Weekly Update: Still at it.
Life has been crazy busy as of late. I’m sorry for the lack of updates. I plan on doing a little revamping of the site in the coming weeks. I need to make things a little cleaner and easier to navigate. Right now it’s not so easy to find a book. I need to correct that.
Speaking of books, if you listened to the latest Get Published podcast, you’ll have heard the announcement I made. My rather insane announcement that I plan on publishing (myself) 28 books in 24 months. That’s my grand plan. Guess what. I’m currently on target. That’s huge! As of this writing I currently have put out six books. This month may see another, or next month will see Three. It all depends on covers and editing. That will put me at nine for the year. For the rest of the year, here’s what I have scheduled:
My Teacher is a Witch
My Teacher is a Ghost
Asteroid Bunnies: Zanahoria
Billy Barbarian: Sethopolis
V&A Shipping II
Golden West: Season 1
Supernatural Learning: 8th grade (this will collect My Teacher is a Zombie, Werewolf, and Vampire)
Of Gnomes and Dwarves: Book 1: Chance Encounters
Astel: Chosen (re-release)
That’s right. Nine more books. That will put me at 15 on the year. That’s if I don’t decide to drop something else in the mean time. I did pull two books I had scheduled just because I wanted to make sure I committed more time to the projects I’ve already laid out. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself with all I have currently going on.
Speaking of all that’s going on, life have been busy these past two months. Writing time has been extremely sparse. By that I mean I’ve only written about 20,000 words in the past two months. I’m 45,000 words behind schedule. That means I pulled the giant robot story I was writing. I also pulled To Fall From the Sky. Should I get back on track, I will add these books back into the mix, but for now they’re off the schedule until I can get back to them. I don’t want to rush any of the stories I’m currently working on. Just because I plan on releasing a large number of books doesn’t mean I’m going to skimp or cheat or put out a poor quality product just to get it out the door.
Now, in order to achieve my goal I will be cheating a little. How? Quite simple. I’ve already written nearly all the books that will be put out this year. The ones I haven’t written yet are only 20,000-25,000 words in length (middle grade books). I will be writing those once I finish with Golden West: Season 2 (I’ll talk about Season 1 in a bit). I plan to write the next few books in the Supernatural Learning series in one shot so they’re all ready to go long before their release dates. I hae two for this year and four for next year (completing 9th grade and going into 10th grade). I’ll then work on the first two or three in the Asteroid Bunnies series. That will complete all the shorter works for 2014 that will need to be written. Yes, I’m self publishing and I could just drop them at any given time, but I want to release these on a schedule so the series will have time to grow an audience.
Yes, I realize that I’m dropping a LOT of book out in a short time, but why not just drop everything once it’s completely written? Quite simple, if you were to see my schedule, each book I’m writing is in a series (except for a few stand alone books) and I plan to drop only one in a series in a given year. Honestly. I am working on books that will be released next year and I have a schedule for this year. I want to make sure that the books are ht best I can make them and by doing a majority of the work on my own, I need to make sure I put out the best product I can.
Back to the writing. I said I’ve only written 20,000 words in two months and I’m way behind. Those 20,000 words that I did write were written over a four day span and a two day span. I write very fast. I always have. If I were more consistent with the number of days I spent actually writing, I’d have a lot more accomplished at this point. I’m only shooting for an average of 1000 words per day. Not a lofty goal, but I need to hit that goal in order to have all the books for next year written and ready to release.
Work slowed to the point where it won’t invade on my personal time as much as it has. Yes, last year was a busy year and between writing and blogging I wrote 490,000 words. I didn’t write nearly as much new fiction as I would have liked and that’s what I changed for this year. I’m focusing only on words of new fiction written. Not these blog posts. I know I can beat my 365,000 word goal. I plan to blow it out of the water. I’ll be spending some time doing that today. I’ll write at least 4,000 words today. I’d like to actually finish writing Golden West by the end of next week. I’m currently sitting on 8000 words and I need to get to somewhere between 55,000 and 60,000 words. Yes, I need to write a lot today, tomorrow, and during the week to hit that goal. I think I can do it. This will put me in great shape both with the podcast and with my writing schedule.
Speaking of the podcast. My writing partner just dropped his episode and I’ll be getting that up this weekend. So very VERY sorry for the delay in the final episode. Once we have it complete we’ll be dropping them into podiobooks so people can get their fix that didn’t want to wait a month between episodes. I won’t put it out there until the ebook and print book are available.
There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes, but now you’re up to date on all the writing stuff. I’m glad you’re with me on this journey.
Until Next Time!
WOO WOO!
Posted on May 18, 2013, in Weekly Update. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
Asteroid bunnies sounds absolutely awesome! I like the way you are setting a release schedule. It looks like you’re going to have a very healthy library of work available 🙂
Asteroid Bunnies will be great fun. 🙂 It’ll be my second Middle-Grade series. I have fun with that length of book.
As for the schedule, it does two things: 1) Give me motivation to write faster and 2) Time to plan what I’m going to do when I release a book.
There are some days I wish I could write even faster, but I don’t want to push it 🙂 I’m having fun and will keep doing this as long as I’m having fun.
It sounds like its working out for you very well, so as long as you’re happy with it why change it 🙂
Only thing that will change will be release dates 🙂 As long as I can keep the words flowing, things should keep on schedule 🙂 It’s just a matter of making words happen every day.
It sounds like your on a roll so I hope it continues for you 🙂