forms about their products, plus I’ve been querying professionals about their favorite tools. And did I mention I’ve yet to begin writing? And, for whatever reason, my phone has been ringing twice as much lately with new projects from existing and new clients.

The workload is overwhelming. I’m officially daunted.

Every single minute that I am not working means guilt (including now when I’m taking time to update the blog), but I’m being as proactive as I can possibly be. I put D.J. on notice that most of my workdays for the next few weeks are going to be long ones, and I’ll probably be working every weekend. I’ve canceled haircuts, put off health care appointments, turned down visits and trips with friends.  I’ve warned friends and family that I’m strung tighter than the strap on my g-string after holiday feasting. I’ve increased the cupcake budget, and I’ve hired a temporary employee to cut, paste, follow up on inquiries and organize while I continue writing my regular stuff. She starts tomorrow.

And I’ve taken an extra step, a crazy step, an indulgent step. I just made a reservation for my first-ever writer’s retreat — a week in a nice condo in Palm Springs, CA. My retreat costs almost as much as I will receive as an advance for this book, and I’ll lose my regular revenue because I’ll leave my day job behind. My inner accountant is screaming — this decision does not make financial sense in the slightest. It’s logical to visit either my friend who owns a farm in Iowa or a buddy who lives in a house in the woods of Oklahoma. Both of those locales are more than an hour from a Wal-Mart. But I need to keep weird hours, withdraw from society and be a bitch when necessary. I can’t afford to be friendly or social, and my friends are too wonderful to ignore like that.

D.J. is 1000 percent behind my decision. “This is one of the most important projects in your career,” he said, “and you have to make an investment in yourself to make this succeed.” He’s right. Yet. Still. Umm. That’s a lot of money, and what if I get there and see the blank document as a blank wall? I’ll have wasted all this money, put my clients on hold and will be utterly disappointed in myself.

When my friend Troy was writing his book, he locked himself in the family motor home for several days to work. And he succeeded. Frankly, I think I will, too.

I take that back. I KNOW I will succeed. I have to succeed, and I’ve laid the groundwork to do so. I just need to put in the hours, and I’m ready to crank.

54 days.