New Year Resolutions for Writing

Each year, I set a writing goal.

Actually, the suggestion comes from my friend Rayne Hall, who also keeps me on target! Last year, my goal, which I achieved, was to write 300,000 words and edit 300,000 words. I did so, squeaking by in December. Since it was a challenging but achievable goal, I’ve made that my overarching goal again this year. I am adding one thing only, which is to count my research, world-building and outlining as a separate category, and add that I want to so 100,000 words of outlining as well. So:

1. 100,000 words outlining/world-building

2. 300,000 writing (draft or full)

3. 300,000 editing or revision

Are New Year’s Resolutions of any value? Do they help or hinder? There’s a TED talk that claims sometimes telling people your goals has the same impact as actually achieving them, so be wary of publicizing goals. If you do set resolutions, and make them public on a blog, make sure it’s to help keep yourself accountable, not to prematurely pat yourself on the back. So, please note, I’m not auto-back-patting here, I’m not trying to plume myself, but to prep myself, and to prod myself, with these goals.

There’s another problem as well. What happens when the goals aren’t met? One of my goals for the past 3 years has been to finish The Unfinished Song series — all 12 books. Since I had a rough draft of the entire story, it didn’t seem unreasonable to expect I could do one book a month. Not only did grad school and babies come along, but what I wanted for the series also changed. Instead of 12 very short novels, all less than 50,000 words, I wanted to make each installment in the series a full novel. (You’ll notice that after Initiate, which is short, all the other books are 80,000 to 120,000 words. QUITE a bit longer.) More importantly, the extra length wasn’t just padding but represented additional storylines and characters, which, in my opinion, deepened and strengthened the story. My primary goal was to write an excellent story, one that would stand the test of time, and if that meant taking the time to rework and rework the story until it was perfect… I was willing and am willing to do that.

That said, it’s still one of my goals this year to finish the series. Trying to be more realistic than I have been in the past (apologies, dear readers!), I am committing to publishing at least the next trilogy in the Unfinished Song: Mask, Mirror and Maze. If I can bring you more than that, be assured I will. Just keep in mind, I want the final trilogy to be a “stunning conclusion” to the whole series, not a let-down, and I won’t compromise on that. So I will work on it as long as it takes to make sure these books are as good as I can write them. I’ll write as fast as I can… but not faster.

One of the ways to keep the Unfinished Song fresh and strong in my mind is to step away from it from time to time and work on other things. That’s to avoid creative burn-out. So I don’t promise I will work ONLY on the Unfinished Song this year. In fact, I have a few projects I would like to get started or continue this year. You’ve not seen most of these yet, and they might not be published this year at all. Right now, most are still in the world-building, research and outlining stage.

Here are the series I anticipate actively working on (in various stages):

Series in Progress:

1. Unfinished Song
2. Roxy Hood (a new Urban Fantasy series about a descendent of Little Red Riding Hood)
3. Tarot Temptations (a Paranormal Romance series in the planning stages)
4. Avatars of the Archons (a High Fantasy series)
5. STRAT

The break-down of sub-goals — which, I should note, are  more fluid, and may change with circumstance, are:

• Detailed outline of the next Unfinished Song trilogy (Mask, Mirror, Maze)
• Trunk drafts of Mask, Mirror, Maze (the trunk draft of Mask is done but not the others)
• Revise, edit, polish, and publish – Mask, Mirror, Maze

• Detailed outline of the final Unfinished Song trilogy
• Trunk drafts of the final trilogy

• Detailed outline of at least three Roxy Hood novels
• Trunk draft of at least one Roxy Hood novel

• Coordinate with possible co-author about writing some Tarot Temptations novels

• Detailed outline of STRAT: COIN

• Rough outline of Avatars of the Archons 5-book series

As you can see, the main writing-in-full will still be on The Unfinished Song, but in between, I’ll be doing research and outlining for future works.

If you read  carefully (for whatever deranged reason anyone would be reading this post carefully… I realize it might be completely dull to anyone but me…) you’ll notice that if I do the Tarot Temptations, it might be with a co-author, specifically another writer friend who has more experience with romance and erotica than I do. This series would be Paranormal Romance, with hot and sexy scenes, but not full-on erotica.

I’ve never worked with a co-author before. Totally new territory! Working with a co-author could make the whole thing go faster, enabling us both to publish those books sooner (maybe even later this year), or it could be a complete train-wreck, full of drama, heart-ache, and mutual voodoo curses that raise the dead on a global scale. Fun!

If that project develops further, whether fantastically or demonically, I’ll be sure and keep you updated.

 

Lindsay Buroker on Lessons Learned from Three Years of Self-Publishing

Lindsay Burokoer, a long-time writer friend and great blogger–who recently featured a guest post of mine about the Faery Worlds Book Bundle–has posted her reflections and lessons learned from three years of self-publishing.

Lindsay and I started self-publishing about the same time. Perhaps it’s not too surprising, then, that we’ve learned some of the same lessons. I completely agree with what she has to say.

Read the whole thing, but here are some high-lights:

Lesson #2: A series with dedicated readers is what leads to reliable income.

Over time, the numbers tell you how many people go on to buy subsequent books after trying the first, so you’ve got a good idea how many buyers you’re going to have each month if you can get X number of new people to pick up the first book. You also get an idea of how many people will buy the next installment before you even start writing it. With unrelated works, things are more hit-and-miss. You might get lucky and attract an all-new audience, but you might also find that fewer of your dedicated readers will try the new characters/new world.

Lesson #3: You should give a book time on the market before giving up on it or making hasty decisions regarding series-potential.

Based off early reviews, I almost scrapped Torrent and the notion of doing a subsequent series. At one point, I was going to take it down from the store altogether. The only reason I didn’t was because it was clearly set up as a Book 1 and I felt compelled to write more in the series at some point, so people wouldn’t be left hanging.

So what eventually happened with Torrent? I left it up there while I went on to my other stuff, and it’s actually sold well, quite well when you consider that I haven’t mentioned it anywhere since launch weekend back in September. Even for launch, I didn’t do more than announce it to my newsletter, and throw up a post on Facebook and Twitter. I haven’t spent a penny on advertising (I always figured I would wait until I had more books out in the series). I’ve also had some nice emails and comments from readers who enjoyed it and want to see more. In addition, I got an email from someone at Amazon last month, and they may include it in some kind of featured sale in a couple of months (no guarantees, but, hey, they’ve never emailed me about any of my other books). So that brings me to…

Lesson #4: Glowing reviews don’t always make for a best-seller and the book that gets hammered hardest might just sell well.

I should note that I agree with some of the critiques for the book, and I’ll try to address certain points and improve on things as I go forward in the series. However, it’s also worth pointing out that…

Lesson #5: If you publish something in a different genre, you risk displeasing people who prefer the old.

As authors, we sometimes like to jump around and explore new genres and different styles of writing. (Why of course it’s time to try something in first person!) There’s nothing wrong with that, but we have to realize that those people who really liked our old genre and old style of writing may not be excited about the new. I think the next time I jump to a different genre (there’s going to be a space-age SF series eventually, so look out!), I’ll mention it to the mailing list but won’t do the big discount to try and encourage them to try it. If they do and they like it, great, but I’ll go to the book blogs and genre-specific advertisers and try to first put it in front of those who really dig that type of book.

There’s much more so be sure you read the rest on her blog.