I want to make a list of the WIPs I want to finish. Well, not really, because I have a list. What I want is to add up the number of WIPs I want to finish this year, how many I’ve already finished this year, and then create a way to track it for the accountability page. Especially since I’ve already started and will continue to start new WIPs this year. It’s inevitable, mostly because I have series that are ongoing.
The Year of WIPs
I wrote about this in a different post, but I thought I’d break it out into its own. It’s important. It’s my main goal for 2025, and it deserves its own space. :)
Time to move on; time to finish; time to start fresh
I’ve set a goal this year to finish as many works in progress as I can, preferably every last one of them. I’m talking specifically about those that I started before the end of 2024, but I’ve already added in a few new ones for 2025. I like to write short stories, and I’m not going to stop just because I’m trying to finish some novels, novellas and a few other short stories. And the novel ideas, well, they just keep coming.
I have several series, and in each one, I have a tendency to start the next book right after finishing the last. Then I run out of momentum on it or start feeling like I need to write a different book instead, because of need or expectation, so I leave it hanging until I can get back to it in the rotation (or whenever I decide I’ve had enough and am going to finish it anyway).
This year, I want to get some of those books out of the way. All of them, in fact. But I’ll settle for most.
It might be that I’ll always have a stack of WIPs waiting for me even if I get the old ones out of the way. It might not be preventable. :D But it would be nice to have a fresh start in 2026. To do that, I have to finish out 2025—and all these WIPs!
New streak?
I have four days of writing in a row. Three days of more than 300 words a day. I’m thinking it’s a streak.
Now, to decide whether it’s a four day streak of writing or a three day streak of 300+ words. I’ll let you know tomorrow! ;)
Getting closer to done
The scenes I thought would go quickly have taken a little more time to finish up. My subconscious thinks there’s more story there to tell, and I’m letting it.
But I am almost done with it, and it feels so good. I’ve spent longer than I wanted on this one, and I’m hoping to transfer my momentum to my next story.
The Year of WIPs
I’ve set a goal this year to finish as many works in progress as I can (those that I had started before the end of 2024). I have several series, and in each one, I have a tendency to start the next book right after finishing the last. Then I run out of momentum on it or start feeling like I need to write a different book instead, so I switch and leave it hanging until I can get back to it in the rotation (or whenever I decide I’ve had enough and am going to finish it anyway).
This year, I want to get some of those books out of the way. I’ll be honest with you, though, and tell you I’ve already added two new WIPs to the pile since 2025 started. It might be that I’ll always have a stack of WIPs waiting for me even if I get the old ones out of the way. I do usually finish what I start. There’s the occasional story start that doesn’t work out, but this is the exception, not the rule.
Today, I’m back at it. I’d like this to be the first WIP I cross off the list and I’d like to do that today. Wish me luck. :)
Today is a day for finishing
I have a story I’m working on finishing today. I’m most of the way there, but there’s still a little to finish up. I want to say it’s one of the rare stories where I end up writing scenes out of order that have to be rearranged as the story consolidates itself in my head. That’d be a lie. Lately, this has been the rule instead of the exception.
I’ll say most of this seemed to start (or get considerably more common) in the last few years. I’ve written extensively about the probable reasons for that so I won’t bother again, but I’m hopeful it’ll get better. For a while, I didn’t even want to write at all, and that did get better, so there’s always hope!
Anyway, working on this story today and I’m pretty excited that it’s coming together finally, after some scene shifting, cuts, and redrafting.*
But sometimes the story that’s there isn’t the story you really want to tell, and your subconscious calls you on it. :D Now it is, and I’m so happy I trusted my subconscious. I’m really happy with what I have so far.
*I usually call this editing, but in truth, it’s really just being creative and finding the story that my subconscious is trying to get out onto the page in the way it wants it there.
January’s experiment
I’m halfway through the month, but yesterday, I realized there was an experiment I needed to do, so I’m starting it now, even if it’s a bit late into the month.
