The Encounter (Book 4 of Escape from the Abyss)
I’m still up by almost 3,000 words. After the weekend, I had a good lead but got dragged down the last three days. I’m also trying to get Facebook Ads going. That’s a tedious task in itself. Fortunately, it only takes a small amount of my time a couple of times a week. So it doesn’t cut into my writing time. The biggest lesson I learned about Facebook Ads is not to touch them. The algorithms have to learn who is more likely to click through and that takes at least 3 days to a week. The only reason I switched to Facebook Ads from Amazon Ads is that the Amazon Ads don’t seem to do anything anymore. They used to drive traffic to my books, but I can’t seem to tweak anything to get traffic going. Facebook Ads, on the other hand, will spend my daily budget, good results or not. So that has its own hazards and I took a course that shows how to set up dynamic creative Ads. That made a huge difference. Gotta get the Ads to go to the right person. If you’re one of those readers who clicked through one of the Facebook Ads and purchased a book or two, I hope you enjoy the story(s). I appreciate you taking a chance on a newish author.
As you can see by the little book progress meter on the right side, I’m over 50% now. It’s all downhill from here. Or, so I tell myself. The last half of a book seems to be more difficult than the first half. Probably because it’s easy to get off to a running start when starting with a clean sheet. Then things start to get twisted and I have to reference back to make sure I keep everything consistent. Fortunately, I write almost every day (I’ve only skipped a day or two per month on average), so productivity is high. I can crank out a 100k book in a couple of months without too much trouble. But this is not about speed, it’s about the number of hours I can dedicate because I can put down 1,000 words in an hour without breaking a sweat. All I have to do is get down into character and “live” the scene. My visual interpretation of the scene comes out of my fingers automatically.
I’m also spending time reading books from advanced authors. These are books that I study and learn from. To top it off, I’ve taken several courses from Dean Westly Smith. He’s got some great stuff on depth, advanced depth, advanced character development, character voice, and so on. Some of these courses I’ve taken as classic courses and others I’ve taken the 9-week online workshops. The workshops include assignments that Dean looks at and comments on. The classic courses are previous workshops that don’t have any interaction. I’ve also run through his lectures a second and third time, just to make sure I have the material nailed down. Writing is an endless process, just like programming. You never stop learning.
The Traveler Series
As I mentioned several times, I still have book 2 of the Traveler series on my radar. Book 1 (Desperate Action) came out really well as you can tell by the 3.7 star rating. I have a story worked out for book 2 and ideas for follow-on books. I also know how the series will end (with a bang, of course), but that will remain a highly guarded secret. I am still uncertain about the number of books that will be in that series. No more than 10, but I’m leaning toward 5 or 7. In the future, I’m not going to start two series at the same time, unless I do chronicles. That way I could drop a book every now and then and nobody would be hanging on a cliff-hanger biting their nails.
Miscellaneous
If you go to my Amazon author page, you can expand the list of books that I have on their site. There is a book titled “Lost” by Jessie Simpson at the bottom. I got nothin’. Amazon has a bug in their system. They probably added it to my list by mistake. Maybe they think it’s the hardcover version of my MacKenzie Steel short story called “Lost.” The book is 106 pages for the low, low price of 42 bucks. Nice. Maybe it’s one of those AI-written novels? It doesn’t have a preview. Amazon must think I have a pen name of Jessie Simpson. I think I’ll send them an email and mention their mistake before they attribute any issues with that book to me.
There’s also another book. No image and Unknown Binding. It’s currently unavailable. The only thing known is the title “The King.” That’s just fabulous.
Long Term Plans
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this on my blog before, but I plan to turn this business into my retirement. Writing software is something that I could do until I’m 100 years old, but it can be stressful and I’m limited in income from my employer. Writing books, on the other hand, gives me full freedom to set my schedule, and work as many hours as I’d like (and get paid for them). It’s also a bit more creative than programming. Oh, programming is an art form. After doing it for almost 30 years professionally (since 1994), I’m always amazed at how creative programmers have to get to make stuff work. Writing a book has even more freedom because I’m making up stories (of which, I have about a million more in my head) and just making sure the words on the page translate into what I see and feel in my head. Learning the craft is a challenge and I’m already committed, so there’s no quitting. I’m currently working a full-time software gig and doing the writing at night for two hours on weekdays and an unknown number of hours on weekends. I also get bank holidays that I use as a full writing day. I’ve managed to put enough hours in on those days to write 14,000 words. If I ever make enough to turn the writing into a full-time gig, the sky is the limit. I will probably adjust my schedule around so Monday through Friday are big writing days and the weekends I take off. If I write for 8 hours a day (easy to do), then that translates into 8,000 words per day. Or about a novel every month (15 days x 8,000 = 120,000 words, plus editing).
Right now my schedule is set as 2,000 words on weekdays and 3,000 words on each Saturday and Sunday. That makes 16,000 words a week. On my spreadsheet, it looks like this:
Today is the 12th, so I should be at 62,000 words. I’m currently at 64,627 which makes me ahead by 2,627 words. Of course, this is not an exact science because I don’t cut off my writing day on an exact word count. What I usually do is attempt to beat the words that I should be at for that day. I also try to stack extra words on the weekend and sometimes I get a really good writing day. Like last Monday, which was a bank holiday (I work for a credit union). I managed to put down 6,873 words in one day. I also did 6,454 words on Sunday, but only 494 words on Saturday. By watching my goal, I can determine if I’m ahead or behind.
I used to just set a daily goal. Like 2k words per day. But then, I wasn’t really tracking where I was (ahead or behind) so the book schedule wasn’t predictable. When I start a new book, I copy and paste that list of days and how many words I expect at the end. Then I have a good idea of when the rough draft will be finished. I can take two weeks to the end of that to get an idea of when the book will be published. In this case, I’m planning December (the holidays are gonna kill me this round).
Now you know my secret scheduling technique.