I’ll be honest here. I did a terrible job of sticking to the script in January. (This isn’t a huge surprise — that’s pretty much the story of my life.) But I did actually get a lot done, so I’ll evaluate the goals I had, and then list the things I did.
Write the first draft (or at least 50k) of the series reader magnet. I’m not sure how long this will turn out to be — I would be fine if it expanded into a full-length novel, but I don’t have that much plot for it yet. (I have characters, a beginning, an end, a theme, and an inciting incident. Who needs more than that? Ha ha ha…)The draft is currently at 27k. I think it’s going to go another 10-15k.- I wrote episodes for two different serials last month, so if I need to take a break and work on something other than the reader magnet, I’ll add some episodes to those. No pressure on this, though. I did not write any new episodes from scratch.
Get the next few chapters of Ghostwriter out to the YWC critique group.Woohoo! I did this.
So I did 1.5 out of 3 things. I had an honors physics class in college where the median grade on one test was 7/100 (I got 9/100 so I was doing great!), but in most classes 50% would not be passing. However, it’s my life, so I’m giving myself a provisional grade of B.
On the other hand, here’s the other stuff I did:
- Did a read-aloud pass of Dragon Freehold in preparation for releasing it in February. I can’t emphasize enough how much work that is, but it also makes the language so much stronger. It’s necessary.
- Pulled an old novel out of storage and started editing it and feeding it to Vella. I’m not sure Fighting Fate will ever be anywhere other than Vella. It’s SF romance, which doesn’t quite fit with the other things I’m publishing at the moment. But it’s a fun novel, and if Amazon is going to pay me bonuses, I might as well put it out there.
- Started working on edits for The Chaos Nexus, which is the third Jackpot Drift novel. I also have a slot in the cover designer’s schedule this month.
- Started setting up my Patreon. I still need to do some integration to finish making it all work, but if anyone wants to support me financially, it’s almost up and running. (Can you still be a fan without contributing to the Patreon? Absolutely! Talking to your friends, writing reviews, buying books, or even convincing your library to buy books are all great ways to support an author! But for those people with a bit of extra cash who want to throw some my way, Patreon makes it easy.)
February Goals
Can I do a better job of planning February? Let’s find out!
- Finish the rough draft of All Gremlins Great and Small.
- Publish Dragon Freehold.
- Finish setting up the Patreon and get into the habit of posting things that I’ve promised to all the levels, even if I don’t have people signed up for it yet.
- Continue editing and loading episodes of Fighting Fate to Kindle Vella. (I’m dropping one episode every day, so that’s not an insignificant amount of work.)
- Finish structural edits on The Chaos Nexus. I’ll probably get into the final editing stages in March.
- Play around with cover ideas for All Gremlins Great and Small as part of Thingadailies.
Fingers crossed I don’t head off piste during February…
Obligatory Pet Picture
Somebody is very sad the box is empty…
