publishing

atthequillsmercy

Giving up: Knowing When To Throw In The Towel

I have finished the rough draft for one anthology entry and I’m 7 written pages into the second. However, I have come to realize there is no way I will get to finish both of them in time to submit. They are both due on the 24th, one is 1,200 words and needs to be 5,000 and the other needs to be 10,000 and I am no where near that.

So, I give up.

I will write both but instead of submitting two crappy manuscripts which will absolutely get rejected, I can focus on the short one, get it all perty like, and finish the other one at my leisure. And who knows? Maybe the stars will align and I will finish both to submission quality. And maybe the unicorns who live in my closet will cry tears of liquid silver and I will sell it to pay off my mortgage. :p

It is a pretty big closet…

This is a hard lesson for me to learn and it’s one I’ve had to learn more than once: You can’t do EVERYTHING, and you don’t HAVE to. Anything I don’t finish by the deadline, I can polish myself and put together as an anthology. Just because I can’t have them all traditionally published doesn’t mean they will languish unread on my flash drive. Some will even be on my site, as well. ^_^

Are you excited? Because I am. Excited and proud at getting so much done, even if it isn’t all on time. 😉

atthequillsmercy

Would you like to take a survey? No, really.

As a self-published author, I like to get in on certain things. A friend/co-worker of mine pointed me to this survey over at Taleist about the state of self-publishing today. I’ve done my part and filled it out (with my quite pathetic sales numbers) and I encourage all my self-pub buddies out there to join in. ^_^

atthequillsmercy

What to do… Goalsetting and money making

Aside for needing to just update more (prepare to hear more complaints about my kid and the general joys of being a working mother who scrapes for time to be creative), I have been thinking about how to make this a bit more lucrative. I have sold a couple more books and more people have been coming to my site, but at the same time I am becoming more aware of how I spend my time.

In order to make "extra" money, I’ve been taking as much overtime at work as I can get. And it doesn’t seem to matter because no matter how much "extra" money I get, I either break even or am slightly less behind than before. My kid is literally BEGGING me for my attention and acting up because I’m not around. I’m always working. I’m working so much that on my days off I am so freaking tired, I can’t play with her.

Though I love my mother to Reece’s Pieces, that was one mistake she made with me. As a single mom, she worked two jobs to make sure I had not only everything I needed but extra: Dance lessons, Saturday enrichment classes, instrument lessons… I was a very busy child. In addition, on her days off she had to take care of the yard and house. We didn’t pay for landscapers; she mowed our HUGE lawn and tended all our bushes herself. And cleaned. Didn’t cook, though. Ma can’t cook for shit. XD All this made it so at the end of the day, she was too tired even for a game of Chinese Checkers.

Since I don’t want to make that mistake, I will be taking less OT in the future. However, there is still a mortgage to be paid and my kid will always be better served if kept warm and fed whether I’m around or not. :p And since both me and the husband work full time, it couldn’t hurt if I explored some other avenues of income. That short story that got rejected? Rather than post it for free, I’ll make it available on Kindle on the cheap. As soon as I figure out how the formatting works. @_@ Everything that’s on my site now for free will remain as such but in the future, my short stories will go up on Kindle with previews on the site. As much as I want to be the cool author chick who gives her awesome stories away for free for all you lovely people to enjoy to your hearts content but, Lenni needs to keep her house. And eat. Food is great! 😀 Oh!! And clothes! Trust me, it’s to everyone’s benefit that I walk around with clothing on. XD

To that end, I’m back to my 5 page a day goal. And my journal doesn’t count. Neither does the blog. Five pages a day of pure creative genius. I’ll get there. 😉