I’ve been writing for most of my life. I’ve been self-publishing for over 14 years now. I thought I’d be further along by now, but I can pretty definitively say that the reason I’m not is because I’ve struggled so long with trying to get faster in a way that hasn’t worked for me. I may never get faster, and I’m tired of that struggle, to be honest. I think pushing so hard for it at various times has led to burn out and blocks and other struggles that have really affected my desire to write when I most needed to do it to keep up my momentum. I don’t think I’ll ever be faster than I am now—or at least I don’t think me consciously pushing for it is going to make it happen. Who knows what the future will bring?
Anyway, my point is that I’ve decided to eliminate some of the things that get in my way, things that make me having feelings that affect my joy in writing, and that aren’t helpful. These things might be tied to perfectionism. (Isn’t everything?)
I often use timers to keep me focused while I write. They work. They work really well. And then I see the WPH that my spreadsheet usually calculates for me (because once I’m using timers I can’t seem to avoid tracking them), and it jump-starts that internal critic. That’s all you did? You should try for more words next time! Didn’t you focus? Why aren’t you faster? Why can so-and-so write so many words in a sprint/session/hour but you can’t? What’s wrong with you?
Yeah.
That kind of criticism isn’t good for anyone. It certainly isn’t good for me.
So this experiment for January came to mind.
I’m going to use my timers and (gasp) not track a single one of them. Total word counts for the day is all I’ll pay attention to. It’s all I ever should pay attention to, anyway. I won’t stop tracking that, because it keeps me moving forward and it is important to me. I’ve been tracking my daily word count since August 2012. I like having that record of my progress.
But as for the rest? I don’t need it.
At the end of January in about two weeks, I’ll see how I feel about the experiment and if I want to make it permanent. Or if I’ve managed to pick up a habit of not caring about those sessions metrics. :D That’d be nice.
Just got it: tags
Holy crap. I’ve struggled with how to tag entries here on this blog for years. But less than a minute ago, I finally figured it out.
From now on, tags on this site will be the index entries. Categories are the table of contents, really, in a usability sense, but now I have my answer for tags.
This seems like such a simple thing, and I have to wonder why it too me so long to figure this out. :) You know what they say about the forest and the trees. I guess this truly was a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. :D
My new year
I’m always trying to figure out what I want to do with this blog–how to make it work for me.
But it already does. I just forget sometimes that it’s okay for it to simply exist in the way that it does. I start to feel pressure when I notice that (nearly) everyone else in the blog business is trying to run a business.
Look, this is a blog. If you learn something here, it isn’t because I taught it, it’s because something I’ve said about my own journey and life resonated with you, and you did the work to apply it to your own life.
I ramble. I talk about my own struggles. This blog is like my body double so I can get closer to reaching my own goals. I need that accountability. I like writing about my failures. Maybe I’m too introspective. Maybe it slows me down. What I do know is that if I don’t write out these things they start to billow up inside me and make me feel like I’m ready to claw my way out of my own skin.
And I enjoy writing the blog for whatever reason. But I hate structured writing. Don’t like putting together essays or articles. It feels hard. It definitely isn’t fun.
This–stream of consciousness writing–is easy. It feels fun, and it relaxes me.
So here I am. It’s time to reset for 2025, a little early, I know, but is it ever really too early to do better? No, I don’t think so. :D
Welcome to my new year.
See you around.
P.S. If you have a blog that’s just a blog, let me know and I’ll share the link, for other writers who just want to read about someone else’s struggles with writing and publishing for a break from their own.
5 minutes of writing
I don’t like intentions. They feel like a set up for failure. What they really are for me is a hit of dopamine that takes away the push I need to actually do the thing I intend to do.
Counterintuitive since I need real accountability to get things done if I’m basically not obsessed with it already, huh?
So, no intentions today. No stated intentions ever if I can control myself past this little rebellion.
But…
Yesterday, I tried out writing for 5 minutes while I let my (decaf) coffee brew and that worked surprisingly well, so of course I’m going to try that again today.
