Okay, coming to you a little earlier again. This one is set to go out at 6 now. My short story of the week will go out at 5 every Monday from here on out.
Well, I didn’t get up this morning. Wide awake, I looked at the clock and thought it said 1:45 a.m. That’s close enough to 2 to start a normal day (for me) so I got up. But in actuality, it was 11:45 p.m. last night. Two hours earlier.
Still, I was awake, so I figured I might as well make the best of it. I worked on my new publisher website for a couple hours. That was my waking up time, only it lulled me. (grin) So around 1:30 I went back to bed for about an hour and a half.
Got up again at 3, did a little more on the website, read/researched a couple other publisher websites, and signed up to sell my ebooks via OmniLit (http://www.omnilit.com), a new (to me) online ebook vendor. Again, if you have your books available only in Amazon, you are SO missing out.
Finally, a couple hours after getting up the second time, I closed the websites to get them off the screen, and turned to my writing ‘puter and the Stark novel.
Nope. Didn’t happen. I felt like it’s been forever since I had a good walk, so I grabbed my camera and headed out. Had a short walk (just over 2 miles) but got some great pics. Came back and put a few on Facebook.
Then I made and ate breakfast, then got a shower, then came back here and did some preliminary work re collections. I didn’t realize how many uncollected short stories I have floating around.
Then to write this and what you see below (everything except Today’s Writing and the numbers) and now, finally, just after noon, I’m turning to my writing ‘puter. Barely time to get my 3000 words for the day before I take off an hour for NYPD Blue. Pretty sure this is the last week of the show.
Oh, this notice is actually a day late, but I hope you’ll drop by and read the topic (Writing A Bunch of Words) on Dean’s post from yesterday. I recommend this for those of you who want to increase your productivity but can’t quite get that from me. In this post, Dean shows you how he wrote 6300 words in 7.5 hours. Chances are, it isn’t what you think. He also gets a tad snarky, his word, not mine. (grin)
Okay, although I very much enjoy working on my own websites, I also dread it. When I get my teeth into a project, I want to keep going until it’s finished.
Working on a website is a very different kind of creativity than writing. For one thing, I have a final result in mind when I start. I also am even more anxious to see the finished website than the finished novel. And I work quickly so I can finish a website in MUCH less time than it takes to write a novel. For those reasons and more, it would be SO easy to take off a couple days and just get the Publisher website up and running.
But today is also the next to the last day of the month. I’d love to go out with 70,000 words this month, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Still, I’d like to make a run at it. And if I take today off, there is no possible way I’m gonna finish the month in style.
So one more part of my retraining rears its ugly head. I need to write when I can (writing must remain my number one priority) and do everything else when I’m not writing. That includes working on that website. And that means part of my retraining is to make myself able to turn my back on it when it’s time to write some more.
Another number two priority is putting together some collections. I just realized this morning I have twenty uncollected short stories. There also is still one 5-story Stringer collection that has not been combined into a 10-story collection yet, plus a single Stringer story that has not been collected. Nick Porter has two uncollected individual stories, and then I have twenty.
So I have to think of a way of putting all those together in various batches. The individual stories I probably will bunch with my own with a nod to the original pseudonym. But I still have to put the collections together, format them, create covers and publish them.
And I enjoy doing all of that, but it isn’t writing, and I enjoy writing more than all of that put together. Hence the priorities. (grin) But it’ll get done. Before too long. I just have to write when I can write and work the rest of the time.
Oh, and then BookBub popped up with a link to 8 Tips on Creating Single Author Box Sets. So now I’m thinking in that direction too. Oh well. A guy’s gotta have a hobby.
Today’s Writing
Poor writing day today, though I did get a lot of other things done and started, as I alluded to above. I expect a much stronger writing day tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Fiction Words: 1476
Writing of “The Coming of Simon Stark” (SF novel)
Day 1…… 3800 words. Total words to date….. 3800 words
Day 2…… 1516 words. Total words to date….. 5316 words
Day 3…… 2942 words. Total words to date….. 8258 words
Day 4…… 4261 words. Total words to date….. 12519 words
Day 5…… 3039 words. Total words to date….. 15558 words
Day 6…… 2600 words. Total words to date….. 18158 words
Day 7…… 4634 words. Total words to date….. 22792 words
Day 8…… 3149 words. Total words to date….. 25941 words
Day 9…… 3641 words. Total words to date….. 29582 words
Day 10… 1900 words. Total words to date….. 31482 words
Day 11… 1476 words. Total words to date….. 32958 words
Total fiction words for the month………… 61597
Total fiction words for the year…………… 526638