Month: November 2017

Crunch Time!

~ vincentdehaut ~ Leave a comment

So, where are we on our goals for the year?

1-Read ten (10) new books:

I’m at 9.5. Last one is Pride and Prejudice, which is a bit of a slog (it’s good, but just not to my taste.) Definitely doable by end of year.

2-Write one blog post every week:

Already done. Admittedly a few of those were low-content notes and the like, but I think I’ll post enough by the end of the year to make that a moot point.

3-Be done with Book the First:

As a reminder, here’s what that goal meant:

That means either finding an agent, or self-publishing the book. 

I’ve mad a lot of progress on e-publishing the book, but no way I can do it by end of year. And I’m not planning on querying any more this year, and I have no live query. That’s a failure (though not from lack of trying.)

4-Finish and start shopping the short story I’m currently writing:

Project dropped, because it was splitting my focus too much at a time when I couldn’t afford it. I still think trying to get a short story published would be a good idea but it needs to be a better short story project than the one I had.

Still a failure.

5-Take this website to the next level:

Nope. Admittedly, I kind of need an art direction for this first. But failure so far (although I doing at least the backend work would be a good first step, and that’s doable by end of year.)

6-Finalize my plans and start work on the Next Series:

 

I think that’s a success. Not a definite, clear success, but good enough for a pass.

So – my focus for the last month of the year will be backend work on the site, and finding a short story idea that I can somehow get published (and hopefully, at least make a good start on it.) Three acceptable successes and two goals in significant progress are good enough for me to accept my output for the year.

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Corner Turning?

~ vincentdehaut ~ Leave a comment

For the first time in a while, I have free time and the mental energy to create something.

Let’s not get carried away: it’s an afternoon (and parts of an evening), not a five-week vacation. But I will write a few words today if it kills me!

I also will push through at least one chapter revision. I’ve received my newest post-manuscript rejection, and it was… honest. As in brutal. “Not agent-ready.”

So yeah, I think I need to finish that editing pass, and probably do another one (if I can’t find the money to pay an editor.) All the while enduring that nagging feeling that my time would be better spent working on another manuscript.

In addition, I’m getting frustrated by the life-preventing-me-from-having-a-writing-career trap. It’s probably easier to write when you don’t have to hold a job, can pay an editor, and are famous enough to be able to deliver less-than-perfect manuscripts to your publisher (I’ve read ARCs by famous authors which were far less well-edited than my current manuscript.) But there’s nothing I can do about that except to keep rolling the dice.

In any case, I need to get back to work 🙂

Sick Again

~ vincentdehaut ~ Leave a comment

So, the one no-qualification-needed downside of having a kid is that they get sick, and that their bugs tend to mutate into sci-fi style superinfections.

My son brought home a common cold that morphed into an ear infection for him. For a dad, that’s hard to take: I want to make sure he’s fine always. So goodbye free time, I need to take care of my boy.

And then I get sick too, but I don’t get the common cold. I get something that’s a mixture of cholera and terminal sepsis. Or so it feels like, anyway. Kid-empowered common colds do that, apparently.

So… I’ve literally done nothing in the last two weeks. I mean, I was able to get to work and take care of my family, but beyond that it was “crash on the couch, hope to be able to go to sleep before five AM.”

Good thing the “get the book e-published by December” is off the books for the moment. I’m still pushing through the latest reread, because regardless of how things turn out agent wise another reedit cannot hurt, but it’s slow, slow going.

But I have vacation time coming up. Which probably won’t result in any meaningful progress given the way things have been going this year, but we’ll see!