Uh oh. Is that a stated intention? Erase it. Pretend it doesn’t exist, because I actually want to do this 5 minute thing. :D
(Yes, I’m typing this blog post on my phone while I sit up in bed thinking about my day and try to motivate myself to step out onto the cold hardwood and get it started.)
A Good Day to Write
Spending the day writing is a good way to avoid the stress of watching and reading election news.
I voted, had lunch, and now it’s time to sit down and catch up with my November word count goal. :)
First goal? Write for 3.25 hours and try to get nine 20 minute sprints in there. I’m already down 15 minutes so that’s probably not even possible, but as many as I can get in there will suffice.
September 2024 accountability post
Let’s see. I finally cracked 10,000 again. I wrote 10,600 words in September. I restarted my daily writing streak. I’m on day 27 now of > 200 words a day (assuming I finish today’s words, which I will). However, and this is huge as far as I’m concerned, I didn’t finish any of the projects I wanted to finish—yes, those same August goals that I didn’t finish in August are still incomplete.
One of the short stories is not so short now, and I did get back to work on the novel. As for the rest, just didn’t get to it because I kept telling myself that the short story was close to being done and I should just stick with it instead of moving on to any of the rest of the things.
Mistake?
I’m honestly not sure.
I will say that as of last night, I’ve decided that one reason I’m stuck on this particular short story is because I haven’t been trusting myself. I wrote a whole bunch of scenes (or pieces of scenes, to be precise) that I cut out after I started them. I pulled one of the more fleshed out bits back into the story and told myself to stop second guessing everything. I know this isn’t the way to do my best. My best comes from writing what my subconscious tells me to write and letting it be.
Maybe I’ve started to think of the story as too important or something. That’s always a possibility. I’m always fighting the demons of perfectionism, and it gets its claws into everything I do the minute I stop guarding against it.
Anyway, September was an improvement. I’ve finally started to feel like I’m getting into a bit of a routine after the routine busting events of mid-year. Here’s to hoping October will be better still. :)
How’d I do with my goals in August?
Not so well. I didn’t finish any of the things I wanted to finish in August and I’m really not sure why. Every day felt like a struggle to get to the writing, and I admit I’m still having a lot of trouble falling into a routine now that I don’t have my days to myself.
However, there does seem to be some movement in the right direction that started near the end of the month.
For the last four or five days, I’ve been sitting down and writing for an appreciable amount of time, and making progress on my stalled stories.
My total word count in August was very low, and it wasn’t helped when I deleted 3,821 words from one of my stories. Net word count for the month came in at an embarrassing 431 words. I’ve already blown past that in just one day of September.
August is behind me now, and I’m planning for a much better September.
Goals for August 2024
This is a simple list of the goals I’ve set for August. I’ll post a comprehensive assessment after the month ends. It probably won’t be as formal as it sounds. :)
No word count goal for the month. Just a goal to finish:
- 3 short stories
- a weekly chapter of my serial
- the novel I’ve been working on for far too long
At halfway through the month, I’ve gone over the length I wanted for one of those short stories and it feels kind of like it’s never going to end. I haven’t even touched the other two. As for the weekly chapters, I’m two behind, but I might push to get two up today and get that back on track.
June–July 2024 accountability
So…the months keep slipping away and I keep forgetting to write these accountability posts. Not sure what to do about that other than make a calendar entry for them. I don’t want to do that, for various reasons, so I probably won’t.
In June, I wrote 1,537 words, and in July, I wrote 2,126.
I know what happened, and is still happening, but I’m not having a lot of luck fixing it. Yet. My daughter moved home, and it has really messed up every routine I had. And honestly, I was never good at keeping routines anyway, so this has been even more challenging than I thought it’d be. We’ve been living apart for several years, so reacquainting ourselves with compromise and sharing spaces has been a process. I also had to wrap up the last of the issues with my Dad’s estate.
