I got my final grade for my first class this week, and was happy to find myself starting off with an A. I was very pleased that my major research paper came back with the following comments: “The ideas you present in this paper are scholarly and astute. You make new and interesting connections between old ideas and synthesize those connections into exceptional ideas of your own.” I was exploring authors’ current choices between traditional and self-publishing routes, and speculating that some basic business principles could help guide both Big Six publishers and Indie publishers to a new relationship in the ecosystem of books as entertainment.
Since I think authors and readers alike might be interested in some of the research I found on the topic–and I’m proud of my scholarly effort!–I’m sharing my paper here, too: “Big Six Publishers’ Response to eBook Evolution”
A whole week off without school assignments meant I thought I was going to be cooking with gas on my fiction writing. Instead, I needed to recharge my battery with an escapist read (Patricia Briggs caught me again with her latest installment in the Alpha and Omega series) and desultory work on guest posts for my upcoming blog tour for Dementional.
On the other hand, I made major revisions to my short story… And Published IT! I still added over 1,000 words to my novel, but finishing it before the end of the month is very likely out of reach. So I took a page out of my publisher’s book and drafted a schedule for November. It includes 72 hours dedicated to fiction-writing, as well as time for classwork–and some Thanksgiving cooking. If I’m able to follow my standard production values, that means I could very well mange both books 2 and 3 of the Red Slaves series in the month of November.
The real question boils down to: Will I have the stamina and stick-to-it-iveness to manage that schedule. I think for November, I’m going to take a blogging hiatus other than my Sunday check-ins to help reduce my writing commitment outside of fiction and school. I’m still counting on the ROW80 community to keep me honest, though.
Visit the list of other ROW80 participants to see how they’re dealing with their goals.