Efficiency!

I got about halfway through the copyedits yesterday, so I should finish today, and then next week I'll do a very thorough proofreading, and then I'll be done with this book, other than work on the cover and cover copy and publicity, and all that.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. Not only did I get all that work done, but I also baked cookies, did my bookkeeping from the trip (so I won't be desperately searching for receipts next April when I'm doing my taxes), took care of a couple of things from the to-do list I came up with following the conference, and got everything else on the day's to-do list done. Plus, I made my bed, washed dishes and otherwise cleaned up from the baking, and went to ballet class.

And no, the Internet wasn't down. I think it was the cool weather, which always gives me more energy.

Since I'm so close to finishing this book, I'm starting to dive into the research phase of my next project. I'm not yet saying anything about what it is because I want to get far enough into it to know if it's going to be viable. It's still just a vague idea at this point. I know the kind of story I think it might be and the subject matter I think it will deal with. I went to the library today and checked out just about everything they had on the topic, so this weekend I'll start filling my brain with all that info and see what comes out.

I'm on track today to being as productive as I was yesterday, as today I've already gone to the library, unpacked from my trip, made the bed, and taken the trash out, and it's not even noon. This bodes well.

A lot of the sessions I attended last weekend involved promotion and publicity. I'm not sure I gained that much new information, but I did start thinking about things in a different way. I may start doing something different with my web site and blog, for one thing. I'm probably going to ditch Live Journal when my latest membership runs out. I may or may not keep posting at Blogger. When I first started blogging, that was the big place, and there were a lot of communities. I figured that participating in communities would be a good way for people to discover my journal and then discover me. I think I'm now at the point where anyone reading my blog is doing so because they know who I am, or else they're driven by social media posts. And if they're driven by social media posts, I want them to come to my web site rather than to some third-party blogging site. My current site setup doesn't allow a blog to be incorporated, so I may do something different there, and I may even hire someone to do the work so I don't have to fiddle with the technical stuff. I talked to someone who does this stuff for authors, and he can do something where he sets up the structure and framework and the author can fill in the content and update it without needing to go through the webmaster.

There was also a lot of talk about podcasting, social media, and even serial fiction. I have an idea I think might work well as a serial because it's inspired by Dickens, and that's the way he published. It might be a way to build an audience and interest. That's something I'll have to discuss with my agent, and after I get a couple more books done.