Write Faster!

I was very pleased with myself for getting something accomplished yesterday even though it was a choir night. I've been really bad about that lately. But so far this week, I'm on track to have produced words every day. I'm sensing that there might be a struggle today because I'm so sleepy and I finished a big scene yesterday without figuring out what happens next. However, I found myself daydreaming some potential scenes.

Meanwhile, scenes from the Fairy Tale universe are starting to play in my head. I don't know if they'll end up in a book, but the characters are starting to take action, and I know what the main plot for the next book will likely be about. However, if it goes like any of the previous books, when I get about 3/4 of the way through, I'll realize what's really going on behind what I thought was the main plot and I'll have to rewrite the whole thing.

I saw someone talking yesterday about publishing a new book (via independent publishing) every four to seven weeks, and that's blowing my mind. I thought I was a fairly quick writer. If I'm really working at it, I can do a rough draft of a full novel of around 90,000 to 100,000 words in a month, but then I need at least a month for revisions. And then there's at least another week or two of dealing with copyedits and proofing. The only way I could imagine getting a book out even every six weeks is if they were a lot shorter, and there my problem is that my books fit the length of my ideas, so I'd end up having to do a cliffhanger and put out one book as two shorter books. All of this may be why I'm not one of those self-published Amazon millionaires. I admit I don't spend as much time writing as some people, but quality of life has to count for something, and I feel like I've run out of words after a certain amount of time. I'm trying to build up my writing endurance and my time management to produce more and faster, mostly because I have so many ideas that I want to write that I'm afraid I'll never get to.

I'm probably between the two publishing worlds. I write too quickly for traditional publishing, where they only want a book a year, at most. But I'm too slow for independent publishing, where you need a new book every couple of months to gain and keep any momentum. This is why I try to do a little of both. It's also why I'm trying to work on some shorter pieces that could serve as in-between releases to maintain a presence. I'm also considering doing something more serialized -- shorter chunks of a larger story produced more frequently. The industry has changed so much since I got started that there are more ways to do things and there's room to innovate. Really, though, the serial idea isn't so much an innovation as it is a return to the Dickens era. All those doorstopper novels of his were published originally as serials in magazines and newspapers, and those individual installments were later compiled into books. If you were eager to see what happened next, you bought the magazines as they came out, but there was still the option of waiting for the whole book.

But for now, I need to finish the book I'm working on and gear up for a convention in a couple of weeks.