Interesting Problems…

Being Consistent and Prolific Is Fun…

But often the publishing just doesn’t keep up with the writing and production. I know a lot of writers who have told me they are a number of books behind getting them out and published. Kris and I are both that way at the moment.

Kris has a fantastic novel she wrote over a year ago that we were going to do a Kickstarter for, but then life, business issues, and other things got in the way and now we have that planned for this fall. She has two Fey novels, both new, that have not seen the light of day yet. One will be in a Kickstarter this spring.

And on top of that she just finished a new big Kris Nelscott novel.

I ended up having just over 100 short stories that have never seen the light of day as I work to put these collections together. (By the way, all 15 science fiction collections will be going out to that Kickstarter in a few days.)

But now I have over twenty brand new short story collections (beyond the fifteen going out) all done and no plan on any push on them yet.

And as I said, I have been told by other writers they have this same issue.

How does this come about in this new world of indie publishing, where books can be published within days of finishing writing them if you want. Simple… you want to do some basic promotion like a Kickstarter or an offering to a Patreon base before you put it out wide. And that takes time and planning.

And when the writing is the first priority, as it is with all long-term writers, the writing gets ahead. Simple math.

Say you do 1,000 finished words per hour when writing, no rewriting, just cycling as you go. You know, professional writing.

You have a work ethic and manage 3 hours per day, five days per week. Oh, no, fifteen hours per week. The pain, the pain… (sorry… not really)

15,000 finished words per week, 4 weeks for a 60,000 word novel. 12 novels per year.

You are doing 4 Kickstarters per year as starting promotion, but at best that can take up to 8 books into the public and you end up 4 behind, the books waiting to get out into the light.

Now most writers I know who complained to me of this problem, write more than that.

Of course, in traditional publishing, this would be an impossible problem unless like me you had a dozen or more pen names, but thankfully for any sane human, traditional publishing is a worthless pile of crap. But that leaves the fun decisions to you as an indie writer as to how to get a book out, and when.

Let me be clear to those of you not at this level yet. THIS IS A FUN PROBLEM YOU WANT TO TRADE UP FOR.

As I said, being consistent and prolific with the writing is great fun. Especially in this new world.