A Writing Machine

I’ve been MIA for a while, once again. This time, I went on my honeymoon, which was amazing. It was nearly a month long and an absolutely fantastic time. We went to the British Isles. And bonus points for you, if you know the difference between that and Great Britain and the U.K. To make it easy, we went to all of those places, as well as Ireland. That’s what the British Isles are. Here’s a link, if you’re lost.

And since I’ve been back, I’ve been writing. Not on this blog, obviously. And I probably won’t be doing that all that frequently for a while.

When I got back, of course I had some serious jet lag, so I’ve tried to hang on to that for as long as possible. I was wide awake at 4am on the first day. It was noon in England. So I got up and started writing. Now, I’m getting up sometime between 5am and 7am every day and writing. I’m trying to shoot for 5, but some days, I just stay up too late. It makes it hard to keep that schedule. But I’ve been mostly good. 9am used to be early for me. Now, 8am is late.

I’ve been writing a lot. I’m nearly done with my novel. I’ve felt like I’ve been nearly done for a while, but things keep cropping up, issues that aren’t working out, logically or otherwise, new story elements appear and I have to tame them and make them play nice with the rest of the story. But right now, I feel like I really can finally see that road to the end.

It’s been amazing. I write for three or four hours for myself every morning. Then I switch gears and write and edit for other people, for money. And do my other two jobs that also make money. I’m getting a lot done. I’m not goofing off so much. And if and when I start making money from my own writing, I will have much more time for blogging. If I didn’t have to work three other jobs, I’d be blogging all the time. You’d get sick of me.

I’m not doing Twitter at all right now. I used to fool myself into thinking I was being productive by being on Twitter. All the while, my book was not getting finished.

I do enjoy writing the blog, but, given my current schedule, I find it to be a distraction from my actual work. And I’ve been learning that, statistically, blogging doesn’t help fiction writers anywhere near as much as nonfiction writers. I listen to a great podcast called The Creative Penn, which is author Joanna Penn talking and interviewing others about the indie publishing world. It’s the self-publishing world, but she calls it “indie” and that makes perfect sense to me. Self-publishers can be vanity publishers filling the world with unprofessional junk. Indie publishers care about their books and treat them like a smart, small business. They are much more like indie musicians or filmmakers. I highly recommend the podcast for anyone looking at self- or traditional publishing. She shares so much good information.

Joanna, and often her guests, doesn’t see blogging as a necessary thing for fiction, especially if you have nothing to promote. I was trying to promote my book that doesn’t exist yet. I thought I’d stir up some buzz over it. But the fact is, no one cares about an unpublished book from an author they’ve never heard of. Once it’s out, I do plan to come back to the blog and offer cool extras for people who want them, character stories and artwork, things like that. For now, I might stop by to say hi now and again, maybe give an update, but I am going to focus on what matters, the book itself.

And I’ll peek at your blogs when I can. I really enjoy reading the stories and rants, the inspirations and backyard creations. But this boy’s got to focus.

And I know I owe someone a post about a unicorn. I will get to that!

Oh, and I have a children’s book in the works too, if I hadn’t mentioned that. Once the illustrations are done that should be going to print. It might even be out before my novel. We’ll see how it all shakes down. I’ll be saying hi again then for sure.

And I welcome comments on this, as always. Do you agree or disagree about fiction writers blogging? Do you think someone can promote a non-existent book? Any other takes on this that maybe I’m missing? I’d love to hear.

In the meantime, I will be digging in, a writing machine, bent on unmitigated creation.