I
have amazed myself with what I can accomplish when I really set a goal and
strive for it! I decided on DEC 22 that
I was going to finally write a story I’d been dreaming on for a while, and get
it done in time to submit it to the current quarter of the Writers of the
Future Contest. That deadline being DEC
31st. So I had one week to
get this done, even with Christmas and working four 13-hour shifts.
To
my own amazement, I made it! And in
doing so, learned a little about myself, my writing, and conquered a couple of
imaginary barriers within myself to getting things done.
One
being, the false idea that I have to be setup in 95% perfect surroundings and
situation in ordered to get real writing done.
That shouldn’t be necessary. As
I’m fond of saying but not of practicing: “Mood is a thing for cattle, and love
play, not for writing!” (If that sounds
familiar or you’re hearing it in Patrick Stewart’s voice, I stole it from
1984’s Dune movie and changed one
word. Can you guess which?)
Another
one is embracing the teachings of Heinlein and Dean Wesley Smith. Specifically, I sat down, banged out the
story, and with just a once-over of revision, sent that bastard out! BAM!
Now it’s time to move on to new stories of wonder!
(Actually,
it’s time to get my butt back to writing the sequel—or rather prequel—to Hungry
Gods.)
In
other news, this blog has now officially surpassed the 100,000 page view
mark. Woo-hoo for that!
And
with 2016 only days away, I have of course been refining my goals for the next
year. I actually started working toward
that in October and have been making progress since then.
One
aspect of that is to do even less blogging than usual (which isn’t that much to
begin with), less Facebook (maybe even do away with it all together), less
Tweeting (again, virtually none now), and less of all the messing around that
isn’t writing. Only WRITING is
writing. Everything else is of limited
value. Very, very limited, in my
opinion.
I
did spend an awful lot of time on other-than-writing things in 2015, including
some reformatting, republishing, and too much marketing (though not nearly
enough by some folks’ standards). My
research and experiments in marketing proved that the amount of money and time
dumped into that stuff does not come back to you. Or at least, it didn’t come back to me. I think the marketing market is exaggerated
by those who stand to make a buck from it, while those of us trying to utilize
it (under peer pressure from those who may or may not really know what they’re
talking about) end up not getting the exaggerated results we were
promised. I think you have to be at
least a minor-league Somebody for any of that marketing to do your book sales
much good. And in order to get there,
you have to do more writing!
So
my goals for words produced keep going up, even while my time allowed for doing
so keeps going down. Though I did
surpass the 100,000 mark on words written this year! Actually, about 123,000w. Woo-hoo for that, too! Now that word count is a measure of work
done, not necessarily of words published in books. My blogging this right now goes into that
count, as does time spent revising, adjusted as half as many words – it’s a
weird equation, but one I’m comfortable with.
Because, again, it’s a measurement for me on how much writing work I’ve
done, and this year I did a damn good job, considering I work 50+ hours a
week, have a family, and spent 2-3 months barely writing as I was gearing up
for a deployment to the Middle East. And
in 2016, I hope to be even more productive.
I
also learned a lot this year. One of
those lessons, in fact, was to not spell out exactly what I did learn or what my
ever-shifting plans may be. Therefore,
I’m not going to say anything more about that.
In
fact, I’m not going to say anything more at all right now. Happy New Year, everyone. Now, I have writing to do!
