MCAH Online

So it turned out that NaNoWriMo was useful for something after all: I had fun.

Which normally I’d ignore.

But I had fun while writing, and that was a huge clarification of everything. Why, how strange, thought I. I am having fun! This is fun!

And I remembered, Oh right! This is what I wanted to do with my life! Not all that administrative/marketing/business stuff I do in order to make money!

…

Yeah. Of course. The administrative/marketing/business stuff has to be done. But sometimes when you’re good at a lot of things you lose sight of the things you want to do and end up doing the things you’re good at that are more obviously rewarded.

So I did NaNoWriMo, and in a month I wrote a novel, and in two months I wrote a novel and started another and am a quarter into it and still having fun, and I think now I have a goal. I am going to state it out loud, because that helps a body stay on target:

I want to arrange my work year so I can write 2-4 novels a year.

To do that, I need to be setting aside 2-6 months where 80% of my “work time” is dedicated to writing.

Now, I want to make this totally clear: the reason I make money is because of all the time I spend doing administrative/marketing/business stuff. All that Zazzle merchandise, the e-books, the audiobooks, the prints, the serial posting, the website updating, the Kickstarter-running… it works. It makes the whole “make real money” thing possible. But I want to get to a point where the stuff out there is making enough that I can throttle back a little on the business side and concentrate more on the creative side.

How can I do that? Not sure yet. But I stated a goal. Stating a goal is always the beginning. I know if someone said to me: ‘take the next six months. Write.’ Then I would sit down and write 2-4 books and have a rip-roaring grand time. I wouldn’t waste the time. I wouldn’t spend six months thinking about writing books. I wouldn’t spend six months writing part of a book, realizing it was all wrong, and starting over again. I wouldn’t spend six months reloading Livejournal, writing one page of fiction, and then wandering off to count rocks. I would write like a racehorse bursting from a starting gate and keep going until someone dragged me away from the keyboard, mangled metaphors and all.

I have fun. Writing novels. And I mean writing like “turning out 10-20 pages a day.” I’d forgotten that.

So. Yes. NaNoWriMo taught me something. Or rather, reminded me that left to my own devices, all I want to do is tell stories. So I’m going to retool my 3-5 year plan in the hopes of hitting my target: my properly set target. Two to six months a year, 80% writing time.

Now to figure out how. *looks determined*