Looking back.
Aug. 20th, 2013 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI'm going to be doing a bit of blogging to get the habit of formulating thoughts and typing in an unfamiliar setup rolling. Depending on how things go, there might be a few more posts throughout the day as I alternate this with writing fiction. If I don't, it probably means I hit a groove on the fiction thing.
One thing I did a lot of the night before last when I couldn't sleep was going through and reading my older entries on my LJ/DW blog. I've been trawling my own archives a lot more lately, and it's been an interesting experience. It's helped me see the patterns of my life a bit more clearly, especially since my LJ period covers a number of years (2008 through 2010, basically) when I was living in a heavy fog and was having a lot of memory problems. Not that those have completely gone away.. I counted at least three posts where I was very excited to have just become aware of Cat Valente's Deathless for the first time.
It's kind of painful (in a way that's similar to re-reading older stories to comment on them) to look back at the highs and lows of my last half-decade... all the plans I had that lost momentum or otherwise fell apart. But I also found a lot of good advice that I gave myself or found elsewhere, some of which I've already incorporated into my life and some of which clearly never took but is worth re-examining.
One of the the posts in that category is this one, about a panel I have absolutely no memory of having attended at my first Wiscon. It sure sounds like a good one, though, and the takeaway I took away from it is something I should keep in mind. I've gotten better at spotting the waves as they come in and riding them for longer, and I've been re-arranging my life to minimize the frequency and impact of random external factors... but stuff still happens, and will continue to happen.
As painful as it is to see my enthusiasm for things that ultimately went nowhere, it's also helpful. I had a lot of plans for LitSnacks and Gift of the Bad Guy that didn't fail... the book launch was about as messy as you'd expect a first time effort to be, but the sales were decent and there was momentum. It was purely external events that got in the way of following through, and it's taken a long time for me to get anywhere near the same amount of enthusiasm about selling my own e-books. But now that the enthusiasm is building again...
Well, I'm obviously not in a position to do much about it at the moment. Between late summer heat and the upcoming move, I mean. But one side effect of the fundraiser is that by the time I'm done fulfilling perks I'll have everything that I've got on Amazon in every format, which is a huge step towards having my own fully fleshed out bookstore. And we'll be heading into the colder months, which I now understand are the productive high point of my calendar. Gift of the Bad Guy came out of the cool nights of February and March.
Anyway, that's about all I have to say on this subject that won't be rambling and repeating the same poitns, so I'm going to end this entry here.
One thing I did a lot of the night before last when I couldn't sleep was going through and reading my older entries on my LJ/DW blog. I've been trawling my own archives a lot more lately, and it's been an interesting experience. It's helped me see the patterns of my life a bit more clearly, especially since my LJ period covers a number of years (2008 through 2010, basically) when I was living in a heavy fog and was having a lot of memory problems. Not that those have completely gone away.. I counted at least three posts where I was very excited to have just become aware of Cat Valente's Deathless for the first time.
It's kind of painful (in a way that's similar to re-reading older stories to comment on them) to look back at the highs and lows of my last half-decade... all the plans I had that lost momentum or otherwise fell apart. But I also found a lot of good advice that I gave myself or found elsewhere, some of which I've already incorporated into my life and some of which clearly never took but is worth re-examining.
One of the the posts in that category is this one, about a panel I have absolutely no memory of having attended at my first Wiscon. It sure sounds like a good one, though, and the takeaway I took away from it is something I should keep in mind. I've gotten better at spotting the waves as they come in and riding them for longer, and I've been re-arranging my life to minimize the frequency and impact of random external factors... but stuff still happens, and will continue to happen.
As painful as it is to see my enthusiasm for things that ultimately went nowhere, it's also helpful. I had a lot of plans for LitSnacks and Gift of the Bad Guy that didn't fail... the book launch was about as messy as you'd expect a first time effort to be, but the sales were decent and there was momentum. It was purely external events that got in the way of following through, and it's taken a long time for me to get anywhere near the same amount of enthusiasm about selling my own e-books. But now that the enthusiasm is building again...
Well, I'm obviously not in a position to do much about it at the moment. Between late summer heat and the upcoming move, I mean. But one side effect of the fundraiser is that by the time I'm done fulfilling perks I'll have everything that I've got on Amazon in every format, which is a huge step towards having my own fully fleshed out bookstore. And we'll be heading into the colder months, which I now understand are the productive high point of my calendar. Gift of the Bad Guy came out of the cool nights of February and March.
Anyway, that's about all I have to say on this subject that won't be rambling and repeating the same poitns, so I'm going to end this entry here.