I’m still working on coming up with a plan for 2018.
I have some ideas though, and they start with a target number of hours spent writing every day. Five hours is the number I’m leaning towards. Every day, I think.
(5 x 7 = 35, so it’s not a crazy amount of time, by any means. The way my brain works 5 hours a day 7 days a week is much better than 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. Much, much better.)
This matters because I still haven’t figured out how to get myself to stick to writing daily and how to stop falling into a funk after I finish a book. I don’t want to go so long between releases. Nine months was too long. My current book is paying for that publishing gap.
In the past, the longest gap I’ve had between releases has been five months. Most of the time, that’s closer to four months. Now, I’m not talking about novels, or even books in my best selling series’. But I’ve tended to release something within a four to five month window.
Not this time.
Big mistake. My current release is struggling, to be blunt. Even though fans seem to be enjoying it, I’m not selling as many copies as I would like, not by a long shot.
So, time for another book.
Looking at the bright side, maybe this pressure is what I need to push me right back to writing. I had already planned to ramp up my writing, because I feel like I’ve finally pulled out of whatever state I was in this year that led to me writing so few words compared to previous years (barely more than half the number of words of my next lowest year’s word count: 125,712 versus 217,641).
That’s a significant drop, no two ways about it.
I debated requiring something of myself before I call it a night, but it’s been a tough day, to be honest. I think I’m going to get some extra sleep, get up at a decent hour, and start fresh tomorrow on this plan to write for five hours a day.
See you back here then.