Month: July 2015

My routine is all messed up and I’ve been having a lot of trouble trying to get my writing schedule restarted. Today I finally had a little success at that. Admittedly, I’ve had a few days where I thought I was getting back on track only to have it all fall apart the next day. I’m not going to let that happen tomorrow.

Tomorrow I begin a new streak with my schedule, a new beginning, if you will. Today was day one and one day doesn’t make a streak. ;)

I decided this morning that 10 am is a better start time for me right now. I just can’t seem to get going before 8 am and that doesn’t leave enough time for me to start on time every day at 9. So no more 9–1. The rest of the summer the schedule is 10–4.

I went back to 6 hours because I have so much to write this month and next and I think I can make it work. I’m hoping not having a break in there won’t be a big deal. We’ll see tomorrow. :) Now, off to write for a while before calling it a night.

I had planned to get started writing again today, but I stayed up way too late again last night working on a cover for a second book in my new pen name series. I just wanted to get a feel for how easy or hard it’s going to be to create them. This one has taken a LOT longer to come together for me, but I finally came up with a title that interested me and have gotten a look I like. I’ve spent most of the day so far on that.

Yes, I regret not writing! And not sticking to my schedule! I blame it on weak impulse control caused by lack of sleep. ;)

I AM going to get this out of the way today and do some writing this evening, even if I have to do it half asleep. :)

However, I’ve been thinking of the benefits of putting up the cover on my new pen name’s website and I’ve just about decided it’s worth finishing so I can do that.

Also, I say with feeling that although I understand the concept of ROI, my brain isn’t cooperating with me today. This cover’s never going to be perfect and it’s probably as good as it’s going to get, and yet… I am still at it. Maybe I should give that some thought before I let myself make just one more tweak. ;)

I am so ridiculously worked over about this new pen name novel. In all likelihood it won’t sell a thing. I mean, first book, new pen name, blah blah blah. And yet, I still have this horrible sinking feeling that I’m not ready to put this one out there. I’ve given this book entirely too much importance in my life and this is me saying, “Fuck that.” ;) I can’t work under that kind of pressure! :D I need relief!

Anyway, I did finish the copy edit. I didn’t write yesterday because I decided to do something stupid that turned out to be pretty awesome. I made my own cover for the pen name book even though I had a perfectly nice cover that I bought from a designer several months ago.

I had a couple of reasons for doing that.

• I decided I absolutely do want a print edition sooner rather than later, but I bought a cover only for an ebook and I’d have to pay to get the cover made print compatible.
• After living with the original cover for a while, I realized a few things about it that I’d rather I’d had done differently, but I didn’t want to hassle anyone to make changes and I definitely didn’t want to pay for them, especially considering how I’ve been feeling about this book.

The interesting thing is that as usual, the cover took me about 5-6 hours until I had a look I was happy with, then another 1-3 hours to replace the comp photo with the purchased photo and get the sizing and layer mask correct. But I now have a great layout and template for future books in that series. Since I hope the book sells better than I expect it to, I’ve thought it through enough to know I want to write a lot more books in the series, maybe as many as 20. Yep. That’s 20 whole books. Which would be a lot of covers and a lot of dollars, and a LOT of extra dollars for print covers, if I had stayed with the designer of the original cover.

I also feel like it’s a better cover than I had before, and yeah, I had to get a second and third opinion on that because I was really worried I was just imagining that the cover was better. But my name is more prominent (not bigger, just a lot easier to read!) and the book now looks like it can easily be part of a series. I’m tempted to create a second cover for the potential second book just to see if I’m right about that.

I wonder if I need to let the designer know I decided to go with a different cover? If you know the answer to that question, please let me know! I am terrible at knowing how to handle stuff like this.

I really like my new cover though. I still kind of wish I’d gotten at least some writing done yesterday. My excuse for today is that I’ve been planning to publish this book all day. Hasn’t quite worked out like that. :) I did spend about 4 hours writing and rewriting the description for the book. I’m still not sure it hits all the right notes.

Now here I am, trying to get the formatting done, and it’s 8:11 pm and I’m still stalling. I know it’s because of how I feel about this book. I just can’t let go of this feeling that I’m not ready to put it up. I have to get back to my other books though and they won’t wait. So, I need to get this book published before I go to bed tonight.

If I do just stick it in KDP Select like I was thinking I’d do, this shouldn’t take too long. Not nearly as long as usual. :) I mean, wow. All I have to do is finish setting the doc up in Word, import to Jutoh, and a few minutes later, I’ll have a mobi to check in the Kindle Previewer. I could have this book published by 10 pm if I just get to work…

And that’s my cue to get busy.