End of January Update (and an explanation about Twitter)

February 1, 2021

I deleted my Twitter account. Please don’t worry; it’s temporary! I promised myself that once Trump was out of office, I’d delete Twitter for a few weeks to finish Garden Book, read for pleasure, do work on the farm, and take a break from social media Discourse. Refilling the creative well is vital for my writing process, and helps prevent burnout, so that’s what I’m doing. I’ll return in a few weeks!

At the beginning of January, I noted that I decided to try tracking my work via spreadsheet. It’s a bad habit of mine to pick up productivity rituals and then drop them, but I have been inputting my word count every day, and I think I’ll keep this one. I’m pleased to say that I wrote every day in January!((how I managed to get words done on the day of an actual insurrection, I still don’t know)) My wordcount total was 50,116. Yes, I am patting myself on the back.((and yes, I am using footnotes now))

Here’s a screencap of my full January spreadsheet:

And my monthly progress graph of words, which show a slight decrease at the end of the month.

The decrease accounts for a few things:

More obviously, losing a bit of energy. I’m not a machine.
Garden Book was pre-plotted until about mid-way through. I hit the end of my outline and basically had to figure out where the book was going, which resulted in:
A main character and a main plot just were. not. working. at all. period. I had a firm idea of what I wanted the book to be and very much tried to make that idea work, but it was flawed from its foundations. One of the reasons I do the trash draft is to see if my initial idea even works as a full-length novel((ideas are a dime a dozen and even great ideas can make for poor books)), so this is the trash draft accomplishing its basic function. This is actually good news! It means that after I’m finished with this draft, I know exactly what I need to change, and I feel very confident that I’ve made the right decision. I’m happy. I figured out my broken book!

And for more visual data, some people might also notice that my site tracker for Garden Book is now “off graph”.

I assumed the draft would be around 50k words, like most of my SFF trash drafts are, and was very wrong. I’m leaving the tracker as is, but it seems likely that this will hit 75-80k. So: a long trash draft for what will probably be a long book!

One thing I’m discovering about myself is how well I respond to visual progress and data. I enjoy the process of waking up, syncing the previous night’s words from the Alphasmart into Scrivener, putting my wordcount into a spreadsheet, and watching the data on my habits take shape. After 4 weeks of tracking, I’ve learned:

I work well with the simplicity of the old Alphasmart word processor. The lack of backlighting is also gentler on my eyes, and I am not getting as many headaches. It’s also exceptional for maintaining flow.
I can write an average of 900+ words an hour (drafting; we will see what happens when I get to editing).
I am finding a rhythm with drafting at night. I head to my room at 8 PM and work until around 10 PM ((and Ember Cat has fallen into the habit of joining me!)), then I have spare time to read. I’ve been reading Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series this month!

Other thoughts, Observations, and Farm Things:

Since I don’t have Twitter right now, I can’t tweet all my responses to this article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/28/mitch-benn-wrote-two-novels-then-stopped-what-happened-terra

There are a few reasons I feel rather, erm, strongly about this article. The first is that Mitch Benn and I share a UK publisher (Gollancz); the second is that our debuts from Gollancz were both published in 2013, so I received a galley of Terra and very much recall “this book came about from a tweet” used to market it; and the third is: oh my god, how many people sell two books to a major publisher by tweeting “I’m bored”?

The relative privilege of receiving a book contract from a tweet about a temporary state of ennui aside, everything expressed as extraordinary in this article is, actually, rather ordinary. When an author is contracted for two books, the third is an option — meaning the publisher will, generally, look at the sales of the first two books before deciding to pick up the third in a series. Benn’s claim that he knew nothing about sales strikes me as disingenuous; there’s no way he couldn’t know because they would have rejected the third novel on that basis. This happened to my co-author Laura Lam. What she did not do was whine to the Guardian about it. What she did do was write another damn book.((This entire scenario is separate from the cancellation of a third book already under contract, which is also, sadly, very common)).

The article describes Benn’s attempts to “move on” as unsuccessfully pitching a few other books to US publishers. I am that Nathan Fillion speechless gif. I am saying S I R in a loud, forceful voice. I then recall that this man who sold two books on concept after tweeting “I’m bored.” Of course, he assumed other book deals would come that easily. Of course! His agent ought to have disabused him of the notion, but that’s beside the point.

The point is: selling a novel on concept without a previous working relationship with a publisher/editor is difficult. Not impossible, of course((I would say that selling a book with a tweet is difficult, and this guy did!)), but generally, it is. And even with a working relationship, sometimes book pitches get rejected. I have a friend who pitched over a dozen concepts to an editor, and they were all turned down. What she did not do was whine to the Guardian about it. What she did do was — and I really cannot emphasize this enough — write another book.

This leads me to my last point: one should never assume a third book is guaranteed, even if it’s under contract((and Benn’s wasn’t)). Speaking as someone who finished an SFF trilogy, one thing I will not budge on is the likelihood of writing another((romance is an exception, and that’s because series are the norm, and each book usually functions as a standalone novel with a different romantic pairing, meaning readers can pick up and drop off where they like)). It is extremely common for third books in SFF or YA to be canceled based on lackluster sales. If it doesn’t happen to one author, they probably know someone it has happened to. Duologies are becoming very popular for a reason!

To conclude: nothing in publishing is guaranteed. But you can always write another book.

So that is my rant. Moving on.

In pen name news, I released the box set of my first three Katrina Kendrick romances! I’m so proud of these books and am excited to plan more romances for the future!

The box set is available on Kindle and for Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08VHC9D7P

Now onto the photos!

More later, much love,