The Journal, Friday, 9/25: Help Bookstores Know Your Print Books Exist

Rolled out early again, about half past 1. My little cat needed me to get up for some reason I still don’t understand. She woke me about 12:30 and I laid there for an hour before she finally nagged me out of bed. (grin)

Did much of nothing the first couple hours again. I’d like very much to change that. For now I guess it’ll be what it’ll be. At the end of the day if I’m making headway on the novel (or whatever writing) then I guess it’s all good.

Nothing to do today but write as far as I know. I have noticed I’m getting more relaxed about writing awhile and then doing other things. I don’t think of them as breaks, really, but I guess that’s how they function.

Took an intentional break to read Dean’s post. It’s a good one. In the topic he talks about getting your indie published paper books into bookstores, how to make sure bookstores know your book exists so they’ll buy it. Yeah, the topic of my post is to send you to Dean’s post to read his topic. It’s important. Go. Read.

Hmm. Just realized tomorrow is Saturday. I like college football, specifically involving LSU (and other teams in the SEC), Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Tomorrow, LSU plays at 9 a.m., OSU vs. Texas OR Tennessee vs. Florida at 12:30 p.m. and Arizona vs. UCLA at 5 p.m. Bet I get a lot of writing done before 9 a.m. tomorrow. (grin)

Today’s Writing
I had a pretty good writing day today. At about 1:30 I went over my daily goal. Since tomorrow might be a short day, depending on what I get done before 9 a.m., I thought I’d press onward.

Lesson 1: Why did I press onward? Goals and challenges aside, being a professional fiction writer is a game of averages. For example, I’ve had three days out of seven when I did very little on the book, but my average (arithmetic mean) over the whole 7 days is well over my daily goal.

Lesson 2: Never be afraid to cut what your Creative Voice (not your conscious, critical mind) is telling you needs to be cut. This book began really taking off after I hacked off the dead weight that was the first 5,000 words or so because it was a different story. But notice that I didn’t “figure that out” with my conscious mind. I listened to that quiet little voice deep inside that told me something wasn’t right.

I still have to write a short story, create a cover, and publish it before Monday at 6 p.m. (grin)

Fiction Words: 4634

Writing 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

Total fiction words for the month………… 51431
Total fiction words for the year…………… 516472