Why?

I'm still working on this and thinking things through. (But not letting anything stop me as I write and complete the story.)

So I've been thinking about why I'm doing this and what I hope to accomplish. Now I'm not a big planner. I've always been a seat of my pants kind of girl. There's a flow to things, and sometimes I get a feeling that the wind is blowing in one direction, and that I should follow rather than fight against it. (Though I will fight against it if I get a feeling that I should.)

So what am I hoping to accomplish here? Do I want to be famous? Well known and well considered? Maybe some of that stuff would be nice. Ok, I should be honest here. Heck yes, I wish I could make enough money that I could stop doing what I'm doing and do nothing but write!

That is a very real possibility too. Not at first of course, but given time and effort, yeah, it could probably happen. There are writers out there who are making money off their works that you never hear of. Many writers bemoan making only $1,000 off their work, and I'm like, "Damn! That's already how much I make in a month! I can live off that!"

But of course, I couldn't because there's more to think about. It's a business. That's basically what you're setting out to do, and that's what I would like to do. I want to go into business for myself. I want control of it, the rights to it, and I want to fiddle with everything, create my own image, write my own blurb, make my own cover. Nothing else appeals to me. And in fact, I think what originally turned me off from publishing was the fact that my book wouldn't be mine once I "sold" it.

There's also the terror that I'm intending to write a series because that's again what I feel. But I have no real control over it. I'm not a writer that can plan to write and then just do it. (Which is also a bad sign for me as an indie author, I know.) With something like this, I'm counting on myself which is somehow more pressure in one way and less pressure in another.

I guess because if I fail, I'm only letting myself down. And if I'm on my own, that desperation, that need and that drive will push me on and make me want to continue. It's sort of what's making me go now.

So I'm not planning on asking anyone to read what I'm working on until the online story version is done. It just seems like a good idea. By my most recent count, unless something goes wrong or my gut takes a detour, I'll be finished with the online version in eight weeks. And I should be 50% done (hopefully more) with the novel version by then or I will be very disappointed in myself.

But, uh, I do have the first couple chapters of the remastered version ready for download from here. (7,600 words at about 22 pages saved in rich text format) Thought about password protecting it, but I've taken down my own links to this blog, so I think that's enough. The first three chapters, still a work in process but closer to the original vision. The liner notes at the end of chapter 3 are because I'm thinking of taking those paragraphs out, or rewriting them, but was too lazy to fiddle with them right now.

Live

I had a dream that I made the story go live before it was ready.

Oh man, I've been sitting here all morning trying to remember my dream and what it meant and just like that when I sit down to write it out it just pops out like that.

So I think the dream was that I put my story up on a site like Smashwords, but it didn't have an ending and so I was scrambling to fix the ending so that people wouldn't be upset. And I think in the end no one noticed because no one was really reading yet anyway. Or no, actually I think I had quite a few people download and then it didn't go any further than that because I didn't have an ending and people didn't like that.

Well, I've been in a mood all morning because of that. Same thing yesterday. Another unsatisfied mood which I blamed on a lack of productivity. Only I did produce stuff, but it wasn't good stuff. Which is how it is actually supposed to go.

Now that I've decided to work on a novel, it generally goes like this: write some stuff, realize that it isn't good enough, mope, rewrite/edit things before we can go on, be happy and feel productive until we repeat.

I can't stand this up and down stuff. Writing has always been my balance. So I'm trying to convince myself to also continue the fun writing as we go because the fun writing is what pulls me through a day and leaves me floating on a cloud. I haven't yet though because I'm lazy and don't wanna.

Plus, yesterday when I decided that I would do a fun writing piece in my journal (long hand), I ended up writing another scene to the story I was supposed to be taking a break from. What the hell, brain? Can't you do one thing I ask of you? And if you're going to be a rebel, can't you at least rebel by writing better than I do?