Monday, September 5th

News For Today

Today's (remedial) lesson is that no amount of discipline or having a set routine is going to change the fact that I am an insomniac.

I didn't sleep (or even repose) at all during the day yesterday, I had a single caffeinated drink in the morning, I took my pills at 12 and had all lights out by 1... and by 3:30 I was wide awake. Not not tired, just wide awake. I stayed under the covers until 5:30, at which point I was overwhelmed with the urge to get up and do something.

So I decided to get up and put a story I've been sitting on up on Amazon. I've heard from multiple sources that the key to making money on Amazon... the key to making money selling books/stories at all... is volume, that the best marketing is to write and write some more. This makes sense to me. Each story is an advertisement, another point of contact for readers to stumble across, and each additional story is a chance for readers who like what they see to buy something more.

My LitSnacks initiative lost momentum at the same time everything else did... the fact that I involved Caoimhe in the flagship offering tangentially as a proofreader kind of left a bad taste in my mouth I'm still trying to rinse out. I don't want to abandon the concept (or the "Gifter" storyline/universe), but I'm not ready to do any heavy lifting in that area just yet. Short stories are another... well, story.

So, anyway, I've got my short story "The Absolute Beginner's Guide To Immortality" formatted for Kindle. I'll be uploading it later today, probably after I crash here in a bit (I can feel it coming on) and then wake up again... I don't want to actually put a story up while I'm in this state. I couldn't swear as to whether I got any actual sleep between 1:00 and 3:30. I won't have a link to buy it until later in the week; Amazon typically takes a day or two to approve new e-items.

Yeah... I'm definitely crashing. Remainder of status post when I actually wake up again.

Status Post Part Deux

So, yes, I did in fact crash for several hours after an early morning bout of slight productivity. Since I woke up again, the day's been going pretty well... got my breathing/centering done, got a good start on writing (1,000 words in an hour), I see the chapter I hope to post today shaping up pretty well.

I'm also seeing the next few chapters shaping up pretty well. One part of the vicious cycle of low productivity is that when the updates are rare and far between, I feel the need to build each one up a lot more. That can be a good way of bridging a lengthy gap in updates, but it's a poor way of getting past the gap and moving forward to just doing updates again. So this is going to be a short chapter, an "interlude" chapter... it's hard to get myself to accept that sort of thing as justified, especially on the heels of a very long chapter, but that can be exactly where such a chapter needs to be.

State of the Me

Again, insomnia. Not much else to say.

Dreams From Last Night

None during the night. They came on pretty fast and furious during my daytime slumber, but nothing I particularly recall/can make sense of.

Plans For Today

Tie off the chapter I'm writing, get the short story uploaded. Maybe look at SmashWords to see about getting the short stories up there.