![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Update: 20th January 2014
Jan. 20th, 2014 10:50 amI have a list beside me of all the work I need to get done by the end of the month and for the first time in a long time I’m actually not that worried about it. Even though we’re still not in as good a position as I’d like to be (James is still in pretty much continuous discomfort and, unsurprisingly, it’s still making him depressed) I’m writing more than I was before the new year and I’m enjoying the stories that I’m working on, which makes things easier. Most of the time I’m writing between 1,500 and 2,000 words an hour, depending on the story, so when James goes to his nan’s to work on the car at the end of the week – we have the MOT coming up the middle of February and there are some things James thinks it will fail on – I’m going to be seeing how much I can write in a day if there aren’t any distractions. At the moment I’m writing between 4,000 and 6,000 words a day, 5 days a week, depending on exactly what I’m doing. I should be able to write about 9,000 comfortably, as long as I’m working on something I enjoy, and that is my aim.
The more I write the more I realise how much I like writing. I’m not going to say there aren’t days when it’s hard, because there are, and on those days being able to get the stories I have in my head onto paper are impossible, but fortunately I have enough stories that I can bounce from one collection to another to find something I can write. Occasionally that doesn’t work, so those are the days when I should be doing admin work or something else useful, yet I often find them to be just generally unproductive low spoon days when I get very little done at all – sometimes I even struggle with dinner. Before James got ill he used to help me on those days, although they were rarer then, but now my only choice is to keep going, because he needs me (even though he says he doesn’t when he’s in his worst moods).
Having a list helps to remind me what I should be doing, what stories I should be working on and what posts I want to be writing, otherwise I have a tendency now to forget. There is so much to be done and sometimes it feels like I’m never going to have enough time to do it all. I know that I do. I have more than enough time – the one thing I’ve learnt is that five minutes is actually plenty of time to do something in and that is what I’m trying to get James to understand. He often looks at the clock and tells me that he can’t get anything done in two hours, but then we do work very differently. I am an insomnia and he’s a hypersomniac. Both are hard to deal with – his can be impossible on days when he ends up sleeping for twelve hours because his body just doesn’t want to work. Nothing I can do helps then, sadly, but we keep trying to find something that might get him up. His brain takes a while to wake up, while I can easily start writing within about fifteen minutes, even though I might well be shattered. Right now I have dry eye from not sleeping very well last night and being up at stupid o’clock to make James’ coffee.
So, the reason I started this post was to get some input and let you know some of my plans for the rest of the year.
The raffles will be happening, but they’ll be bimonthly. Each one will run for two weeks, at different times of the month to see what works best, and they’ll be pretty much the same as they were last year. 2014′s first raffle will be next month and I’ll be posting them on the schedule as soon as I have them all planned out. I will also be posting a complete list of all the winners from last year, including the unannounced November winners, in the next couple of days.
When I get a chance I’m going to go through Case and note down all of the other Webs that have been mentioned, as I think they’re going to be interesting to explore, and if you already have any stories you would like to see then let me know. It’s good to have a list of options to explore when I’m having a day when I feel like writing something new and interesting, although I do have some new stories to get started and some prompts still to work on. For those who’re interested they’re in my working on folder and I go back to them every so often, because I am going to write a story to every prompt I get, eventually. They just sometimes take more time if I can’t find the right story.
I’m also going to be working on other maps for the Web, to show some of the natural doors and where they lead to, as well as maps for each of the worlds. Even though I have ideas for most of them when I haven’t got round to working on them yet and that is something I really do want to get done, especially as they’ll be really useful when I’m working on the Introductory ebooks, which are something I’ve been thinking about recently, because I’m wondering what would be best for the collections that are set on more than one world. Should I do an ebook for each of them and then gather them together in an omnibus later on? It might work better that way, for people who are interested more in different worlds, and it would mean that I could work on each world separately, which might be easier. The collections I’m thinking of are the Fae World and World Walkers’ collections. As each of the worlds is very different I’m certain there are going to be people who read one but not another and they probably have no interest in learning about certain worlds. Input would be gratefully received.
Another thing I want to get sorted is a trades page. I know there are people who would help me financially if they could and would rather like to purchase more words from me without collecting credits, so I’m planning on making it obvious that I am also open to trades – words in return for something I need or want. This will include things like plotting stories for me as well as books and other items. So if you’re interested in this let me know, even before I’ve finished the page, because it would be good to have some idea of whether this will work in advance.
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.