Reply To: Week 10 (early) Check-in ✈️

[jeanne_mooreParticipant]

Hi, Cheryl,

How do I react when faced with unanticipated interruptions to my writing schedule? I write for whatever amount of time I can and if I don’t get a chance to write or do write some but don’t make my goal for that day, well, then that’s the way it goes. And I write in “chunks” – as in “The Chunky Method.” I rarely write for more than 40 minutes at a time. Sometimes I only write for 20 minutes. I don’t do my daily goal of 2 hours at one time.

This week’s gone well for me. I finally finished the editing for my 6 stories (3 novellas of approximately 22,000 words each and 3 short stories of about 10,000 words each). This includes going over them for over-used words – the last over-used word being “that.” Now it’s on to proofreading and spell checking.

I’ve been undecided as to whether to publish them all in one collection or publish one collection of just the novellas and once collection of the short stories, publish each one alone as an e-Book and use the shorter ones as either free or 99 cent specials to generate attention to my books/eBooks. Now, I’m thinking I’ll publish all of them in one collection in this order: short story, novella, short story, novella, novella, short story. Begin and end with a short story. There are two novellas that take place in the same area in Central California and one includes a character from the other one in a minor role several years after the other one – so those two will be the ones together without a short story between them. Clear as mud?

I looked back in my records (I keep spreadsheets on everything I write), and I’ve been working on these 6 manuscripts a little over a year. That includes researching, writing, rewriting and revising, and editing, proofreading and spell checking. I don’t think I’m going to work on this many manuscripts at the same time again. But the good thing is when I’d get tired of working on one, I had plenty others to work on.

Who knew writing would be so much work or that I’d be able to carry my manuscripts through to being finished without a supervisor standing over me. But I am grateful that I can do this; it’s kept me very busy during the COVID restrictions.

Have a good week, everybody.

Jeanne