I Quit… Sort of… Not Really
The last time I posted, I talked about what a great and productive year I had in 2022 and vowed that this would be the year of editing and submissions. Well, I went down the rabbit hole and wrote another book! I just can’t seem to stop long enough to do the stuff I need to get published. I’m addicted to writing and I probably need an intervention or something, but if you plan something like that for me, please be sure to bring booze. Last night I finished the Hex Slinger novel. A weird west, supernatural tale of 100,000 words. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a short story (High Midnight) where I came up with the character Horus Sandalwood, the Hex Slinger and my readers, the Eyeballers, ate it up. It got one of the best overall responses from them of anything I have shoved down their throats yet. So, what did I do? You guessed it, I jumped in with both feet and wrote the novel staring the slinger. Submissions be damned! I’ve got a book to write!
On a positive note, I did submit Horus’ origin story to a publisher, but haven’t heard back yet.
I’m sitting here in my office looking at the big board on the wall where I keep track of all my projects and word counts. There are five novels in various states of unfinishedness that I could dive into, but I’m trying to resist the urge. The completed novels are what’s screaming at me for attention. Can you hear them, too? “Edit me, you bastard!” “Send me out so others can read me!” “Why aren’t you wearing pants?” You know, stuff like that. I have no choice but to listen to them now. At 800,000 words, seven complete novels and five finished short stories, it’s getting kind of ridiculous that I ain’t published by now. As the great podcast, The Writer Dojo, always says, the point is to get paid for what you write. Otherwise I’ve got a hell of a strange hobby that takes up a crap ton of my time. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the hell out of it and if I never get traditionally published, I will still have had a great time writing all this.
So, here’s the new plan. I will only write new stuff while on lunch at work, since it is hard to do real editing there. I like to use the readback feature in Word when I’m doing serious editing. Hard to make that work when there are a lot of other people around. Writing time at home will only be for editing and submitting. That’s it! No exceptions! Wow, what a hard ass, you might say. Not really, since most of my writing for my daily goals happens at lunchtime anyway. I can crank out my thousand words a day while eating, usually without fail. When I get home, I sit down and finish whatever thoughts I had going earlier and that’s where I get most of the bonus words for each day. That’s also why I got down over 400,000 words last year when my yearly goal is only 300,000. Days off I can get several thousand on a good day as well. No more! I have spoken!
So it is written, so it shall be done!
Now where are my pants?