Writing In 2012: Writing Challenges

One of the best ways I can sum up the last few months of 2011 is in the word inspiration. In learning about the new world of publishing through the mentor roles of authors like Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Michael Stackpole, and others, a whole new phase of my writing career began. It's been a slow start but one that is still ongoing. I plan on entering the new year with a series of challenges that are also writing goals.

50 STORIES

That's right, I plan to write fifty new short stories in 2012. My goal is to complete all fifty by the end of the year. If I  exceed the number, then all the better. Still, I have a definite number of stories that I can aim for and succeed in finishing. It's a realistic goal meaning it is dependent on me and within my control for the most part. 

Each story that is finished will either be indie published or sent to a market. I hope to do a little bit of both just to see if I can sell any of the stories to magazines. The bottom line for me is to complete at least those fifty short stories and have fun doing it. Additionally, I will discuss each one when it's finished and post it for free on my site for a week. I will tell you a little bit about the process of writing it, how long it took to write, and other points if they come up. 

2012 LONG FICTION

Besides the short story challenge I've described here, I plan to write several pieces of long fiction. By long fiction, I mean novels and novellas, for the most part. At this point, I have five projects that will be spilling over from this year into the next. Three nonfiction books and two novels will all be published in the first half of 2012. When I considered what I wanted to accomplish for the year, I looked for a number to shoot for. 

As far as totals are concerned, I have ten books in mind. I want to publish a total of ten books. That leaves five books unaccounted for or not conceived yet. It may be a mix of fiction and nonfiction, depending on what clients come my way. I will be adding more details to this challenge as I nail them down.

Novellas, shorter by design, are harder to fit in to the picture, but I am thinking about writing five of those as well. 

STAY TUNED...

If you're following along, you'll have to wait for some upcoming posts to get more information. I am ready to hit 2012 hard and fast and have a lot of fun writing. If you're a writer, I hope you are setting some goals too in the coming year. Get busy writing...or find something else to do with your time.

Word Counts and The Speed of Writing

"Hey man, I heard you're writing a book."

"Oh yeah, I'm thinking it'll be close to 80,000 words."

"Really, uh...well..how many pages is that?"

I'm sure some of you have had a conversation like that with people who don't make their living thinking in terms of word counts. I know I've had the conversation more times than I can count--the last one being only a couple of  days ago. More than likely you do the quick mental math to give your "non-writer' friend or family member a clue to what the heck you're talking about. 

"Oh, right, that would make it a 320-page book. Now remember that's double-spaced pages."

"Wow, that's impressive."

It seems strange doesn't it? After all, who thinks about the words before they think about the number of pages? Um, writers do, silly. Sometimes it seems like our whole world revolves around word counts. We've spent a lot of time thinking about the various articles, stories, and books we've written in terms of their word counts. Maybe it was because we were required to at first. We had an assignment from an editor who needed a 3,000 word article, or we took a web content gig that required us to write ten 500-word articles for a website.

Somewhere along the way, the word count became the common terminology we used when talking about what we do. It makes sense doesn't it? Words are our tools, they are the building blocks of our craft. The word count is also the way we gauge our progress. Most writers have a certain number of words they can produce during a given time period. For me, that number is 1,000 to 1,200 words an hour in most cases. (This is between 4 and 5 pages an hour if based on a standard, double-spaced manuscript page, which is 250 words.) That last statement is worth expanding on when discussing the idea of the speed of writing.

Speed

In the previous post I mentioned bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith. I first gained the insights and information about the speed of writing through reading a few posts he wrote in which he talked about speed as one of the myths of publishing as well as a factor of some significance in the emerging new world of publishing.

Consider a single manuscript page: It's 250 words. How long does it take you to write those 250 words? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Really, if like me, you can write about 1,000 words in an hours time, then consider the total word count of an average-sized book. Let's say 80,000 words, for this instances. What if you only wrote 1,000 words a day? That's just an hour of writing. You could have that book done in eighty days. Just under three months. You could conceivably do that two or three times during a year's time.

From a writer's perspective, at least one who understands their own writing speed and is willing to trust their voice, this is very doable. Those outside the profession would be astonished if you said you had written three books in a year. They would you say you must be a very fast writer. They'd call you prolific. (Unfortunately, some would call you hack; how dare you write three books in just a year!) Why? Well there are some more myths involved there and if you want to know more then you need to head over to Dean Wesley Smith's website and read his blog series--both the Sacred Cows and the New World of Publishing while you're at it.

For me, Dean's willingness to break things down to the word counts and combine them with an evaluation of one's own writing speed (i.e. the amount of words that can be produced in an hour) really revitalized my thinking as a writer and my aspirations as an indie publisher too.

With my schedule as a writer, I can do a lot of writing if I set my mind to it. There are so many opportunities to tell all sorts of stories and then publish them myself. 

A Writer's Path: Indie Publishing In 2012

There are only a few weeks left before the end of the year and there have been many changes happening in the publishing world during 2011. For me, a freelance writer who has been doing his own indie publishing lately there are some great reasons to be excited about the prospects in the realm throughout the coming year.

Publishing In A Brand New Way

It is a new world of publishing according to bestselling authors Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Of course, these long-term pro writers aren't alone in heralding the rise of a new era where many writers now have a range of options that wasn't available to them just a few years ago. However, they are among its strongest voices in this author's opinion. On a personal level, they were the catalysts for my own forays into the electronic publishing in a way I hadn't though of doing just a year ago.

For those of you who have followed my blog at all, you might know that I established Founders House Publishing with my wife Amanda back in 2009. At the time, I didn't really think much about pursuing eBooks that much. The Kindle, Smashwords, the Nook, and other eReaders/platforms were out there slowly, inexorably seizing greater shares of the book buying market, in many cases wresting it from paperback and hardbacks. My wife and I were slowly building our list. First, we had open submissions and looked for other authors. Our first book, Echoes From The Past: A Memoir Family Heritage, gave us some local exposure that led to the subsequent books.

In most of these cases, people have come to me asking me to help them write their stories. It was a great thing for me because I had been wanting to transition to book writing for a while. Then I could help people get their books in print. Every book I've been writing has helped me become a better writer. Then about six months ago, I discovered Dean and Kris via Kevin J. Anderson's blog. I read what they had to say about the "new world of publishing" a concept that resonated so deeply with my desire to go back to fiction, that only a couple of months later, I had short stories published at Smashwords, as well as for the Kindle and on  PubIt for the Nook.

New Publishing For A New Year

Dean and Kris have insights that come with more than thirty years of experience in publishing. I've implemented their strategies and this has revolutionized what I'm doing. I have changed the focus of my publishing company to use it as an indie pubbing vehicle for my work. I still have contracts that will be a part of my focus, but the majority of the writing I will be doing this coming year will be my own work. I'm really excited about that.

It's a great time to be a writer. I can set my own course without any thought for the current interests of the traditional/legacy publishers in New York. I can choose to work New York under stronger terms--provided I take charge of my own writing career (Thanks for that Dean and Kris!). I can now distribute in most of the places that bigger publishers can go. Founders House Publishing can do both eBooks and print on demand paper books. I have options. All writers have options they didn't have until recently.

I look forward to 2012. I'm ready to write some great stories so I can share them with readers. That's what it is all about; it's the bottom line. Stay tuned dear readers.