RoW80 Check In and Some Startling Realisations

For a long time I’ve thought that my blog posts need to be witty, informative and well written. It’s probably part of the reason why I haven’t blogged that much lately. Today though, as I was sat in the Arboretum (a small park in Nottingham for those not in the know which is probably all of you) I realised that this was complete and utter poppycock. Yes I use words like poppycock. My blog posts can be whatever I want them to be. It’s my blog and my voice, I shouldn’t change it for no real reason. With that in mind I want to tell you how my RoW80 is going.

1) Write 500 words of my own work a day. - I’ve not been writing any of my own stuff. That’s my first goal failed since I signed up.

2) Participate in Camp NaNo - Secondly, I haven’t written a thing for Camp NaNoWriMo either. All of my stories are still in the planning stages or partly written. I wanted to start with something fresh, something I haven’t tried before. So this weekend I’m going to sit down and plan it out, vaguely and quickly, and then I’m going to write it. Simples.

3) Work on new web-comic once a week - I haven’t worked on my webcomic idea either. Unless you count a few vague plans for a daily auto-biographical stuff which I suppose you could. Actually scratch that. This goal I’ve managed to reach. Last week I planned a couple of pages, this week I’ve planned a few more. I even have thumbnails. Maybe one day I’ll actually put them online.

4) Blog at least once a week - My blogging went wonky, I won’t lie. Mostly because of the reasons I outlined at the top. I had failed my goals and there was no fancy witty way to say it. Now, with no pressure of sounding informative or even intelligent, I can probably get more blog entries done.

 

In other news though my freelance writing is going swimmingly. I have a regular contract; one short story a week of 5,000 – 6,000 words, for $20. It isn’t much, I’ll admit, but it’s a start. It gets me into the habit of writing every day, of working to a deadline. Those are both things I’ve struggled with outside of NaNoWriMo. Now though I’m slowly conquering those problems. And with this freelance writing stuff I’ve come to another startling realisation.

 

Just because I’ve not got a full length novel to publish doesn’t mean that I can’t simply write some short stories and put them up for sale. It’s a smart thing to do in my mind. People can download them, read them and slowly they’ll start to remember my name. That way, if and when I eventually publish a full-length novel (either traditionally or through Amazon’s Kindle store and various other eBook outlets) I may already have a following. So for the rest of April and probably a large chunk of May I’ll be working on building a back catalogue of writing and figuring out how the hell to use that stuff. It’s a little confusing at the moment. If anyone knows any good sites that explain it in simple language then please let me know in the comments below.

RoW80 Round 2: Getting back on the horse

I’ve recently begun free-lancing. But that’s not what this post is about today. That is going to come another day.

Instead I’m telling you all what I plan on doing for Round Two of RoW80. Round One was a bust, I won’t lie. Things happened, my productivity dropped to near 0 and I essentially vanished off the face of the internet (this part at least). I’m not back on full power just yet but I’m getting there and one day, when I’m feeling stronger I will tell you about what exactly happened in January.

But, pushing the miserable stuff aside, my aim for this round of RoW80 is to just get writing again. I have a few goals but not as many as I usually set myself.

1) Write 500 words of my own work a day.

I’m freelancing yes, and that means I am actually writing more days again, but I’m not writing what I want to write. I’m writing for someone else. So, to get me back into the spirit of writing my own work I’m going to aim for a minimum of 500 words a day. It’s not much, it should only take me about half an hour on a good day but it’s more than I’m doing now.

2) Participate in Camp NaNo

I’m taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo this month so I’ll be trying to write for that. It’s pretty self-explanatory really.

3) Work on new web-comic once a week

I’ve been working on a new web-comic idea recently and so I want to make sure that I’m not just leaving it by the wayside as I focus on other stuff. I may even post about it a bit at some point.

4) Blog at least once a week.

Writing the blog is something I find very therapeutic and it’s something that I need to do more of. I realise that I need to start planning my posts more though. Usually I’m just writing them on the day they get posted and it feels like a bit of a cop-out. So I will do some blog series at some point this round... when I’ve figured them out.

So, there we have them; my goals for RoW80. Enjoy!