Money and Writing Part Two

So I have spent three days on this topic in my head and working it out on paper. Paper does help; I can see where the train of my thoughts has gone and where they have derailed. To recap: I am a writer who can appeal to an audience. I want to earn supplemental income from my writing. And I get paralyzed by fear of making the wrong decision and end up an indecisive mess.

Neil Gaiman also gave me an incidental boost. I wish I could find the blog post to link to it, but Firefox at home is being cranky and not loading stuff fast enough. But he has said that him current WIP originated from an idea he had ten years ago. A reader questioned him about that, and his answer was basically sometimes you have to wait until you’re the writer that can do the idea justice. I needed that gentle reminder that the muse is a fickle thing, and me and mine should fight less over the proper time to work on something (which really only comes from me, my muse sits in the corner and sulks taking my drive and enthusiasm with her). I have found that the universe seems to be hitting me with a boffer sword lately, and I’m going to pay attention before it moves to the proverbial two-by-four.

My decision is to buy the course, and keep track of the expenses on this venture. If I don’t earn at least my money back, I’ve flopped and made a bad decision.

Now for the changing writing habits. Lord and Lady, it feels like I have tried every trick in all the books. Write to Done was actually pretty inspiring with writing first thing in the morning before anything else and I’m up already at that time . . .
working out.

I don’t work out everyday (yet) but I don’t want to write everyday. So my choices are get up even earlier *groan or find a different time. Yeah, slapping my hand and telling myself to write at lunch has worked so well in the past. However, option one appears to be turning me into a night owl by sending me to sleep during the day. Brain doesn’t want to turn on by the time I get home. So it looks like I’m left with getting up earlier in the morning. 3am instead of 3:30, maybe that will be enough. Do it for a month, then evaluate. I’ll be starting Tuesday February 5th. Remind me to evaluate March 5th.

What to work on is more up in the air.

• Piper of Shadows universe – has oodles of fun potential, but I don’t really have characters or a plot to go with it yet. What I know about it though, I think it has a shot with a mainstream market of some sort.
• Zy’s universe – including the novel and short stories I also consider a mainstream shot.
• Underneath the Colored Lights universe – I’m on the fence with this one. I can see where it could work in mainstream. And I can see playing up the Lovecraft homage that gave birth to this universe, how mainstream it isn’t.
• Strix universe – self-published, especially with jumping mediums.
• Capt. Kate’s universe – I might find a mainstream home for some of this, but not the way I want to do it (with using “thou” correctly for Elizabethan English grammar). Right now, I’m leaning heavily towards self-publish for it too.

Everything else I have listed is fanfic or for Acadiana Medieval Faire, which neither are something I can sell.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take to finish the course. So to get started in my establishing-writing-time habit, I’m going to finish the current fanfic and then start on Strix set-up story. As long as nothing goes crazy in my life. And I need to make real deadlines to keep.

From Novelist’s Boot Camp (which I found has the most helpful discussion on how to plan your calendar):

1. Establish your deadline.
2. Cross out time allotted for work, family, vacations, religious observance, exercise, and other obligations. Take the remaining time and allocate:
   • one-third to mental preparation, planning, invention, and development
   • one-third to producing a quality draft
   • one-third to revision, editing, and proofreading
3. Mark your calendar with these key dates.
4. Further guidelines:
   • Do set daily goals.
   • Do plan on vacations, breaks, business trips, and the like.
   • Do give yourself some breathing room—build a “fudge factor” into your time plan.

I’m going to work with a sixty-day chunk. That should be enough time to get the habit established too.

Currently, I’m in the second one-third section of time with the fanfic. Thirty minutes a day for sixty days becomes twenty days to finish the first draft, twenty days to revise and proofread, and the third twenty days will be planning on Strix unless I have vastly under estimated. So started in February 5th, my deadline dates are February 24th to finish the first draft, March 15th to finish editing and publish, March 16th to start brainstorming on Strix. My daily goals are to write thirty minutes a day and write at least 258 words a day.

Okay, I have a game plan for fiction. What about blogs? Well, they are my accountability monitors so I need to keep them up. But they must come after thirty minutes on fiction even if I don’t make the full word count. And I’m going to start tracking word counts on the posts. One of the things I worry about is all my energy getting sucked up by them. So don’t be surprised after these monster posts if you don’t hear from me for a while.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/