In today’s Journal
▪ For fun
▪ The challenge.
▪ The daily diary
▪ Of Interest
▪ The numbers
For fun (and with my friend Dan Baldwin in mind), see the excerpt from “A Love Story Between Business Managers, Written by a Business Manager” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/a-love-story-between-business-managers-written-by-a-business-manager/. Oh dear god, folks, please don’t write like this.
***
The Challenge
I’m currently on Day 9 of the third novel of my writing challenge (to write 10 novels in 150 consecutive days).
When the first novel ended, I had three days in the bank. I quickly wasted two of those days, which left me one.
To maintain my pace and stay on track with the challenge, my WIP has to be finished on or before February 19, and today is February 11. So including today and the 19th, I have nine days left to finish it.
The good news is I should do that with relative ease, especially if I can keep adding 3000 and 4000 word days. The bad news is a hope: I hope I don’t waste anymore days.
If I could save any future banked days, and if I average (remember, everything good in writing numbers boils down to average) twelve days on each novel, I could easily write 11 or 12 novels in that original 150 day time frame. (grin)
I guess when the dust clears, we’ll see. Let’s hope no sandstorms pop up.
The other thing is, as I recall this challenge included doing covers and prep docs and having all 10 novels up for pre-order within that 150 days.
At the moment, I don’t yet have that done for Book 2 even as I’m closing in on Book 3. So we’ll see how that goes too.
***
Rolled out late this morning and by 11 (mostly cycling, with breaks, to fix a glitch) and finishing a scene from yesterday I’d added only around 1500 words. Today might be a sluggish start to the week.
Around 11 too, I remembered I’d promised a couple of weeks ago to write a guest post for a writer whose work I really like.
That led me to a (probably) hair-brained idea. I won’t tell you here what that idea was, but a few of you received an email from me about it.
I spent close to an hour composing that email, then (with my brain going in that direction today) I decided to write the guest post for my friend.
So that’s how the day will end. With a lot more non-fiction than fiction written on the day. (grin) I don’t usually count email words, but this one was too important not to count.
Talk with you again tomorrow.
Of Interest
See “When Real Life Collides with Fiction” at https://killzoneblog.com/2019/02/when-real-life-collides-with-fiction.html. There’s a ton of good stuff in this post.
See “Haunted House: Crime Writer’s Research Trip” at https://www.suecoletta.com/haunted-house-crime-writers-research-trip/.
See “Buried Alive: How To Escape Your Grave” at https://www.suecoletta.com/buried-alive-how-to-escape-your-grave/.
Some great (informative) comments on “Reading as an Editor” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/reading-as-an-editor/#comments.
See The Passive Guy’s take on “The Beginning of the End for Patreon” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-patreon/. I recommend reading the comments, too, and I recommend (strongly) staying away from Patreon.
See “Business Workshops Around the Country” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/business-workshops-around-the-country/.
Fiction Words: 1528
Nonfiction Words: 2543 (Journal, email, guest post)
So total words for the day: 4071
Writing of Blackwell Ops 3: Marie Arceneaux (novel)
Day 1…… 1699 words. Total words to date…… 1699
Day 2…… 3766 words. Total words to date…… 5465
Day 3…… 4601 words. Total words to date…… 10066
Day 4…… 3535 words. Total words to date…… 13601
Day 5…… 3415 words. Total words to date…… 17016
Day 6…… 1845 words. Total words to date…… 18861
Day 7…… 3093 words. Total words to date…… 21954
Day 8…… 1528 words. Total words to date…… 23482
Total fiction words for the month……… 26604
Total fiction words for the year………… 110007
Total nonfiction words for the month… 11503
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 36913
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 146920
Calendar Year 2019 Novels to Date………………………… 2
Calendar Year 2019 Novellas to Date…………………… X
Calendar Year 2019 Short Stories to Date……… X
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 39
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 7
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………… 193
Short story collections…………………………………………………… 31
I just attended the Superstars Writing Seminar that Dean mentions in his post. Highly recommend it for anyone wanting to write full time, or at least make money. Very business focused and encouraged networking like crazy. Pretty much, if you saw a group of people from the conference at lunch, you invited yourself to the table to chat.
Lot of good topics. I attended several panels on making Amazon work for you and was able to talk to Kevin J. Anderson for fifteen minutes about getting noticed. It was so good that it was like a book you finish and you have to get the next one. I’m already signed up for the next one.
Thanks, Linda. That makes two people I know who attended this year’s Superstars. If I had that money to spend, personally, and could go to only one or the other, I’d go the Dean’s Master Business Seminar in Vegas. If I remember right, it’s coming up in October.
Both loved and cringed at the “for fun” post from TPG. I have to deal with that sort of language day in and day out. Talk about mind-numbing. 🙁
Ugh. I was in corporate America for about a year. I’m SO glad the rest of my working life took me elsewhere. But take heart: “going forward” I probably won’t post anything else like that. (grin)