Tag: Know thyself

October 2019 progress

Lynn

I forgot to post my October progress post. :) That shouldn’t be a surprise. I also forgot I was going to post about NANO. That update is out of the way and now I’m going to do the October progress post. :D

October words: 19,168.

That’s far under where I wanted to be for the month, but it did continue a streak of months in the five digit word counts.

There’s not a lot else to say. I continued writing on whatever interested me, and that has been a nice change of pace. I also have stayed away from timers and schedules and I’m not feeling the pressure to go back to using them.

On the other hand, I’ve now finished two stories that I haven’t yet published and I don’t like that. I much prefer finishing one at a time, getting it published, and then getting back to writing. That’s been a side-effect of writing on more than one thing at a time. I now have a lot of stuff that if I continue with that, will end up finished in lumps. Not really a fan of that, now that it’s actually happened to me.

So that’s something I won’t be doing in the future. I’m about to drop the multiple stories thing again, but only sort of, and with a purpose.

Here’s what I mean by that. I like moving between stories, but I also need to maintain a high interest in each story and finish it as quickly as possible. So… on days when I just cannot seem to get moving, I plan to allow myself to change stories. But as a general rule, I think I’m going to have to try to keep myself working on one book, no matter what, and finish it as quickly as I can so that my interest doesn’t wane and I don’t lose a lot of time to trying to get back into the story after an extended break.

I really don’t think those extended breaks do anything good for me. I lose a lot of love for my stories when I take them, and getting restarted is a bear. Seriously, it’s the worst.

I’m now at day 99 of my writing every day streak. I can’t count today because I actually haven’t written anything yet. But as soon as I do, it’ll be 100 days long. The number to beat is 122 (in the sidebar over there somewhere if you want to see it).

The changes to my sleep habits have also been helpful, maybe. I actually can’t say. I do know I’m doing better than I did during my massive downturn, so there’s that. I don’t really know how I can quantify this in the long-term, except to continue to adhere to better sleep habits and see where things stand many months from now. If I can make it through the holidays writing, that’ll be a win. It’ll be a tough proposition once the school breaks start, so I’ll have to stay vigilant about the earlier bed times! :D

So that’s where things are.

November has been (so far) about trying to do what needs to be done to get those finished stories out, and move on. And pick my next focus and really hone in on it and plan to get it done ASAP. And stop all this dilly dallying around. It feels less like fun than you’d think. It feels more like puttering, and there’s no sense of accomplishment at all. My ability to self-motivate depends on how I feel about what I’ve done.

And finally, I’ve set a challenge for myself to make November my first 60,000 words month. I’m behind at the moment (of course), but I’m still hopeful that I’ll be able to do it.

:D

Look, unrealistic expectations will kill your dreams

Lynn

Here’s the thing. When I set out to make writing my source of income, I knew what I was getting into. I’d been married to someone who did contract work for a while cutting lumber and I have a dad who did that for a while, too, and who worked as a mason for some-odd years. I also had an uncle who had spent years working in construction, with all its seasonal variations and ups and downs.

Writing is like that.

Cash flow is a thing.

Income variability is a thing. A big thing. I mean, it’s real and it’s ugly sometimes. It means that the good years have to be averaged with the bad years and you have to live on the average income or less, not the income of the good years.

If you don’t, when the bad years come, you’ll go broke and you’ll have to go get a job doing something that will put money in the bank. When that happens, whether or not you can continue to produce good fiction at a pace that will get you writing full-time again becomes a thing. Maybe you won’t be able to juggle the new job and the writing. It was hard the first time, remember?

That’s what it’s like to be a writer. The income is all over the place. The few (and they are few!) who can turn writing into a regular, reliable source of income are miracle workers. You can’t let yourself be fooled by them into thinking that cash flow is going to be steady and that you’re trading the paycheck of a regular employee-type job for a regular paycheck from self-publishing fiction.

