November was a kind of tipping point for me, although what it is exactly that I tipped between, I’m not sure. It feels like I tipped between “not confident” and “confident” on a personal level, as in, “She is a confident person.” But where that came from or what it means, I don’t know. It’s probably a bunch of little things getting resolved or addressed over time. I had to say “no” to several people on a personal level; I brooded on the matter for some time, but eventually came to the conclusion in various cases that I didn’t have time for drama, but I did have time to shop for clothes. Plus I took a personality quiz that said I was confident now, and you know how those are always accurate.
I’m looking ahead to next year already (as you do), and I’ve decided that I need to spend more time working on my own writing, and less time getting my own writing out–that is, I need to get my writing out, but I need to be more efficient about it.
Methods I’m currently testing out:
- Write 3K a day of my own stuff, first thing in the morning. Results so far: GREAT. This has been taking me 70-80 minutes in 10-minute bursts. The fingers are FLYING. A drawback is going, “Uh…you finished this story with 600 words to spare. Now what?” Answer: Flash fiction.
- Start stripping down existing processes to a simpler routine/template in order to save time. Results so far: I’m dropping Smashwords and Kobo in my direct uploads process. I’m still uploading to Amazon and Draft2Digital. The Kobo promo pages haven’t been doing much for me, so I feel that I can move Kobo direct sales over to D2D without much of a loss. Smashwords has never done me a whole lot, and I’m finally just saying, “That’s another 10 minutes every time I have a book to upload that I don’t want to deal with.” I’d already ditched Smashwords .doc files and was using .epubs only. Still in testing: should I switch over to InDesignCC or stick with my outdated CS2 version? How much time can I save? Can I convert straight to HTML or epub? If so, how clean is that code?
- Start shifting more work from my desk to a virtual assistant/contractors. Not started yet. I feel that I need to get the routine solid and efficient before I start asking other people to feel my pain.
I feel overwhelmed right now, because only one minimal efficiency has occurred at this point, and I have to spend extra time trying to work all this stuff out. BAH. But at least I’m writing waaaay more of my own stuff. Something that occurs to me is that I’ll probably stop putting out short stories by themselves as separate ebooks, and concentrate more on story collections. If I keep writing at this speed, it won’t take much longer to get them done and out.