I spent a little time cleaning out my shed today, and have been working in here much of the day, which is conducive to end-of-the-year writing thoughts. Brace yourselves — this one is long.
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Last year was a very weird writing year for me — I barely did any fiction writing at home, even though I got quite a lot done while I was on writing retreats (which I tried to do every month or so, and thank you to all the generous friends who let me stay at their homes for free!).
It was a good year for making progress on book-length projects, but I kind of lost track of the fact that I wasn’t writing anything short — no short stories, no essays.
Which became something of a problem, because no short pieces meant no infusions of cash, which means that my small business ran out of funds before the end of the year, and Kevin and I had to give it some money, in order to keep paying my part-time staff. That was unanticipated, though I should have seen it coming. I’d just somehow lost track of the fact that I wasn’t writing short things.
I’m going to need to prioritize writing things that make immediate money for a bit — short stories, essays, adding more content to my Patreon and directly released on Kindle. We can’t actually afford to keep just giving the writing business money to pay staff; we don’t have *that* much extra. As it is, I think we’re going to have to cut back on staff hours a bit, which I hate to do. Hopefully not for more than a month or so. Must publish more short things!
(Selling hand-sewn items and food treats also does help the budget! But it’s better if I am writing and publishing short pieces more of the time, for my overall career.)
To get myself writing more at home, I think I need to get back in the habit of going out to the shed every morning to write, at least as long as the weather permits. We’re having an astonishingly mild winter so far, and the next few weeks look the same; it’s quite toasty in the shed at the moment, with my candles and my electric space heater and my electric blanket. I’m planning to spend some time tomorrow sealing the windows in the shed, so they hold heat even better when the temperature does drop.
So, I made some mistakes, cash-flow-wise. Still, I don’t want this to be an entirely beating-myself-up-for-not-publishing-enough post. I was working on big book projects, and sometimes those take time to come to fruition.
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Things I accomplished writing-wise this year:
– published and brought out Vegan Serendib (which is part of the reason for the shortfall, as we had to buy a lot of books, which are now sitting in my basement until people buy them, so if you’re looking for a vegan cookbook for yourself or someone you love, it’s definitely not too late to get one, link in comments…) — all of which I could not have done without my team, and I have to do a particular shout-out to Stephanie Bailey, who basically did all of the layout and most of the publishing and distribution work; she is a publishing goddess!
– revised my breast cancer memoir, Tornado, and gave it to the publisher — she has sadly had a recent death in the family, so publication has been delayed a bit, but Tornado and the reissue of Perennial should be happening in early 2023, fingers crossed
– finished revisions to my SF novel, _Liminal Space_, which now needs to be sent off to an agent (and why haven’t I sent it off yet? anxiety, basically. It’s going out this coming week, come hell or high water — I want it out the door before the semester starts, please hold me to that.)
– took three screenwriting classes and drafted three screenplay episodes; I’m not sure if anything will come of those, but I learned a lot, and I’m glad I did them
– started a middle-grade novel, which I’m only a little ways into, but I quite like where it’s going, so we’ll count it anyway
It really was a good writing year, if not exactly a good publishing or money year. I’m not unhappy with my writing of the last twelve months. But a little refocusing will be in order for 2023.
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Things I plan to do in the next few months:
– finish edits on a Wild Cards story and send it to George (cash!)
– issue some of my backlist through Serendib Press as e-books (I have some sexy stories that have only appeared in print in obscure places, so it’ll be fun to get those out in public again)
– send the aforementioned Liminal Space out the door
– keep promoting Vegan Serendib (invite me to do a library talk for you, or a cooking class!)
– put together a little Serendib cocktail ebook, and a tea party ebook; I promised that as part of the Kickstarter, so we need to do those to close out the Kickstarter (before we can run another Kickstarter), and we’ll also make those available for sale generally
– take all the half-written food essays sitting on my desktop and actually finish some of them and send them out — one essay / month is not an unreasonable goal
– finish revising “Thin Air,” then give that whole _Jump Space_ collection to Jed to look at for his editorial comments
– consider sending “Thin Air,” novella to Tor.com (it’s tricky, because they have such a long lead time that if they take it, it’d delay the _Jump Space_ book another year — on the other hand, good venue, infusion of immediate cash)
– keep drafting the middle grade fantasy novel
– figure out how to use Patreon better
– do a better job supervising my staff; I feel like I’m very vague with them a lot of the time — I need to be less frantic and more thoughtful. Some regular in-person time together will likely help; all remote is convenient, but also inefficient in a lot of ways.
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Publishing has become a very uncertain business these days, unfortunately, and I want to be sure I have at least some options for indie publishing whenever big and small press publishing gets erratic. I have lots to learn on the indie front, but luckily, writers are generally very generous with their help and advice.
I’ve been writing and publishing for about 30 years; I’m 51 now, which means I can hopefully write and publish for at least another 30 years. Maybe more!
Lots to learn, lots to write!
Onwards.