The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

One of the most important things to me is that I start to earn something from my original fiction. This is something I've talked about before. It's something I'm going to talk about again. For now I'm going to ask anyone who's read something and mine that they've liked for a favour. Can you share a link to any story you've really liked, for whatever reason. That can be a link to the community, if you can find it there, or the website. I'd really like to get some more regular readers, or commenters, so any help is truly appreciated.

The website has had an update. I still have a couple of things I want to do, but that's something I'm planning on doing at a later date. For now I'm trying to work out what I want to be doing with the stories themselves. ( Read more... )

In the same way I've changed how I look at the way I write I'm going to change the way I look at my income from the website. For the next six months, while I'm focusing on getting stories I've started finished, my financial goal is to earn £20 (approx $30) a month from 5 of my collections. Both the Fae World and the World Walkers have been split into worlds, to make it easier to read the stories which also means it's easy to buy a story for a favourite world.

£20 a month is two new stories, for your favourite collection. You can pick a favourite setting (eg. the Fae School, or the Thieves' Hideout), a favourite race (eg. the Nox Gadael, or the Carne), or a favourite character (eg. Alice from the Donor House, or Kestrel from Heliopath's World).

That's been resonating with me a lot recently. As a writer I compare myself to others, and, because of who I am, I find myself lacking in multiple ways. Of course it doesn't matter that people hire me as their ghostwriter for a reason - they like how I write. Honestly, for me, I think the main issue in the original fiction... even though I know logically that not being on Amazon, Smashwords, and the other big sellers is going to have an effect on how many people I can reach. My website is a tiny little place in the infinite world wide web, and it's going to take time to gain a readership. I just have to be patient. I just have to believe in my ability to write. Sadly, it's not that simple, which is one of the big reasons I thrive on feedback. Feedback, enjoyment of what I write, is what keeps me going, and is one of the big reasons I have a website. I want people to be able to comment on what they've read. I want to know what you like, what you don't like, if you want more of a particular character, setting, or world, and without that feedback I wither. Writing becomes one of the hardest things in the world.

I find joy in writing, but, and this is the big thing, I find the most joy in sharing what I write. That's never going to change. I first realised this when I was at school. That was where I started writing my first 'serial'. I'd write new parts of the story each night for those who wanted to read it, and it was the best fun. I want to be able to do that again. It's definitely possible. Other people have done it, so there's no reason for me to think I can't, but, like I said before, I have to be patient. I have to take the time to build up the number of stories I have at the website. I have to accept that I can't do everything. Even though I want to be posting every day it's just not going to be possible, because I have so much else in my life. I only have so much energy and I have to accept that, as hard as it is. Unfortunately I'm just one of those people who wants to be able to do everything right now. I want to have all the stories in my mind written. There's so many of them in my mind and that's why there were so many beginnings. Giving myself the freedom to be more episodic in my writing, because that makes sense to me, has given me a lot of freedom. It's also made things harder, in a way, as I want to be writing even more than I was before.

The most important thing for this year, my main goal, is to get back into the habit of regular postings, in order to make it simpler to build up a readership. I will be posting complete stories, but, due to the episodic nature of what I do, those stories will always have something that comes next. I always have a reason for ending things when I do. Most of the time it's because I want to switch to another character and it makes sense to have their part come next. Of course that doesn't mean that things aren't happening at the same time, because they are, so there is likely to also be a part from the same character following that. Even now there are examples of that posted at the website. It's just the way I write and I don't mind that. I am who I am. That's not going to change. At the same time that's part of the reason I am always comparing myself - I don't write like other people. I'm never going to be following the self-publishing path that other people have. I am a crowdfunder at heart, I think, because that's what makes the most sense to me. That doesn't stop me from comparing myself to people who are doing the same sort of thing I am. I still find myself lacking. Maybe that will never change.

What I am going to do is keep reminding myself 'comparison is the thief of joy'. To be truly happy the best thing I can do is be who I am, and try not to see myself as never being good enough. Being me is good enough.

Donor House: Blake: The Auction - repost, next part a work in progress.

The Fae World: Benira and Lorasia: Lena: Saving Jake - repost, split into smaller parts, next part a work in progress.

Aurora's World: Ialaera: Itsuki: Becoming Human - repost, story finished, next part a work in progress.

The World Walkers: Kniroch/Aerith: Guinevere: Walking Into A Trap - repost, story finished next part a work in progress.

Kim's Earth: Kim: Responsibilities - repost, story split into smaller parts, next part to be posted next week.

Heliopath's World: Kestrel: The Reaction Phase - repost, story split into smaller parts, next part to be posted next week.

The Fae World: Creoth: Cassandra: Returning - new story, next part a work in progress.

To make myself feel slightly less stressed about everything I'm offering to double the first month if anyone subscribes before the end of October.

If I get three subscribers, at any price, I'll post 1000 words of continuation for three stories currently posted at the website. If I get six I'll double the number of stories, and it will go up in three until I reach 30 subscribers.

If I'm earning £30 a month from the subscribers I'll post 3000 words for one of my newer worlds, and for every £30 I'm earning after that I'll post another 3000 words, either for that story or for another.

Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time.

Please signal boost. Every little really does help.

While I am still going to be crossposting adding my newly created Dreamwidth feed might be a little easier. I also have feeds for all of the collections, so feel free to add them if you want. They can be found here.

