Friday, October 15th
Oct. 14th, 2011 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinNews For Today
To try to close out the fundraiser and stir up a little excitement, I'm using a microincentive... if the $1,000 goal is reached by Sunday night, I'll re-open the Tales of MU character Formspring and make answering questions on it part of my regular schedule (probably either something like three questions a weekday, or just make plowing through a bunch of questions part of my day 1 routine in the cycle... it will depend on volume, probably).
I'm not ready to re-visit the can of worms that was my personal Formspring, since one or two bitter individuals just took that as an open invitation to troll me. That's not to say they couldn't do the same thing with the in-character one, but somehow that just feels less personal.
If this goal isn't reached, then at some point in the future I may use the Formspring as an incentive for something else... but that won't necessarily be a priority. Right now I'm basically figuring out how to do the most with my time, both in terms of getting things done and getting things done that people will appreciate enough to pay for. If there isn't ~$120 worth of give-a-crap about the chance to pick the brains of fictional characters... well, that may have to be that. I guess another thing I could do would be to make character Q&A into a newsletter feature.
Yesterday was a pretty rocky day emotionally, if you couldn't tell from my last news post. The ongoing good news is that my new schedule and work habits weren't affected by it. I still kicked out around ~2,000 words all told, and I'm pretty pleased with what I wrote. The difference again is that I'm no longer expecting myself to maintain a laser-like focus for eight hours in a row every day. My actual output in words/chapters over a period of time is not actually that far from my peak... it's just steady, instead of having bursts of kicking ass and long periods of moping about how much ass I'm not kicking.
A lot of the time these news posts are more like rambling introspection... I think I might modify the format of my status posts so that actual information doesn't end up being buried.
State of the Me
I am increasingly convinced that the state of Maryland just hates my upper respiratory tract, which is unfortunate. I'm hoping that once I'm here for good my immune system recognizes that the local flora is not in fact trying to murder me and settles down a little. Things go well with Jack and Sarah, though, which is good.
Dreams From Last Night
I was trying to teach an actual class at Magisterius University... a history class, to be specific, but one of my students was confused by the history book's lack of plot development or narrative structure and kept interrupting the lecture to question the choice to do things like end the such-and-such era with the assassination of some guy who'd only been barely introduced to the reader.
Plans For Today
Today is day 2 of Chapter 38's cycle, which is the beginning day. I'm going to try to make it a solid beginning, because we actually have an outing of sorts planned for tomorrow. For that reason, I'm also going to try to have tomorrow's newsletter set to go in advance. The newsletter is going to contain my choice for my next novella project along with an explanation of why and examples of how your feedback has shaped my thinking, a sneak at some of what I've been working on for Fantasy In Miniature's relaunch (at the start of November).
To try to close out the fundraiser and stir up a little excitement, I'm using a microincentive... if the $1,000 goal is reached by Sunday night, I'll re-open the Tales of MU character Formspring and make answering questions on it part of my regular schedule (probably either something like three questions a weekday, or just make plowing through a bunch of questions part of my day 1 routine in the cycle... it will depend on volume, probably).
I'm not ready to re-visit the can of worms that was my personal Formspring, since one or two bitter individuals just took that as an open invitation to troll me. That's not to say they couldn't do the same thing with the in-character one, but somehow that just feels less personal.
If this goal isn't reached, then at some point in the future I may use the Formspring as an incentive for something else... but that won't necessarily be a priority. Right now I'm basically figuring out how to do the most with my time, both in terms of getting things done and getting things done that people will appreciate enough to pay for. If there isn't ~$120 worth of give-a-crap about the chance to pick the brains of fictional characters... well, that may have to be that. I guess another thing I could do would be to make character Q&A into a newsletter feature.
Yesterday was a pretty rocky day emotionally, if you couldn't tell from my last news post. The ongoing good news is that my new schedule and work habits weren't affected by it. I still kicked out around ~2,000 words all told, and I'm pretty pleased with what I wrote. The difference again is that I'm no longer expecting myself to maintain a laser-like focus for eight hours in a row every day. My actual output in words/chapters over a period of time is not actually that far from my peak... it's just steady, instead of having bursts of kicking ass and long periods of moping about how much ass I'm not kicking.
A lot of the time these news posts are more like rambling introspection... I think I might modify the format of my status posts so that actual information doesn't end up being buried.
State of the Me
I am increasingly convinced that the state of Maryland just hates my upper respiratory tract, which is unfortunate. I'm hoping that once I'm here for good my immune system recognizes that the local flora is not in fact trying to murder me and settles down a little. Things go well with Jack and Sarah, though, which is good.
Dreams From Last Night
I was trying to teach an actual class at Magisterius University... a history class, to be specific, but one of my students was confused by the history book's lack of plot development or narrative structure and kept interrupting the lecture to question the choice to do things like end the such-and-such era with the assassination of some guy who'd only been barely introduced to the reader.
Plans For Today
Today is day 2 of Chapter 38's cycle, which is the beginning day. I'm going to try to make it a solid beginning, because we actually have an outing of sorts planned for tomorrow. For that reason, I'm also going to try to have tomorrow's newsletter set to go in advance. The newsletter is going to contain my choice for my next novella project along with an explanation of why and examples of how your feedback has shaped my thinking, a sneak at some of what I've been working on for Fantasy In Miniature's relaunch (at the start of November).