Tag: publishing

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August Plans and Goals

August is a very busy month for me. To the point where several times during the month, I will forget to eat and accidentally skip up to a third of the meals I’m meant to be eating. With that said, my goals writing-wise are very minimized compared to last month’s progress.

August Goals:

  • Get through first 25% of edits (85 pages)
  • Keep working on putting paper edits of SoL into the computer
  • Finish watching / working through the Publish and Thrive courses (Modules 4 & 5)
  • Add 10 completed pages to the Lazy Tequila Afternoons story binder
  • Update the “books” section of my website.

That’s it. Very low pressure, not a lot to focus on because honestly? Getting through the month of August at the day job is more than enough to work on and survive at this point.

I’m hoping as time goes on to be able to slowly incorporate more writing / loftier editing goals into my daily routine, but not in August.

And, similar to the goal list, today’s post is short and simple. Hope that’s okay with everyone and I’ll see you next week!

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State of the Author

State of the Author: Week Ending 07/21

Oh my heavens, what a week. I have officially gone “back to school” this week, in that I don’t have students, but there were meetings and planning happening (both on campus and off), my brain had to be turned back on, and also… Real pants were a thing that had to be worn. Which, honestly, is my least favorite part of working. I think this is the first year I’m not super excited to be going back to work after summer break. There’s a variety of reasons for that, I imagine, but one of them is definitely because I’ve really been enjoying the two months of getting to pretend to be an actual, legitimate, full time writer. And truthfully? I’m just not ready to give that up yet.

However, without work, I would have to instead give up my apartment and like… Groceries. Which I am definitely not willing to give up.

Knowing that my life is about to get significantly busier, I found myself wondering if there was a way to possibly make my writing life and my teaching life play nicely together and decided that this week, while I had work — but not students — would be a good time to try an experiment. So, I decided that I would work my full 8 hour day, as required, and then at some point during the day, make the time to write 5k words, edit for a minimum of 2 hours, and still complete my module for my class this week.

And… Well. It was a week.

Writing: For fear of sounding like I’m bragging, 5k words a day for me isn’t really a challenge. Now, it’s not as quick as it used to be when I was consistently writing 4-4.5k per hour, but even still, 5k words is approximately 2 hours of “normal” work for me at this point — 3 hours if I’m having a day where writing just isn’t coming as nicely as it usually does. But something I forgot was how much writing 5k a day boosts your total word count! I went from a decent amount to HOLY COW amounts over the week. And that was pretty awesome. Some of the words are definitely a little on the rambling side, but nothing too extreme. I’m usually wordy in my zero drafts anyway and then I end up cutting about 15-20k on my first read through before I even do any “real” editing, so being a little rambling at this stage isn’t a surprise to me at all.

I successfully completed Mandi Lynn’s #10kWritingChallenge today with about 12k words. So, woo!

SOTA3

Editing: The paper edits are finished! I spent a few hours last night writing out my revision outline and am working on replotting / reorganizing the order of events in the middle of the novel to build relationships more organically… And I’m also really focusing in on not dropping my subplots 14-16 chapters into the (currently) 32 chapter novel. There’s a lot of rewriting that needs to be done to fix old POV shifts that were never cleaned up in previous drafts. So, that’s fun.

The AW Beta Project is officially over. We’ll be talking about that in much more detail on Wednesday.

Words Written: 68,587
Chapters Edited: 32
Hours Spent Editing: 47
Scenes Rewritten Completely: 1 / 21
Scenes Cut Out: 18

Publishing: Still trucking along with this! Module two was long, but awesome. It was a lot of information about metadata and publishing on different vendors. I’m still working through some of the more specific details and things. But still going well!

Next week’s goals:

  • Finish all 7 days of the Harry Potter Crawl for WLaP
  • Edit 2 hours daily
  • Complete Module 3 of Publish and Thrive
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State of the Author

State of the Author: Week Ending 07/14/19

It’s been a long time since I’ve been this productive two weeks back-to-back! I’ve been excited to work on my revision and publication course especially, but even the writing part of the month is going well! It’s honestly confusing me — but I’m definitely not complaining!