...are now sorted. It's possible to go from the first posted story to the last posted story in timeline order (mostly - there are still some I'm thinking about moving around, but that's a job for another day). Getting it done took all afternoon and I found I haven't actually posted a lot of stories that should be there, which means I'm going to get that sorted. Several stories are marked as incomplete purely because I have had time to check whether or not they are incomplete. Reading my own work is a time drain when I get started, so I leave that for days when I can spend hours reading them. Letting me know if any tags are missing would be very helpful, as again that means reading the stories, but the moment I start I know exactly what's going to happen - so it seems sensible to not let myself start.

If you like anything that's unfinished let me know, or toss something into the tip jar and say you want me to write the next part now. As I'm definitely going to be focused almost entirely on day care next week every little helps to keep my head above water.

I've changed the theme I'm using at the website. I think it's much cleaner, so I'm very happy with it. Opinions are always welcome, however, so let me know what you think.

As well as that I've taken some advice from the wonderful moonvoice and I'm updating my categories in order to show the word count for each of the posts. That's working alongside an status category, to show whether or not the stories I'm complete, and these categories are shown next to the stories on the archive pages for each of the collections. The tags also show, so you can see who's in each of the stories as well.

One slight issue I am having in the crossposter I used, which may mean I have to stop posting my fiction at Dreamwidth. For those of you who might want to read me here, or at LiveJournal, I do have RSS feeds. These can be for all the posts or for specific collections. I have the whole list on the RSS feed page.

For some reason I have absolutely no concentration span whatsoever. It's annoying. I'm flitting between working and not doing anything useful, so I thought my uselessness could become a blog post, especially as I've been working things out in my head I probably should write down somewhere.

There is a chance I might be renting a desk/office. At the Bognor Campus of Chi Uni they have a system set up for that, so I'm going to be having a lot on the 4th of June, because working from home is not working as well as I need it to. James, and the dogs, and everything, are incredibly distracting, so being able to go somewhere a couple of days a week would be very helpful. Plus, if I'm out on days when James is day sleeping, there is less of this expectation I'm going to be here when he wants to be getting up, which means he's going to have to sort himself out. Of course this is going to lead to whining and complaints for a while, but being the main earner means I need to be able to focus on what I'm working on and that means he can lump it. As much as I love him I need to think of myself sometimes. I'm not very good at it, but this is a step in the right direction. Having a place purely for work is going to change things for me.

I'm still waiting on Patreon to get back to me. This is irritating, but not a surprise. I want to know what the problem is and if they can fix if. If they can't I need to be thinking about what else I can do to crowdfund. (Once again I'm damning the people who came with EU VAT - mostly because they thought a law created in 2008 or whenever it was would work in 2015. Head, meet desk.) However this does mean I have been thinking of ideas for the Monthly Membership. For the collections that have the most characters/worlds/stories I'm going to be splitting them up. So, for example, I'm going to be splitting the Donor House into characters. This will be in timeline order, so I'll have all the stories from Alice's POV, and Nick, and Lewis, and whoever else I've written more than one story for. For Aurora's World I think it's going to be by kingdom, at least to begin with, and then I'll go from there. For the Brotherhood it will be by House. By doing this I can see what I have and what I don't have, which is important.

Then I need to make a decision about the novellas. Do I put them separate to the Monthly Membership and a part of it as well? I think I will. Separating them means buyers can purchase something as a one off and then make a decision as to whether they want to be a part of the Monthly Membership. It's not much more work, either. Putting them up as two things is relatively simple on Gumroad, which is why the Collection Ebooks are up separately.

Now that I've mentioned the Collection Ebooks I need to go into more detail about what I'm doing about them. They have been changed from the Collection One Ebooks to the Collection Ebooks for a reason. Instead of creating something new every time I update the ebooks I'm just going to update them there. This means you won't be buying the same stories more than once. You'll simply be able to download the new version and see what I've updated. I might have a page at the front talking about what I've done, to make it easier for readers. Obviously I will always have the tipjars up at the website, so if you do want to toss some pennies in after you've downloaded the new versions I won't complain, but I also don't mind at all if you don't. Doing this is all about making things the best value I can.

I've also got some new shortcodes at the website, for my series plug-in, that are going to make life much easier for me - because it means I don't have to post links for all the stories I write. I can just add a shortcode and like magic there's the whole list. I'm very happy with this. The easier I can make my life the better everything is. Now all I need to do is update the Donor House, Fae World, and World Walkers collections there, and then the website is tidy. I like tidy. Once I have tidy I can hopefully go back to working on stories. Writing is the most important thing in the world to me - but then I have an income to earn. If they both meshed the way I want them to life would be a lot easier.

Oh, and I can hardly let a post go by without asking for some signal boosting help. Any signal boost is great. A short one, a long one, one included in a load of other things... every boost is a chance of earning a little more income. More income means less stressed writer. Less stressed writer, I hope, means less flitting about, because it's driving me mental. What I want boosted, for the foreseeable future, is my Monthly Membership and the Collection Ebooks, or for simpleness send them to my profile. I know it's annoying having to create a new logon, but I'm not going to be leaving Gumroad any time soon (as far as I can tell, anyway, because the EU doesn't think short term - it only thinks long term).