July was when I really started to realize nothing was working for me with the writing and my routines. I feel lucky I’m doing better in August, even though it hasn’t been by much. My August word count is already higher than July.
But I’ve had to give up the effort to create some kind of schedule for my writing. I’m thinking I just need to really find something I love to write to get me working on my fiction as often as possible.
I need to worry about finishing things, writing new things that make me happy and enthusiastic, and publishing.
So there you go. I’ll write up an August goals post as soon as I publish this one.
Joined ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors)
I’ve been meaning to join the Alliance for Independent Authors for a while, but I’ve just never gotten around to it.
Until now.
I’ve finally joined. :D
There are plenty of reasons why I decided it was finally time, but the big one was that I’m getting antsy about having few other authors to talk to about the publishing side of writing. It’s time for me to correct that. :)
Winding down in June
June has been the month where I am finally wrapping up the last of my dad’s estate issues. It’s been two years since he died and two years since my sister and I began this, so it’s a relief to finally be at the end of it.
This has meant that I’ve been very distracted this month. I haven’t been able to keep up my daily writing and I haven’t been able to think much about my writing.
Don’t misunderstand. I’ve had time to keep up those streaks most days, but I haven’t had the energy. So, I haven’t.
My dad was a car man, so he had built a working garage when I was a kid. But his health wasn’t good in his later years and the garage suffered. He had a lot of stuff packed into it. Far more than I or my sister had imagined. Very little of it was organized. None of it was clean. The inside was overrun with signs of rats.
Clearing it out has been a struggle. I’ve spent many hours traveling the forty-five minutes to the garage to clean for three to four hours before going home to get ready to do it again a day or two later.
My dad’s garage is on a piece of property given to him by my grandmother. He had also bought a share from my aunt. The family didn’t want us to sell the property. However, we decided we really couldn’t keep it, so we put it on the market late last year.
The emotional baggage that comes with that decision has been a lot to bear for both my sister and me.
By the end of today or tomorrow, the last details should be done. I’ll be closing on the sale of his garage and then there’s nothing left to do but get back to writing.
May 2024 accountability
My word counts dropped in May. I know why so it’s not a big deal. I wrote 5,291 words in May.
On May 20th, I lost my > 200 words a day streak. The rest of the month wasn’t better. I had too much to do, and everything just got a little overwhelming.
I’ve tried to pick the streak back up, but it hasn’t been easy. My routines have changed significantly, and things are still not settled around here, so I keep missing my goal. Overall, though, I do expect better from June. And since the halfway point of the month is a good restarting point, I’m going to try to make yesterday the last missed writing day in June. :)
Draft2Digital and the Smashwords July Summer/Winter Sale
At this point, I’m really wishing I hadn’t bothered to migrate my secondary pen name so quickly from Smashwords to Draft2Digital when the opportunity was offered to me.
Why?
The Smashwords July Summer/Winter Sale is about to start and the migration means I won’t be joining. The reason is pretty simple: I never discount my most recent book. The options I usually have in Smashwords to discount only certain books is missing from Draft2Digital, and if I choose a discount there, then it’ll apply to my entire catalog.
I’m missing out on something I usually participate in and it’s a real disappointment for me.
Smashwords to Draft2Digital
I know people complain about Smashwords and the uploading process when you’re trying to get a book out of a Word document, but I have to say that at least managing a book there is a thousand times easier than managing one at Draft2Digital.
The whole process is more awkward.
But the worst is trying to get more than one book delisted at a retailer. It’s a pain in the ass. And there’s no way to see if you’ve already delisted a book so you end up going into the same pages to double check, making the whole thing annoying and a waste of time.
I dread the day when my main pen name account at Smashwords is forced to transfer to Draft2Digital.
My little side pen name transferred already, and that’s when I found out I’d really misunderstood what was going to happen. I thought merge meant merge, but apparently it was “transfer” all along, which is a far cry from a merge. Now I have two accounts at Draft2Digital. I’ll eventually have three: both pen name accounts from Smashwords and my original Draft2Digital account that published books for both pen names.
