Tag Archives: Month One

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Month One as a Full-Time Author

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I started this full-time author gig four weeks ago.

On that first day, I rejoiced. I had a daily schedule. I had goals. I had dreams. I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out, but I knew it would be glorious.

Fast Forward to today.

What’s been working?

Writing. I’ve done a lot of writing. I decided that I was tired of letting Jagged Scars book 5 push me around, so I’ve spent most of January rewriting it. For the fourth time. But this time it’s going to stick, and it should be to my editor by midnight tonight!

Who makes crazy goals the first month of their new career? That’s right, this girl.

Blogging is working. Well, I’ve blogged every week this month, which was my goal. That’s a win. I think I’m going to try to do movie or book reviews every other week.

Flash Fiction Friday has been really fun. I use it as a way to drop my brain out of my work in process and force it to think sideways for an hour or so. I’ve loved the randomness of it, and the stories aren’t bad. My rotten, err awesome, hubby comes up with better ideas than I do, so there’s that. I keep telling him to write the story, but he’s a baby. (That’s right, I’m calling you out, honey.)

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with my serial series Babes in Spyland. Well, I’m giving the original an overhaul this year, then I plan to write a lot more of it in the years to come. I spent quite a few hours reading through the first five seasons this month, and I’m churning ideas for it already. This is going to be big. Stay tuned for more info later this year.

What’s not working?

Confession time. The thing I’m having the most trouble with is exercising right after I get up in the morning. I’ve been getting up and showering and then going to work or school for like thirty years. I’ve been doing my Kempo class in the evenings since the early 2000s. I’m a morning person, but this getting up and, instead of showering, donning exercise clothes and then exercising is awful.

I think I can comfortably compare it to giving up your morning coffee. It throws me way off. The few days I actually did it, I felt okay, but it took everything I had to drag my sorry butt out of bed, put on my sweats and do it. I should write down the arguments I lose. With myself!

I’ve still been exercising almost every day, but I usually end up doing it during the afternoon, which cuts into writing time, which isn’t good.

Going to bed on time and then getting up on schedule has been rough too. So I need to work on that. As the prince in Ever After says, “Apparently I lack conviction.”

The one thing I totally dropped the ball on (and when I say dropped, I mean tossed it over my shoulder into the corner and purposely forgot about it) is marketing. I did a little, but not much. I felt strongly about getting this book finished first, so marketing begins in February. Which means I sold a total of five books this month on Amazon. Which is horrible, but I didn’t do any marketing, so it makes sense. I’ll have to set a reasonable goal for next month. Double my sales? (Kidding, it’s going to be way more than that!)

So far I haven’t missed my day job. I’m busy enough that the hours fly by and suddenly it’s evening and I’m off to do something besides writing. I do miss more people interaction, so I’ll have to see what I can do about that before I become a strange old cat lady who never leaves her house. Well, except I’m allergic to cats.

All in all things are going well. Thank you to everyone who has supported me through this change. I’m still excited. I’ll report again next month.


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