Doing the Math…

Deadlines Drive Math…

I was working on my challenge on my calendar for deadlines and realized it felt very familiar to me. Very. Took me a little bit to remember that with almost every novel I wrote for traditional publishing under contract, I did the same thing.

I would set up when the book had to be turned in under contract. (Never missed a traditional publishing deadline in 106 books.)

Then I would circle that date on the calendar and count backwards, doing a rough estimate on how long it would take me to write it. That would get me a start date and then I would mark page count goals along the way. Usually in 20,000 word chunks.

Of course, I would almost always miss my start date and then have to revamp my timeline and I would always start at the last possible moment that I could start to hit the deadline. It seemed I really loved to write under stress.

So tonight I was working back from November, figuring out how many of the fifty collections I would need to do each week to hit the deadline. On this one I think I have now pushed the start point right to the edge already.

Now I have all collections put together on paper. And covers are done on thirty of them. Just have to do the extra covers, round up the ten stories for each book, get them through Vellum and up to Bookfunnel.  And then fire into the papers and hardbacks. Bookfunnel is my publishing marker because 15 of them are headed to the backers of the last Kickstarter. Some are headed to Patreon, and all are headed in one fashion or another to our store. Of course they will all be wide in time.

So from Friday, I have 19 weeks until the deadline. In a couple of weeks I will have 21 books published since they are in the works and not part of the fifty. So to do the 50 collections will get me to 71 books published in my 75th year. I will find at least four more books along the way, but right now I am focused on the 50 collections to get my short fiction under control.

So I am going to cut the weeks left back to 16 weeks. That means I need to get through 3 collections per week.

Wow, am I glad I am getting my act organized. This is going to be great fun and a ton of work. And that is also the fun of it all.