Another Million and General Thoughts

If you haven't been following my blog or Twitter and just got here: shame on you. I'm kidding of course: WELCOME to the insanity that is, well, me. If you have been following my blog and Twitter then you know I've completed MilWordy number 2 and can skip the next paragraph if you want.

MilWordy is a challenge to write one million words in one year (12 months). It runs side-by-side with WriYe which is to just write every day out of the year. Milwordy doesn't have an official website but WriYe does.

Anyway, MilWordy No. 2 is done for me at 1.3 million words as of Nov 29th. I'm planning to do a third MilWordy in 2014 or 14 COMPLETE novels in 2014. Yes I know I'm crazy but I'm pretty sure if you've been following me for any length of time you'll have figured that out. I'm also fairly certain my limit is going to be 14 novels in a year just because of you know, life.

As this is the end of the year and the end of NaNo I figured I should say a few things.

I notice that around this time of the year a lot of talk starts up about self-publishing. As someone who has been self-published for four years in March (omfg, right?) I know a fair amount. I know what works and what doesn't but I can say with confidence that if you have the DETERMINATION, TIME, and CASHFLOW YOU CAN SUCCEED.

Yes, you will need some start up fees. Editing ain't cheap (I did that deliberately), neither are cover-designs and no matter what you should NEVER skimp on those. Also: you're a writer. What's the thing you do best beside write? No, no, not watching YouTube videos about cats because of procrastination. No, no, not reading though reading is important. RESEARCH. Yes. Research: your editor, your cover designer, HOW TO market and promote, and self-publishing in itself.

It may look intimidating at first (and it kind of is) but don't worry. If you do it right then you can succeed. I normally don't name drop without reason but go check out Russell Blake if you think I'm lying. Also, check out his self-publishing advice by clicking on these words. He's sold about 200,000 e-books this year at about $5 a piece. You do the math my friend, then come back and tell me the industry is dead as some other self-publishing authors say.

Being self-published isn't about writing. I know, right? It's about being able to MARKET and PROMOTE. If you can't do those two things then it doesn't matter how AWESOME your novel is: you're going to fail. There are authors out there who have written absolute CRAP and are still making money. Heck, there's published (as in with a publishing company) authors who have written absolute crap and through clever marketing are making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Anyway, enough rambling about that. I wrote a million words this year or 13 novels and a bunch of short stories. The final, er, four novels, will be posted here every Friday if you'd like to learn more. I'll also be attempting to post things every Monday (or mid-week) for writing advice and tips. Both have their own sections so look up. Not at the ceiling silly, look at the top of this page for links.

Now, because I'm doing MilWordy, I made a thread about it over in the NaNo Forums that I hope to be checking every week (at the least) so if you're doing some kind of "write all year challenge" that can be the place to hang out.

Of course it wouldn't be MilWordy if I didn't have a plan so here's my plan (taken from another thread in the NaNo Forums, ha):

December: Read Face Snatcher and Hangings to get back into the series and make sure everything's consistent. I'm pretty sure it is as writing at the break-neck speeds tends to help me remember where I am/what I'm doing and keeps everything good. But yeah, I need to read through those to so I can be back in the grove.
January: MilWordy begins. This will be dedicated to writing Dryer and Witches.
February: Car Jacking and Hunter
March: Disease and Control
April: Wedding and Bloody X Mas
May: Pieces and Senses
June: The Tattooed Man which will finish the 13 novel crime fiction series. This would bring me to 11 novels in the year and 825,000 for MilWordy. I likely won't get two per month but, hey, I can dream. I am aiming to be done the series by the end of summer (August) at the very least.
July: Editing the above 11, or finishing them off.
August: Editing the above 11, or finishing them off.
September: Another novel. Not sure which one yet, hopefully the re-write of Tale of the Twins.
October: Another novel. Again, hopefully the re-write of book 2 of Tale of the Twins.
November: NANO! I'm going to go for 250K again. Maybe. At least 225K. So that's three novels, or one and a bunch of short stories. If I went the three novels route that would bring me to 16 novels in the year. I have a weird thing for numbers so I'd like to keep it at 14 rather than 16.
December 2014: Editing/re-reading/chilling till Jan 2015.

Until next time: Comments, questions, rants, rage and everything in between can be directed to the comments.