Someday, they claim I’ll have tools to merge these on my own. I’m hopeful, but I won’t be holding my breath while I wait on it.
In the meantime, I found out that things were not all well on the home front after the transfer.
My library prices came in at $0.99 for some reason instead of $16.99 and, wow, is that a huge difference. I quickly fixed them, but only after I found out it had happened, about a week after the transfer. My fault for not going over every detail of the books once the transfer took place, but really, it never occurred to me that they’d get something as basic as pricing messed up.
All in all, I’m sad to be moving to Draft2Digital, even if the interface is slicker and the book upload process is smoother. The actual management of my catalog is going to become a lot more tedious, and I just don’t see how that’s a win for me.
I’m also not that thrilled to be using a company that is so risk-averse with sexual content. Violence always seems to get a pass, but put sex in a book and it’s suddenly “erotica” even if it’s just a romance. They claim they’re going to be good to the erotica authors who are moving over from Smashwords too, but I’ve already been hearing grumblings that it’s just not happening that way at all.
As for me, I have a romance series that gets pushed into the erotica category every time. Since I know what content it contains and the series is strictly within the “erotic romance” category, meaning it is a romance no matter how much sex is in the story, I get annoyed every time I have to try to defend myself against this switch in genres (and I was once a Vice President of a chapter of Romance Writers of America so I do know what I’m talking about here). It’s not erotica. It’s romance. The sex is essential to the story, but the romance is the primary driver of the entire story. That’s pretty much the definition of the genre.
They can tell me as many times as they want that it’s not an automated check looking for certain keywords, but that’s exactly what has to be happening. All they have to do is read the book description, genre tags, and think for two seconds. It’s a distinction a human versed in publishing and genre tags could do easily. Instead, they seem to be relying on keywords that come up from content inside the books that can only be inferred as erotica content if you take the keywords out of context and ignore the genre and description of the book.
As I said, risk-averse. They rely on blocking books from being distributed to certain retailers and then try to tell you it’s all the retailers’ fault.
That said, I decided to pull all my books from Hoopla because of this issue, and I’m probably better off for it. I get about $0.52 every time my books are checked out for novels that sell for $6.99 and net me between $4 and $5 depending on where I sell the copies. I was honestly doing Hoopla and its library clientele a favor by letting them loan out my books at that rate.
If the onus is on Hoopla for the blocking of books, then I’ll admit my mistake, but I doubt it is. They had approved and were loaning out multiple books in this and other series, while “blocking” a few random books in that and another series that I suspect could have keywords that might be misunderstood.
For example, one romance series has a book in it in which my character has out-of-control magic. So the character started wearing a collar to block the magic. That collar is absolutely not a slave collar, not a sex collar, not a collar in any way tied to taboo content. It’s a thing to stop magic. The book is blocked from Hoopla. I suspect because some automated system picked up “collar” from the book and combined it with an exchange between characters where one character in the book says to another character (in a humorous exchange): “I’m not going to be anybody’s sex slave!” Or something like that. I can’t remember the exact wording. This screams automated keyword scraping as a method of filtering books.
It’s a joke. But a bad one. In fact, joke’s on me for writing humorous stories, and choosing a collar as the way to block out-of-control magic. But screw them. They don’t get to loan out my newest book in the series, possibly costing me sales, and block the one that came before it. :D
Anyway, I just really don’t like Draft2Digital. Or Hoopla, for that matter. Even if I’m not sure which one of them is to blame. Both have annoyed me.
This needs to be the year I get my Apple account up and running so I can just ignore D2D from now on.
April 2024 accountability
It’s a fact that if writing is going well for me, I don’t blog as much. I just realized I never wrote my accountability post for April 2024.
In April, I continued to write every day. I wrote 12,013 words.
I had hoped to start writing earlier in the day each day but that hasn’t been easy to do.