Ohhhhhh man. I woke up today and felt so, so much better. So much better!
Not quite 100%, but I felt like myself again. So, I was able to get a whole work day done today. I am still frustratingly behind on my assignments, but I can rally for the last three work days before we leave for Christmas times. I can do it.
I will NOT be finishing the rewriting this week…which is okay, I guess, because after joining this group of indie authors, I’m finding myself completely overwhelmed in terms of how I should proceed with all this writing stuff. It’s really opened my eyes to what the possibilities are, and that is awesome…and totally overwhelming. It’s kind of frozen me. Too much too fast. I feel like my brain is exploding.
So…that’s okay. It means that I’m growing. I just need to let that shit seep in, calm the fuck down, and just take some time. In the meantime, I am going to finish Starstuff. That has always been the plan, and it will always be the plan until it is FINISHED. I can’t write my second book until I write the first one…and the first one ain’t done yet.
Basically…the revelation that this group of indie authors has stumbled across, in addition to a multitude of other things (like covers, blurbs, newsletters, email lists, etc.) that I’ve been learning about for the past 6 months or so…the big revelation is that if you write a book that has a market (say, urban fantasy right now, for example, is friggin huge), and you can put out a book a month or even faster, you can gain a following pretty friggin fast. And these books are, obviously, not masterpieces; they’re pulps. Quick reads. Fun plots, twists, action, big characters that you fall in love with, simple prose…some of these authors are hardly even doing editing…and they’re making 5 figures a month. The huge HUGE key being: you have to release a book once a month that’s part of the same series, and you have to do that like 20 times.
So, yeah…my mind is exploding. It’s a model of writing that I’d not really considered, at least recently. It’s not that I’ve never considered it…every time I look at pulp scifi artwork, I think about how much fun it would be to write stories like those images…but is that me? I don’t know, man. I really don’t know. It could be. And I have a series or two that might be appropriate…I *think*…for shorter books, and like, 10 to 20 of them.
See, there’s also this thing about “throw out your first 1,000,000 words as a writer, because those were just practice for the real work” that I feel like may have some wisdom to them…and doing indie publishing, possibly under a pseudonym, and setting a target of around 1,000,000 words might allow me to have my cake and eat it to, you know? Both start publishing and getting real feedback from consumers in the form of sales and reviews, AND really work on my craft of story-telling.
It sounds like a great idea writing it out here on the blog, but in reality it’s jaw-clench-inducing. It’s really, really worked me up to the point of overload. I genuinely feel like a computer right now that has too many applications/thoughts open all at once and I can’t keep track of them all. It’s too much.
Breeeaaaatttthhheeee…
I’m going to take a break from the group tomorrow. Perhaps even the rest of the week, or for a couple weeks. I have work to finish. I want to finish it. Then, reconsider. Brainstorm. See if I can quiet the brain storm, and really think about what I want, and how to get it.
Glad to be feeling better, and glad to know that there is a path to being an author out there that does actually pay the bills. I really, really, really love writing. I wish it didn’t stress me out so much sometimes, or feel so scary…but the writing itself, and the stories, and the characters? They give me life. For realsies.
Good night.