Oliver Moss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
olivermoss) wrote2025-02-01 01:19 pm
olivermoss) wrote2025-02-01 01:19 pm
Entry tags:
January Writing Wrap Up
The short version is that editing takes me longer than I think it will. I am pretty confident that as the year goes on I will get faster at it. I spend too much time poking at things when I really need to open a separate document and just rewrite instead of making in-line edits.
* I posted 2 fics, each just over 2k. Not bad. I got work done on other projects, but they aren't done so I can't count them.
* For my original writing, not as far along as I'd hope to be. But, not bothered because I did put in a lot of hours. It's not for lack of productivity, it's because stuff just takes time.
Thing is, I am on a specific schedule to get this done, but I don't know what that schedule is yet. As I said, this is the project I started when my writing laptop died and I didn't have my new one yet. So, my mental desk was cleared of all other projects for a while. I just started writing, and decided to commit to this project. Because I was writing around the holidays, it being that time of year is a major part of the plot. It's hot a holiday book, but it needs to come out around the time one would. Since I've never published before, I don't know how much lead time I need. When I was still on FB, I was in a 'gay men reading gay books' group with a lot of authors and some of them finished holiday books as late as November, but they have established editors, workflow, etc. I intend to work with an editor, but it's too early to be looking into getting one, so I am flying a bit blind. I am trying to think of June as my deadline.
Problem is, even if I could find those posts and chat with those authors who talked about holiday deadlines, it's on facebook, or was. It's pretty much dissolved now and FB has become unusable for me. So, a resource I would have had is gone.
I do have a notebook where I am recording info that comes my way about publishing. I have, for example, names of cover artists I like. I am just letting into accumulate in that book so I don't need to mentally keep track of it. I do have a better grasp of a lot of things I need to know, but whole editor thing is just a big unknown right now. Right now I just need to keep pushing on.
So, while I didn't get as much actual writing done as I'd hoped, I did get work done on the non-writing stuff I also need to do. I am not upset at my writing amount because this other stuff I got done is also work
* I posted 2 fics, each just over 2k. Not bad. I got work done on other projects, but they aren't done so I can't count them.
* For my original writing, not as far along as I'd hope to be. But, not bothered because I did put in a lot of hours. It's not for lack of productivity, it's because stuff just takes time.
Thing is, I am on a specific schedule to get this done, but I don't know what that schedule is yet. As I said, this is the project I started when my writing laptop died and I didn't have my new one yet. So, my mental desk was cleared of all other projects for a while. I just started writing, and decided to commit to this project. Because I was writing around the holidays, it being that time of year is a major part of the plot. It's hot a holiday book, but it needs to come out around the time one would. Since I've never published before, I don't know how much lead time I need. When I was still on FB, I was in a 'gay men reading gay books' group with a lot of authors and some of them finished holiday books as late as November, but they have established editors, workflow, etc. I intend to work with an editor, but it's too early to be looking into getting one, so I am flying a bit blind. I am trying to think of June as my deadline.
Problem is, even if I could find those posts and chat with those authors who talked about holiday deadlines, it's on facebook, or was. It's pretty much dissolved now and FB has become unusable for me. So, a resource I would have had is gone.
I do have a notebook where I am recording info that comes my way about publishing. I have, for example, names of cover artists I like. I am just letting into accumulate in that book so I don't need to mentally keep track of it. I do have a better grasp of a lot of things I need to know, but whole editor thing is just a big unknown right now. Right now I just need to keep pushing on.
So, while I didn't get as much actual writing done as I'd hoped, I did get work done on the non-writing stuff I also need to do. I am not upset at my writing amount because this other stuff I got done is also work
no subject
And the steady work, even if it takes longer than hoped. It's hard to be too mad when you've been doing necessary stuff!
Though ugh, yeah, that's a bit frustrating, to not know how much time you'll realistically need. I think June sounds reasonable to me, just to make sure you have a comfortable amount of time for all of the post-writing/pre-publishing stuff. You're probably right that once you have an established flow, you can cut it a lot closer, but for figuring it all out, extra time is better than not enough.
It's unfortunate how many writers groups did seem to be on FB... it's just such a terrible space to try and use for much of anything, but I don't know where things have moved to other than maybe private discord servers (which I am also very bad at.)
no subject
Hopefully I'm done by June. I have a lot of unknowns to deal with, and can't run them down yet.
Facebook has closed groups and a LOT of LGBTQIA+ stuff relied on that. People keep talking like it was just boomers and no big deal, but free cycle stuff, queer roommate finding, resources, so much was reliant on having closed groups, but also groups you could search for. None of that can work on discord because you can't search for servers and also it would require too much moderation to keep it going.
no subject
It sucks to try and plan something when there are so many unknowns.
Yeah... I was never terribly good at using groups (they were very out of sight out of mind for me, so unless they showed up algorithmically on my feed I'd forget to check in on them.) But agreed. There are a lot of people who shrug FB off as being irrelevant and no great loss, but there were a lot of things that really only worked there. Discord is a poor substitute, because you have to sort of already be "in the know" in order to be in the relevant thing, and it's hard to just discover or stumble across a server, even if it's exactly what you're looking for. Plus yeah, requires a lot more constant moderating than groups did.