The new year is a good point to take stock of the past and plan for the future. Last week I looked at the past, and this week I want to focus on going forward.
I have struggled to get my weekly content done while working full time, and I have no reason to think that will change. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I have decided to change my work hours, but that will not come into effect until the 1st of March. Between now and March, I will continue to try to do all my weekly content, but if I miss stuff I’m not going to beat myself up over it. I need to sleep, and after three years of permanent night shift, I’m not able to push through being tired like I once did.
After March, I will only be working three days a week (and daytime hours!). That means I can focus the other two days on writing. I don’t want to miss one day of content from March, and I want to be making progress each week on a long-term project. If I have two days more each week, there is no reason to miss content or not get work done. Basically, from March I will glue my butt to the chair and start getting some serious writing done.
After publishing two volumes of Solar Flare this year, and a short story of 4000 words, I learned that the format of short stories as ebooks is not tenable. Because the minimum price for an ebook is $1 and a reasonable novel price is $4.99, there really isn’t a market for short story eformats. Well, you live, and you learn. I have taken down both Solar Flare volumes and will be uploading the first volume in a new format. Instead of ten stories, each volume will be fifty stories. This will make the volumes twenty-five thousand words or more, which I will price at $2.99. That said, the market for anthologies has always been small. This should hopefully be a better fit for the market than what I was doing before.
This does mean that the Frank Mason series needs a rethink as well, and so far I haven’t worked out what to do with him yet.
At the current moment, I have been doing research for the Martian Ark, running some numbers and gaming out the plotlines. I want to get the first book in this series done this year. If I can plan it before March, I will then go gangbusters on getting the first draft done. Editing and graphics for a novel will take longer than what I’ve done in the past, as I want to make the best book I can, and that means hiring editors and other fun stuff.
So what is the minimum I want to do by the end of 2021?
• From March onward, never miss a day of daily content.
• Two volumes of Solar Flare, in ebook and audiobook. (I’d like to organise print on demand too, but that’s not a minimum.)
• The Martian Ark first and second drafts completed and an editor engaged. (I can’t control how long the editing process will take.)
That’s it: simple. If I get that done, then I will move on to new projects.
Let’s be clear, I’m talking about publishing 130,000 words this year, a four-fold increase from last year. It may be simple, but it won’t be easy.
Time to get back to it.