CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

The Back-on-Track Challenge and the last university semester have taught me that I have some balancing to do in order to make all the bits of my life fit. Being a full-time student, and wanting to achieve good grades is a full-time job, and that means that, during semester, my writing can’t be. This has meant that I haven’t been making regular releases and that I’ve been expecting too much of myself as a writer, so I’ve had to make a few changes. The first of these is that I had to revamp my writing schedule to take some of the pressure down. Instead of aiming at a release a week, I’m aiming at having a release every 2nd month, starting in January 2016. It also means that I can’t keep working on a ‘backlog’, but that I have to work out how to move forward with what I have, and then to keep moving forward as I keep writing. To do this, I did the following: I rescheduled all the work I’d completed, with the first release coming out in the first week of January. This gave me com...

This month I made a concerted effort to get back to reading blogs - especially those of writers with more experience and knowledge than I have. I need to learn and I need to try and maintain something of a decent perspective from this somewhat sheltered and blinkered corner of the world. Also, I write in isolation. I don't have a lot of in-depth contact with people, let alone other writers. Too shy, not enough time, strong feeling of being too different and not welcome, and not fond of people, pick your reason, but those sum it up for me. Anyway, here are the blogs I got caught up on this month. There are a lot, and if one author seems to be a focus, just remember that I'm working down a list and I'll be culling that list as I go. These are the folk I am learning from at the moment, my unwitting mentors who don't know me from a bar of soap, and to whom I am very grateful. These are their words. Publishing Industry http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/writing-in-public-ye...

The general advice is that the best way to sell your current book is to write your next book. And I agree. I also follow the creed that I should finish my work, make it the best I can and so forth, and that got me thinking, because I have a lot of work to finish, and a lot of books to write, and, to be quite honest, I find balancing it all, quite difficult. I used to wonder why, when the returns were so much better, and the advantages so much greater, not everyone was ‘going indie’. Well, now I know. The short fact of the matter is that it’s not for everyone, that some people just want to write and they want someone else to take care of organising the cover, the formatting and uploading and all the administrative side of having a writing career. And I don’t blame them. I love writing, but I also love the publishing side of the writing. I love the control and the freedom to make my own schedule and all the rest of it but I wish, I very much wish I had more time to write, and I ...

As part of my tidy up, I have been catching up on the blogs. This time there were only around 800 to go through, and there were a lot more that made me stop. Here they are, separated roughly into subject areas: Readers http://www.thepassivevoice.com/12/2012/dont-hide-your-harlequins-in-defense-of-romance/ Scalzi-Hines Charity Pose-Off http://www.jimchines.com/2012/12/choose-the-form-of-the-scalzi/ Industry http://www.lindsayburoker.com/ebook-news/kobo-becoming-a-player-for-indie-authors/ http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/ten-bold-predictions-for-ebooks-and-digital-publishing-in-2013/ http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/kobo-partners-with-major-it-retailer-in-germany/ http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/urban-readers-prefer-ebooks-rural-readers-prefer-print-new-study-says/ http://www.thepassivevoice.com/12/2012/uk-copyright-reform-affects-fair-use-format-shifting-and-big-data/ http://www.thepassivevoice.com/12/2012/a-devastating-report-for-amazons-kin...