Unrealistic expectations will kill your dreams.

I know there are some productive people out there saying that you can make steady money with writing, but I’m just going to say this: they’re not the norm and they’re probably talking about a shorter time frame than most other writers are imagining. And they’re probably in a position that is going to change, but just hasn’t, yet. How long have they been at it? A one or two or even three year history isn’t enough time to know these things.

I’ve been writing full-time since 2012. I have seven years of history behind me as a self-published author earning a living with fiction, and I can tell you that the things I talk about above are true. I’ve had some bad years, all related to my own production issues, but someday I’m sure I’ll have bad years related to market changes too. All of those kinds of bad years come around eventually. I’ve also seen a lot of authors over the last couple of years, who seemed bulletproof, start to recognize that even they are going to have these bad years too. That’s how I know these things are true for writers other than me.

Sometimes it’s not the book. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. So many authors want to say that luck has nothing to do with success or failure, but it’s just not true. I’m not even sorry to say it. There is so much out of a person’s control in the world that it is absolutely foolish not to prepare for the effects of luck, good and bad. If you’re doing everything you can to make it, it’s okay to hope for luck to come along and help you out. It’s also okay to blame luck for the fact that you can’t seem to get anywhere, as long as you’re being honest with yourself about your skills and effort. (If you can’t be honest with yourself, then blaming luck is a crutch and it’s only going to hurt you, so try not to do that, okay?)

Then there’s the topic of what you write. You can write what you want and hope it works or you can write what other people tell you to write or you can study what readers seem to want and write that. If you choose anything other than writing what you want, you really have to decide if you’re actually fulfilling your dream or just making work for yourself on your way to fulfilling your dream.

I chose to write for myself. I don’t want to be a writer if I can’t write what I want. If you can’t make it full-time writing what you want, then you need a job. But you get to choose what the job is a lot of the time. I choose not to have it be writing. If I can’t make it full-time writing what I want at some point in the future, writing what I don’t want to write sure isn’t going to be the job I turn to to pay my bills.

At the end of that road is the death of a dream and I’m not taking it.

If you like writing so much that you want to write and you don’t care what you write, then you’re one of the lucky ones. :)

If it turns out not to be true, that’s when you’re going to be in trouble. Because you’re probably going to be stuck writing those things you don’t want to be writing, over and over and over again.

It’s a pretty simple choice, and a lot of authors really fuck it up: Do you want to write because you have stories to tell or do you want to write because you want to be self-employed and you happen to really like writing?

I’m the former, no doubt about it. I have stories to tell and which ones I tell matters to me. I have a little of the latter in me, in that I am happy to be self-employed, but honestly, if I’m not writing the stories I want to be writing, I do not like writing. Not even a little.

:)

Overdue books, procrastination, and a writer’s income

Lynn

Today has been an excellent day for writing.

Unfortunately, I haven’t written a thing. It’s now 9:48 pm and I don’t really have a choice: I have to find it in me to start writing.

I have an overdue book to finish writing (personal deadline—learned my lesson about setting public ones) and a dire need for money in my bank account. So, yeah, don’t bother trying to hack my accounts. You’ll be disappointed. I haven’t been writing anywhere near enough every day, since about the time my children started graduating from high school and heading to college, and it’s starting to show.

All that said, I need to get some income coming in or come November, I’m going to be looking for one of those seasonal jobs writers sometimes need to make ends meet while writing the next book. I would be really embarrassed to do that, if only because I know the only reason it would be necessary in this instance is because I can’t make myself sit and write for two to three hours a day.

Talk about the pain of facing up to your deficiencies. It’s something I’d rather not know about myself, and yet, know it I do. I have pushed it to the last possible moment and now I’m in desperate need of finishing this book.

And there’s the twist. I just went to check on the stray cat that’s been acting weird all day and the curl of dread in my stomach has been justified. He is a she and she’s delivering kittens. Dammit.