23 years - that's how long ago I said "I do". Grant it, the last 8 or so years haven't really been like we've been together; just living under the same roof and have hardly said anything to each other, but it's okay. He did leave me a text message this morning saying "happy anniversary" so at least he hasn't forgotten.
On the sales note, nothing happened this week. I'm trying to get Heather to fix "Train of Clues" for the final time (I've been trying for months now to get it fixed and finalized but to no avail), so hopefully I can get it back on the market before the October events, and maybe even put it up as an ebook. I hope she isn't ignoring me because I really would like to get that project out of the way. I have 3 more ebooks I want to publish but need covers for them. Biggest thing is I can't afford to pay someone to do my covers or my illustrations right now. Until I see mega sales from the state series, and I mean like 1000 print-run per state, then I probably won't ever ba able to pay someone for doing the artwork. I hope that I see a big jump in sales at the Georgia COMO event the first week of October. With SELA being there and with me in their booth all day Thursday and most of Friday, I should see some orders coming in (that is 12 states represented in the association - Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia). Me personally, I wouldn't consider Virginia and West Virginia as "southeastern states" but I'll be happy to have each state pick up the states already completed for their collection. If each county in each state would get one copy of the five titles available for their main branch, that would be 1025 copies per title to equal 5125 books. That would be well worth everything. I could continue with the series. But that is wishful/hopeful thinking on my part. It's hard to predict what will happen at any given event.
This week starts the Book-in-a-Week challenge and I've decided to participate but not officially. Their (see my posting from Friday about the BIW and the website to get more information) time starts Monday at 8 AM and ends the following Monday at 8 AM; officially my week will run from 12:01 Sunday AM to 11:59 Saturday night. I've decided to work on Imogene and have decided to make it a 2-month time frame to work on it. My goal is to write 3 pages a day for 20 or 21 pages a week over the course of 10 weeks (starting today, ending November 17, with the goal of having the story almost completed if not fully completed). I think setting goals of number of pages as opposed to number of words per day or week will not feel as frenzied as NaNo, and I'll be writing roughly the same amount of words as expected for NaNo over a longer period of time. This hopefully will let me get Imogene's story developed and written so I can achieve publication goal of next summer or fall. I'll post an update every week here (my "this and that" column) so that you all can see that I am on track or if I'm falling short of meeting my goals and you can all stop by and encourage me or give me a pep talk (I'll need plenty of that to get it done).
Off to work so I can work on my writing - see you all in the postings - E :)
Showing posts with label book-in-a-week challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book-in-a-week challenge. Show all posts
Sunday, September 09, 2012
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Book-in-a-Week
I just hooked back up with a friend online (we had been regular chatters for a while and then lost contact when she had her kids) and she has directed me to the monthly challenge of book-in-a-week. Many of you are familiar with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month which is through the month of November) and know that I've participated in that challenge mostly as a cheerleader for my friends who write and participate or as a mentor for Mr. Hughes' class. Grant it, the 50,000 words in 30 days seems daunting but it really does help produce the beginning of novels or at least several short stories and it does get you writing for a whole month. You know that becomes a habit if you actually write every day since it takes 30 days to make a habit and 30 days to break it.
So what's so special about book-in-a-week? Reading over their FAQs, I'm more inclined to write consistently during the week having to be accountable for pages and not not word counts. The minimum challenge is to write 10 pages (that's 250-word pages) in the 7 days, which technically comes out to 2500 words in a week and if you did that every week, yes it would take you longer to write a novel but you would get it done and it wouldn't be at a frenzied pace like NaNo is (averaging 1667 words/day can be overwhelming depending on what is going on in your life and we all know November is full of holiday prepping and time away from your desk for whatever reasons, so sometimes the goal isn't being met or can't be met due to outside influences and circumstances).
Even though I won't participate in the BIW challenge this month (it starts next week), I will do so on my own, setting a goal to write 10-20 pages a week on Imogene and hopefully by the end of November I will have her story finished so in the first part of the year I can revise and shoot for publication next summer or fall. I want to get back to Imogene's story, so this may be the perfect challenge for me to do.
GOALS: 10 WEEKS, 20 PAGES A WEEK, Starting Sunday September 9, 2012, ending Saturday November 17, 2012 (by my calculations, that is 50,000 words - hopefully the story will be longer than that - I'm shooting for between 75,000 and 100,000 for this one but it may not need that much to be completed; the challenge is on).
If you would like more information about book-in-a-week, how to join, et cetera, you can go here and kind of amble around checking things out.
So, even though unofficially I won't participate this month, I'm going to start the challenge next week and work on Imogene for 2 months - with a goal to have Imogene completed before Thanksgiving. Will post my weekly counts on my Sunday This and That column so my week will actually start on Sunday and end on Saturday (as opposed to starting on Monday at 8 AM and ending the following Monday at 8 AM). Good luck to me and see you all in the postings - E :)
So what's so special about book-in-a-week? Reading over their FAQs, I'm more inclined to write consistently during the week having to be accountable for pages and not not word counts. The minimum challenge is to write 10 pages (that's 250-word pages) in the 7 days, which technically comes out to 2500 words in a week and if you did that every week, yes it would take you longer to write a novel but you would get it done and it wouldn't be at a frenzied pace like NaNo is (averaging 1667 words/day can be overwhelming depending on what is going on in your life and we all know November is full of holiday prepping and time away from your desk for whatever reasons, so sometimes the goal isn't being met or can't be met due to outside influences and circumstances).
Even though I won't participate in the BIW challenge this month (it starts next week), I will do so on my own, setting a goal to write 10-20 pages a week on Imogene and hopefully by the end of November I will have her story finished so in the first part of the year I can revise and shoot for publication next summer or fall. I want to get back to Imogene's story, so this may be the perfect challenge for me to do.
GOALS: 10 WEEKS, 20 PAGES A WEEK, Starting Sunday September 9, 2012, ending Saturday November 17, 2012 (by my calculations, that is 50,000 words - hopefully the story will be longer than that - I'm shooting for between 75,000 and 100,000 for this one but it may not need that much to be completed; the challenge is on).
If you would like more information about book-in-a-week, how to join, et cetera, you can go here and kind of amble around checking things out.
So, even though unofficially I won't participate this month, I'm going to start the challenge next week and work on Imogene for 2 months - with a goal to have Imogene completed before Thanksgiving. Will post my weekly counts on my Sunday This and That column so my week will actually start on Sunday and end on Saturday (as opposed to starting on Monday at 8 AM and ending the following Monday at 8 AM). Good luck to me and see you all in the postings - E :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)