To paraphrase Dean Wesley Smith’s description of writing without an outline I’ve decided it feels more like “writing into the abyss” than “writing into the dark”.
More dramatic I suppose, but hey, that’s me! 😉
Fun, lots of fun, scary and sometimes frustrating when I’ve got a glimpse of an idea of how the story is going to go but then I can’t capture what my mind’s eye was seeing.
Ever have that kind of problem?
Do you ever wonder if Michelangelo had doubts about his skill as an artist? (Not that I’m making a comparison between he and I…as if…but trying to make a point here. 😀 )
One would doubt it, but I think that us creatives do tend to be a bit perfectionist.
It’s simply time to write the story, be entertained by it  and let it go into the wild where it can hopefully entertain readers too.
Business Thinking
So now that the new year is right around the corner I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I’m going to do with my fiction next year.
I recently downloaded a free PDF and watched a free webinar replay (couldn’t get the live webinar to work for me, dang it) about finding your first 10,000 readers.
It was put on by Nick Stephenson and Joanna Penn.
Great stuff. If you get a chance, have a look.
While I can’t spend the cash right now to sign up for his help, the information he gave me in both the webinar and the PDF download are PRICELESS!
It’s the kind of information that makes you slap your head and go “of course, duh, why didn’t I think of that”?
Love that kind of stuff…
One thing that stood out is that he said websites like Amazon are not a “bookstore”…they’re a search engine.
That’s the one I slapped my head on…of course they are.
Anyway, point is I want to do a bit of book marketing next year. As in more marketing than simply throwing stories up on Amazon and Smashwords, tossing a few tweets into the nether and hoping for the best.
And part of that marketing will be to try to build an audience.
So there will be some changes after the first of the year to this website and a new focus.
But, I’m not going to spend a TON of time on this. In fact, I will spend time getting it set up and automated and then get back to writing more stories.
I’m also toying with the idea of throwing up some free short stories here on this website which will be available for a week before I publish them.
As I don’t have a huge back-list of short stories, this will force me to write a story each week.
Some would be around 5,000 or so words while others will be flash fiction…whatever I can come up with quickly.
It’s scary, yes…I’ve never written a short story in one week.
But it’s also exciting to think of. After all it’s not impossible…if other people…flesh and blood people…can do it, so can I.
What do you think?
