Sounds like a good plan! And even if it sucks, just write it. Honestly. I've written pages of crap just to get one good idea down. Then you have to go back and rewrite it. Mind you, that doesn't happen much - mostly because I never revise anything unless it's for a class - but just get it down.
I use open office, though I'd recommend word (I'm saving money for word, but for now I'll use the poor man's version). I also save my book to a flash drive weekly, so if it crashes I won't lose too much. Although actually, earlier today my computer crashed and I lost three pages of my stuff, so I know how you feel.
The book, Children of the Damned, is a fantasy. I have the first few chapters up on mibba, though they need a lot of editing (and none of my text formatting is in them, which is sad). It's currently about 300 pages. I started writing this draft in October - that should give you a bit of insight into how much writing I've done a day. :P I started making sketches for it a long, long time ago, but didn't get around to formatting it until this year.
Don't congratulate me because it's not published yet. :P Still finishing the last few chapters and editing, THEN I can take it in. But it looks like it will get published once I send it in and hopefully find someone who likes the manuscript *fingers crossed*!
Mostly it's helping me get one of my stories published and working on editing, etc. It does give me an hour of the day to just write, though, which is great because before I was writing in my other classes (and when you're in three AP classes, well, that's not a good thing).
I survived with good marks! That's a plus. And I gained some intelligence and dropped the big scary science class and am taking a creative writing class instead, so I'm pretty pumped. Getting school credit to write these stories? Heck yes.
And things tend to work like that: In the way that typically makes the least sense.