Writing: This week’s #50in5 was much more successful than last week — I was done with it in just under 4 hours. The flow was better, my life cooperated more, and I was into a better plotted out segment of the novel that wasn’t as research-heavy as the week before. So, here’s another (very rough) excerpt from this week’s work:

SOTA2.PNG

Editing: I am almost 75% finished with the paper edits and then I’ll move into the computer edits. This will be equally as time consuming as the paper edits have been. Reason being? The paper edits do have the majority of the nitty-gritty work, but the computer edits will also contain the reorganizing and rewriting of all the scenes that I marked as needed rewritten (mostly for POV shifts). Realistically, I’m hoping to be fully finished with this draft by the end of August and then hopefully out with some betas after that!

The AW Beta Project is still going swimmingly. I actually got two beta requests! And the person running it told me that my entry was actually the first one requested! It absolutely blows my mind that was how that played out — I honestly expected to get zero requests out of the whole thing! — and I think that’s been a large part of what’s been keeping me motivated this month. There’s something incredibly inspiring knowing that there are people who might actually want to read the craziness in my brain.

#50in5 Words Written: 22,030
Chapters Edited: 26
Hours Spent Editing: 23.25
Scenes Rewritten Completely: 0 (yet — 8 are slated / marked for a rewrite)
Scenes Cut Out: 16
Beta Requests Sent: 1
Beta Requests Received: 2

Publishing: As expected, the Sarra Cannon Publish and Thrive course is absolutely amazing. I worried when I initially signed up / paid for it that I would end up having some buyer’s remorse once the payment process. Not because I didn’t think the course would be good / worth it, but because I’m not earning money right now and for someone without an income, it was a lot of money. And I’ve definitely had to get a little creative with bill paying now because I decided to take the course. However, I think it was the best thing I’ve done for myself all year. Even in the “introductory” module, I learned a lot, which is great. But even beyond that, I’ve really been building relationships with other people in the course.

Which probably sounds silly and like some sort of hoity-toity markety nonsense. But as a romance / realistic fiction writer with a majority of speculative writer friends, I’ve found a small collection of writers who write in my exact subgenre of romance. And that has been super awesome in and of itself. Plus, the Facebook group is incredibly supportive and social and it’s been a very much needed social engagement in the middle of my otherwise relatively lonely summer.

I am unfortunately on campus for work all week next week, so my summer is essentially over at this point, despite students still having just under a month before they’re back, so my goals this week should be lighter than normal, right? Well, yes, if I were a sane person. But I’m not. So, next week’s goals:

  • Write 5k daily (except Friday and Sunday)
  • Write 10k Friday and Sunday (for #50in5 and Mandi Lynn’s 10k Challenge)
  • Edit 2 hours daily
  • Complete Module 2 of Publish and Thrive

Hope everyone else is succeeding in meeting their goals as well!

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Lazy Tequila Afternoons Books State of the Author

State of the Author: Week Ending 07/07/19

It has been quite a productive week for me in terms of writing-related things. Which is great! If every week would mimic this one, I would be beyond happy with my progress. Of course, that’s not possible, and if it were, it would only be a matter of time before I’d accept it as normal and start pushing myself to do more… So, for now, I’ll just focus on the successes.

Writing: As mentioned, I’m working on drafting the initial draft of Rainstorms in Bluebell Fields, which is a sequel and my #50in5 project. So far, I’ve only worked on it one day, and am sitting at 10.3k words on it after that day. It wasn’t a good day for my Real Life, so I wasn’t sure I was going to make my 10k that day, but I pushed through and eventually succeeded. Sure, I’m disappointed that it took me nearly the entire day to accomplish my daily count, but considering there was a large portion of time that I honestly thought I was just going to quit / give up and pick another day to hit my 10k? Yeah, I’m pretty pleased. The words themselves are pretty rough because, well, it was not the best / easiest writing day, but also because I hadn’t done nearly enough prep / research for the first half of the novel. That said, they’re still words, and I’m still proud of them, so here’s an excerpt (please be kind and remember this is a very rough first draft):

RBF Chapter 1 Excerpt.PNG

Editing: Still trucking along here as well. I got hung up a smidge the one day because I realized a major scene was missing from the printed draft I am working through and had to go track it down. Once I accomplished that, I realized that I seemed to have combined two different drafts when printing and had old versions of chapters, some with beta comments from ages ago, and multiple repeated scenes, so I had to spend almost an hour sorting through things and notating where things belonged and all of that. It was by far the most stressful thing I’ve had to do so far while editing.

