Progress Report: Week 4, November 2017

Last week started with a whirlwind visit from my dad, which was nice, and then it settled down a little. I decided I had to focus on my publishing obligations for December, finish the publishing for November, and then see if I thought NaNo was a wash for the year.

Because I’d reached the last 10 days of November, December’s publishing moved to the top of the list. According to the original schedule, I had 1 short story (Serpents’ Souls & Dragons’ Hearts), 1 erotic novella for my friend, Ellie (The Trading Game), and 1 young adult science fiction novel (A Planet’s Ransom) to publish. Of these three, the first two were written, but needed the full process of editing, cover design, formatting and uploading. The last one needed to be finished.

I also wanted to get my long-overdue flash fiction collection out, as well, because I’d let my flash fiction and poetry writing slip during my university years, but that was going to be a long-shot.

Finally, I wanted to get my blogging back in order, because that had really fallen by the wayside.

Before I got into any of that, however, I had to finalise the publication of Wheelchair Mermaid and finished releasing it to all platforms. That took all of Sunday, and part of Monday morning. I also updated my blog, and brought my release and cover announcements back on-line. 

By Monday night, I had started and finished all of the publication process for Serpents’ Souls & Dragons’ Hearts, bar the DriveThruFiction and Draft2Digital pre-order uploads. Those I finished Tuesday morning, along with the progress reports I’d missed.

By Tuesday night, I had done the base edit and format of Ellie Moonwater’s The Trading Game: Zach, as well as finalising its cover, so, on Wednesday, I began the CreateSpace edit and format. That took until Friday afternoon, when I rolled straight into formatting and uploading the ebook versions for pre-order.

By that stage, the novella had gone through 8 rounds of edits, and I still found a missing word in the blurb…AFTER I’d finished the uploading and blogging process. It was a vital missing word, so I took an hour to correct everything I could correct at the time, but some files were in review and could not be accessed to be replaced, until Saturday morning.

On Saturday, I had choices, but there really was only one option. I still wasn’t a month ahead of my publishing schedule, let alone the three months I wanted to be, so I made a scheduling change, bumping A Planet’s Ransom to a tentative January release, and heading straight into the final edit for the last release of the year, the much-delayed 366 Days of Flash Fiction, which, of course, has to be the biggest, most awkward, most nightmarish thing to format, and of course it has to be 140,000 words long… of course it does—but the stories are worth it; some still make me cry.

This means I am almost back on track for being a month ahead of my schedule, as well as being almost set to finish writing the rest of Babes in London for the blog. I’m also hoping to start submitting short fiction to other markets, as well as publishing it myself, but we’ll see. Come the end of November, and I’ll be revisiting what I’ll be trying to achieve next year.

The downside to all this publishing is that this week saw no new words, except those added during the editing and publishing process. I worked 59.5 hours, over 7 days – which is much longer than I would have worked at a ‘normal’ day job, but which I enjoyed a whole lot more. This writing thing is kinda fun!

Week 5 Progress

• New words produced: 894 (during final edits)
• Outlines and Notes: 586 (book front and back matter, indices)
• Works completed: 0
• Works completely edited: 2 (Serpents’ Souls & Dragons’ Hearts; The Trading Game: Zach)
• Covers created: 2 (Serpents’ Souls & Dragons’ Hearts; The Trading Game: Zach)
• Works published: 3 (Wheelchair Mermaid; Serpents’ Souls & Dragons’ Hearts; The Trading Game: Zach)
• Works submitted: 0
• Competitions Entered: 0
• Bloggery: 4,628