Friday, August 1st

The Daily Report

You know, I can't remember the last time I had a really good July. The past several years, I've started my July out by traveling from Hagerstown to Omaha just as I was starting to really settle into a rhythm, and I've been hampered by hot temperatures in my living and working spaces in both cities.

But I made about $240 in book sales last month, split almost down the middle between my Amazon page and my indie store. It will be nearly November before I see the Amazon half of that, but as my book sales increase generally, eventually I'll get to a point where every month has a good sized payment waiting for me.

I also got a bit of a surprise yesterday when I noticed a small payment from Barnes & Noble. I fell out of the habit of adding books to their store because they generated almost no sales, but I think as the amount of work it takes to format e-books generally has decreased for me as I've gotten better at the process, I should probably think about revisiting the other booksellers. Always make it easy for people to give you money. I did the work of putting the few books I have up on BN's website years ago and I made money from them this month.

There wasn't a huge learning curve with getting back into Google Docs/Drive, it was more like slipping into something comfortable that I'd forgotten I have.

I didn't expect much of anything to come from trying to start writing earlier in the day than normal, but there was no "blank page syndrome" at all. It gave me exactly the experience I was looking for, in terms of being able to write at my desk and then get up and walk around and whip out my phone and write some more when something came to me. I didn't have to close it out, I didn't have to refresh anything... this is exactly what I've been looking for in terms of the seamless transition from one device to another, and the freedom to pick up and move.

Throughout the day I found myself remembering how I'd gotten frustrated with using GDocs not only because it was slow on my phone, but there was one summer where while in Hagerstown I'd used a really slow secondhand Vista box that also had been agonizingly slow when running Google Docs. So I think that really that equipment fault was the main thing... I mean, it was frustrating not being able to access my work offline when I had offline mode enabled and had been counting on being able to, but that was something that only came up a few times a year even during the peak of my travel.

On that note, I am still going to have to try the offline stuff and see how it goes. I've gotten some comments that suggest that it's better. I've just tried it on my desktop and found mixed results... after I switched to the new Drive layout, I could access the app while not connected to the internet, but none of my material, even the stuff I'd opened recently, seemed to be synced. Maybe I have to open it with the new layout available, I don't know.

The one major downside of the past month is not having gotten anywhere with Harper's Folly, either the last e-book or continuing the story. I think switching to GDocs and using my phone will help me get farther this time.

Anyway, it's a new month, and I'm starting it in the amazing position of having Tales of MU chapters written out in advance through the end of the first full week. I am just over 25% done with the month's official TOMU writing by volume. Of course, I'll play around with each "finished" chapter and polish them up before posting them... one of the great things about not dealing with a single chapter at a time is that I can look at them as parts of a whole, find common themes to bring to the surface, strengthen connections, et cetera. That's why I'm really looking forward to being two weeks out instead of one. I think the benefits to the quality of the storytelling will be huge.

The State of the Me

Doing okay. I very nearly got up early this morning due to being bursting with energy in an emotional sense, but body said no. Still, I'm up and in the saddle by official start of day.

Plans For Today

I'm going to start the month with another goal post like I began July with. Then I'm going to work on the next Omnibus, because I want to have another one done this month and it's so much easier to work with large-scale book formatting at my desktop, which I won't have access to for half the month.

This afternoon I'm going to be writing another chapter of Tales of MU, which means for one brief shining moment I will be four chapters ahead.

I'll spend the end of the day on today's chapter, looking it over one more time and then posting it.

Goals For August

Harper's Folly

As I said in my status post today, Harper's Folly is where I really fell short last month. I think the problem lay in my approach to it as a purely practical goal: finish the e-book, resume the story.

I mention from time to time that creative work is not a simple matter of mechanical labor, that it simply isn't carting words from one pile to another. Sometimes it feels like it should be, though. When I sat down to finish the e-book, I was thinking of the bonus material as something I could just sit down and bang out... I don't mean do a slipshod job of it, I expected it to be something I could be proud of because I'm proud of everything I've banged out for Harper's Folly.

But the first few episodes of Harper's Folly came really easily, because I was immersed in the world of the story at the beginning of it and because they had strong ideas behind them.

So rather than making my goal being "do this thing, do that thing", I'm going to commit to getting back into the story. Getting inside the head of the world, getting in tune with its logic. I'm going to do that and then see what happens.

Tales of MU

As I've said before, my goals for this month are different than they would be if I wasn't picking up and going somewhere else for two weeks in the middle of the month. So my goal is twofold: to be two weeks' ahead of schedule by the end of the first full week of August, and to resume my Monday planning/Tuesday-Friday chapter writing schedule as best as I can in the last full week of August.

Now, it isn't actually that I'm not going to be working during the intervening weeks. It's that some of the days at least will be light work days, and that I know from experience that it's hard to predict what travel and a change of venue will do to my work habits and routines. So I'm not counting on getting much done. I'm not throwing up my hands and giving up on getting anything done, I'm simply approaching it from the point of view of "Let's see how much I can do!" rather than "Let's aim for getting this much done". If I get down there and write another three or four chapters in a week, it'll be a pleasant surprise... but if I only manage one or two, it won't be a disappointment.

My only actual solid goal for the weeks in between is to write at least one chapter, so that when I come back to full-time work on Monday the 25th, that day's chapter is ready.

The Word From Shadow Grove

This project, intended to be an audio drama, is about halfway written. I wrote the half I have on my new phone before I stopped trusting its office apps. Getting back into the groove of it has been rougher than I'd expected (see my insights on HF above), but I intend to finish writing it by the midway point of this month.

E-Book Publication

I aim to have the Omnibus V out this month, with a preference for no later than August 8th, because if I miss that, then I won't have a chance of getting it done until the week of the 25th.

My second goal is for each week of the month--inclusive of this one--to submit a manuscript file of one of my works to another e-book store/bookseller. I'm including porting more books to my own indie store in this goal, though that won't be my sole focus.