Another great R.A.M.P. day today.
For reading, I continued reading some urban fantasy short stories.
For data analysis, no work…but a lot of work is coming…trust me…
For marketing, I stopped by the Self-Publishing Show with Mark Dawson and James Blatch this morning to talk about estate planning for authors. The episode will go live in about 3-4 weeks and I’ll share when it’s live.
I also stopped by the good folks at PR By the Book, a publicist firm who wanted me to speak to its author members about how to achieve international distribution as an indie author. I talked about Draft2Digital, PublishDrive, Findaway Voices, and all the markets authors are currently using to reach readers all over the world. Fun talk.
I also booked a podcast interview for Sunday (The Indy Author Podcast with Matty Dalrymple—I’ll be talking about AI art for authors) and another virtual speaking engagement, my third of 2023 today. Crazy
For production, I’m sitting at 5,000 words today. I finished the short story I started yesterday. It’s called “The Ghost Suburb” and it was a fun romp. It’s a ghost story that is a mix between urban fantasy and mystery. It features a different kind of hero and world, and I liked the overtones a lot. I just might turn it into a series honestly. The story is a whopping 7700 words, which is my longest short story yet. Most magazines won’t take it, so I’ll probably be able to publish this one a bit sooner.
I finished my story at 3:30PM today (had the day off today, so I got a lot of writing time in). I normally leave at 4PM to go get my daughter from school…
That left me 30 minutes to:
* Prepare the story for my editor and ship it off to her (remember, I take my time and write everything in one draft, editing as I go, so the story was pretty much done once I wrote the end)
* Figure out what I was going to start on the car ride to go get my daughter…
I decided on another short story. I used the short story idea generator tool that I built on Saturday and generated a few prompts until I found something intriguing. And boy was it ever. I’ll share the prompt I used tomorrow.
Anyhoo, I started a new story this afternoon and am already halfway done with it (about 2,100 words). It’ll be around 6,000 words most likely.
I’ll be focusing on short stories this week as I prepare for the final Beast Mode Book—AI Art for Authors. Writing stories will give me a good runway to do some research.
By the time I get all my writing time logged tonight, I should be in a pretty good position to finish the story tomorrow.
That’s the life of writing 1 million+ words per year. Once you finish a story, you start the next one. No delays, no gaps. You just sit down and do it.
Seems to be working pretty well, though I’m writing at a grueling pace right now. I’m already at 51% of my quota for the week. Beast Mode for the win, friends!!!
Have a good night.
YTD Word Count: 176,700
Plan: 1,252,000
Words Left to Write 1,075,300
Words Over/-Under Plan: 36,450
Days Ahead/-Behind: 13.25
Projected Annual Word Count: 1,264,618
Projected Decade Word Count: 12,646,176
Deadline: 12/31/2023
Days to Go Until 12/31/23: 440
Word Count Average: 3,465
Average Pulp Speed: 2.0