I’m still participating in AW’s Beta Project and have already submitted my 3 required crits. There are at least 6 more that I’m interested in completing and deciding if I want to ask for a full beta of. One of the 3 assigned to me was one I was initially interested in, based on reading hooks alone, so I went ahead and requested a full beta of that one. They’re only looking for someone to read and comment on their structure, so it will be a quick beta job. I feel like I could take on two more of a similar commitment or one more that’s more intensive, so we’ll see how I feel over the course of the next week while I’m working my way through the other 6 crits I’d like to submit.

#50in5 Words Written: 10,314
Chapters Edited: 13
Hours Spent Editing: 7.5
Scenes Rewritten Completely: 0 (yet — 3 are slated / marked for a rewrite)
Scenes Cut Out: 7
Beta Requests Sent: 1
Beta Requests Received: 2 (omggggggg <3)

Publishing: I’m not quite on this step myself yet, but I am working through Sarra Cannon’s Publish and Thrive course to help build my arsenal of personal knowledge and resources. I’m still putting the final touches on my pre-course workbook, but for the most part found the reflection on what I want to get from my career and the places I consider things to be most important very helpful… As well as significantly harder than I expected any of the questions to be! Definitely looking forward to continuing through the rest of the modules over the next several weeks. (Registration closes very soon on this course, so if you’re interested / considering signing up, make sure to do it ASAP!)

Well, that’s my current state of progress and accomplishment for this week. Next week, I have a few more specific goals:

  • Fully flesh out my military / intelligence research notes for Rainstorms in Bluebell Fields.
  • Add another 10k to Rainstorms in Bluebell Fields on 07/12.
  • Edit 8 more chapters of Sky of Light.
  • Complete 6 additional Beta Project Crits.
  • Complete Module 1 of Publish and Thrive.
  • Add 5 (completed) pages to my LTA Series Bible

What about you guys? What have you done this week? What are your goals for this week? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

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Nom de Plume

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June: Real name vs pen name: is one better than the other? Why or why not? Which would you use and why?
It has certainly been quite some time since I updated here and I don’t have excuses or explanations for you about it. It happened and it deserved being addressed… But that’s all I have to say about it. Especially since this post is meant to be about pen names!
You might be able to tell by my website / social media handles, but I am a person who does not use a pen name. As long as I’ve been writing and publishing things on the internet, I have always gone by some iteration of (at least) my first name. As I started taking a more “professional” route with my writing — or at least attempting to — I began switching over fully to my “author persona:” Erin Foster Books. Could I have transitioned into a pen name at that point? Probably, but I didn’t see the point. In fact, if I had made that choice, it might have actually had negative affects on my yet-developing platform.

Back in college, I had to complete a short story project for one of my creative writing courses and the outcome was a fully-edited, ready-to-publish (essentially) short story collection. And since this was back in the day of free proof copies for NaNoWriMo winners, I decided to go ahead and publish it. Why not, right? And I did so using my real name. Then I entered a Harlequin contest and did decently well (top 12 — so not placed or anything, but still a huge success in my mind), using my real name. All of the self-published short stories in the AugNoWriMo Compendium Milestone: under my real name. I was already starting to establish my name as my author brand, even before ever thinking about it. To then start over with a pen name? Not something that really appealed to me, personally.

Now, if I were to decide to write… say a fantasy quartet about elemental mermaids instead of my normal romance realistic fiction, would I consider a pen name? Absolutely. Because if someone had read a handful of my other fiction and picked up a fantasy book, thinking it would be in a similar feel / genre because I wrote it… They would be very confused. And the last thing I want to do to my readers is confuse them.
As for which one is better? Well, neither. I don’t think you can make a sweeping generalization like that with something that’s such a personal decision. For me, my real name worked out and was the right choice for my situation, but that might not always be the case for someone — or even for me. I think that as long as the person behind the name is intentional and consistent with their use of whatever moniker they choose, then that is the “better” decision.
(Stay tuned. I am promising a minimum of one blog post per week for the rest of the year. Always Wednesday mornings at 10am EST. There might be more than that, but there will definitely never be less. If there’s something you’d like me to talk about / address, feel free to leave a comment here or reach out to me on twitter at @erinfosterbooks!)