The Journal, Monday, October 28

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* I wasn’t going to
* Topic: In My Personal Restructuring…
* Today
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.” Robert Collier

I wasn’t going to post today. Need to give my left hand a few more days of healing time. But today’s “Of Interest” is important.

Topic: In My Personal Restructuring… yesterday I figured out a few things:

1. How to Climb Back on Heinlein’s Rules

Daily word count goal = 2500 wpd (on average). This is attainable but a slight stretch. It will give me two to two and a half scenes and will result in 912,500 words of publishable fiction per year.

2. Publishing Goals, November 2019 Forward

A. One short story written and published per week on deadline. Submission of those stories to short-story markets first when applicable.

B. One novel written and published per month. (I might adjust this one to 2 novels every 3 months, depending on how much the short stories drain me.)

C. Five 10-story collections of short fiction written and published per year.

3. How to Restructure and Make the Most of My Personal Time

A. I have Internet access on my writing ‘puter (for spot research) but I’m disciplined with it so I’ll keep it. Facebook has been creeping in, but I can get away from that again.

B. My current structure is fine. I just need to actually write while I’m in the Hovel.

C. As part of restructuring my time, I have to also reconsider my approach to The Journal. It currently consumes 2 to 3 hours of every day.

Beginning in November, I will move posting the Daily Journal to the end of the day. That will make it less important in my own mind (secondary to my own fiction writing) and make the time I spend on it dependent on the time I have left in the day.

Beyond that, I’m considering a couple of options:

1). I’ll keep the Journal itself free, but put the writing topics behind a pay wall on the Journal site and on the main site. If I do this, I’ll also restructure the tiers on my Patronage page. (My efforts are either of value to my subscribers or they aren’t. Shrug.)

(By the way, to me what’s important isn’t how much my donors send every month. What’s important is that they find my advice valuable enough to invest something in their own learning process.)

a. I’m also considering using Patreon, but I see no reason to go off-site and give Patreon a cut of what subscribers donate for my advice. I also don’t care for Patreon’s rights-grabbing terms of service.

b. Or, as I wrote in an earlier post, maybe a weekly or monthly Journal would serve just as well.

4. Near-Term Licensing Goals

A. I’ve identified five specific things (beyond writing and publishing more stories and novels) that I can do now or within the next several months with my IP and my “inner IP” (characters, settings, situations and worlds I’ve already created).

I’m not ready to reveal those yet (grin), but I’m excited about them and you’ll be seeing some of them soon.

5. On a Larger, Longer-Range Scale for the Future of Our Business

A. Under “2. Publishing Goals, November 2019 Forward” above, each of those works will be licensed to StoneThread Publishing (STP), under a legal contract, for publishing and distribution. I’ll consult an attorney who’s versed in copyright and IP to draw up a boilerplate contract for this purpose. This is in preparation for…

B. At some point (when income and taxes get big enough), we’ll establish STP as a full C corporation. (Again, with the advice of an attorney.)

C. We more than likely will attend Dean’s Master Business Class in 2020 (a year from now), and we will attend the Licensing Expo as licensors in Las Vegas in 2021 or 2022.

I hope my revealing this process helps with your own process in some way.
***

Today I’ll do little or nothing beyond posting this. Thanks for the well-wishes.
My hand/knuckle is getting better day by day. Another few days should do it.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Why Would I Call Myself A Professional Writer…” at https://prowriterswriting.com/why-would-i-call-myself-a-professional-writer/. And please share. This should go viral.

See “Time Traveler” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/time-traveler/. This is not about science fiction.

The Numbers

Fiction words today…………………… 0
Nonfiction words today…………… 730

Total fiction words for the month……… 3237
Total fiction words for the year………… 383468
Total nonfiction words for the month… 16020
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 278710
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 663296

Calendar Year 2019 Novels to Date…………………… 7
Calendar Year 2019 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2019 Short Stories to Date… 2
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 43
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 195
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31