Up-boo! Day

Today is the last Friday of October, which means it's time for another Update Day. In case you're wondering what it is: Beth Fred and I host a blog hop, where we set crazy or crazy important goals. The idea is for everyone to chase down their goals, and on the last Friday of each month, we share updates on our progress.

You're welcome to join at any time, so if you'd like to sign up, or to see who else is taking part, please click here.

I have to admit, it's currently 9:30 p.m, so I'm cutting it close with my own blog hop. In fact, I almost considered cutting it even closer, because I have a deadline looming (more on that in a few), but I needed a break. So I thought: what better way is there to relax than to do a post mortem on the past month?

Huh?

Huh?!

Oh okay fine. I'll just get to it.

In cased you missed last month's post, I've hit reset on my 5-year goal and I decided to take this being-a-writer thing full-time. 

To make that happen, I'm setting monthly writing goals, along with writing business goals. The former deals with my activities in producing more stories. The latter deals mostly with marketing, and my ability to earn revenues from writing, and writing related activities. Just to clarify, if the money I earn relates in any way to me using my writing skills or knowledge, I'm counting it as revenues for my writing business. 

So, if I were to monetize this blog (which I won't do) and this blog generated an income, it'd show up in my analyses. But if I win the lottery, or suddenly become a millionaire doing something else... Nope. 

Basically, this whole exercise is to see exactly how hard or how easy it is to start almost from scratch and become a full-time writer. So I started last September with a budget of $10, and started working. 

Every month, then, I set a goal for Writing and a goal for Generated Revenue. 

So how did I do in October? 

Before I show the graphs, I should point out one thing: If I had to give October one theme, I would call it The Agony and the Ecstasy. 

Especially the week I just had. Life and other work (yeah, remember how I said I'm still doing other work too because it gives me so much time? BAHAHAHAHAHA *sob*) just went into full-blown hell mode. 

In fact, when I wrote my friend Connie about it, I couldn't even put a word to it. A day later, and it's finally occurred to me: 

Shell-shock

I'm not even kidding. This was a week I will not want to experience ever again. I'll get around to talking about it, as soon as I've really recovered. 

It's not all bad, though. This same hell-week also turned out to have something really good in it too. (And that doesn't count the fact that I've finally tasted (and fell in love with (even more passionately than I adore parentheses)) macaroons.) In fact, this exact same hell-week was nothing short of miraculous. (Again, more on this when I've recovered.) 

In short, the overall results of October were mixed. 

Writing

One of my major writing goals I have at the moment is to finish Book 3 of The War of Six Crowns before the end of this year. 

Basically, doing so means I have to write about 50,000 words every month, including October. 

Did I manage it? 

No. 

In fact, I've managed a slight bit under half of what I wanted to do. In my defense, pretty much every one of those plateaus coincided with some crappiness from the rest of my life spilling into my writing time. 

And sadly, most of the words added here were courtesy of my Insecure Writers' Support Group short story, but I did submit that, so that was one writing goal achieved.

As for my third writing goal (reformatting my books for updates to the content and covers), I've so far managed to start on The Vanished Knight. It's basically done, but I want to do yet another proofread. Not because I think I'll find anything, but I've found that Word does funny things to documents, changing formatting without permission, making words and phrases vanish... That sort of thing. Call me paranoid, but I'd rather be sure everything is where it should be. 

If you're wondering, if the hell-week is over, why I haven't started writing... I have a very good reason. More on this on a bit.

Goals for November: 

1) NANOWRIMO! Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment, but I'll be rebelling and trying to add 50k words to Book 3. In case you want to buddy up with me, my username on the NaNoWriMo website is iceangel. 

2) Published books. I have a lot to do here: 

2.1) Take my paperbacks out of Amazon's expanded distribution, so I can prepare to publish them directly through Ingram Spark. 

2.2) Finish formatting and proofreading all three of my books so I can do the updates I want to do. 

2.3) Plan something around the reveal of the updated covers. 

3) Post Ryan on Patreon. Ryan is a short-story from the same world as Endless. I want to share it with my patrons, and had planned to start this month already, but I just couldn't get to it. 

Generated Revenue

Every month, I'm setting a monthly revenue target. Then, I'm counting all of the month's revenue, which means I count revenue the moment it's generated (which I usually call future income or income generated in the month) and money that were actually generated in previous months. 

So, if I sell a book on Amazon and I get $5 in royalties, it will only really be in my account later. So, in order to show people where my income is coming from, I'll show the money in the month I first earned it, and then again once it's in my account. (It's all just to make the graphs make sense. I actually studied accounting and am aware that this is not how normal people count money. But I'm not normal.) 

Also, I have a few rules I've set for myself: 

The first one is: I set the target, and the target doesn't move until after I've reached it once. 

The second one is: The target for current and future generated income is equal to the monthly target minus accrued income. (So if I set a goal of $10 and that $5 royalty is paid into my account, I have $5 left to generate for this month, or for future months.) 

The third one is: If I hit the target, I have to raise the bar. 

And... well... I'm going to have to raise the bar quite a bit. 

See, in September, I set a $100 target for the month, and then came in under. But this month... this month I annihilated it.

That's right. I generated more than double my target revenue. In fact, I hit the $100 goal on the 14th. Which was part of the reason why I haven't been able to write today. Because I'm getting this income from Upwork, and I still have a deadline. 

On the positive side, I made enough to get Upwork to pay money into my Payoneer account, which also means I'll be able to withdraw my money. Which means I can pay for Photoshop etc. 

Goals for November

1) Boost book sales. Don't get me wrong. I really like when my target graphs look like this, but honestly, I need to see more book sales. Amazon was completely dead this month (except when they paid out a few royalties.) And really, my overall goal is to get my written works to pay my way, so I really need to make that bar graph a bit more colorful. Mainly, though, I know I didn't enough to get sales this month. I did more in September, to obvious results. 

2) Hit my next revenue target. Deciding on the target is a bit tricky, because most of the money I made on Upwork this month will be accrued income in November. So, if I set a $200 goal, it will basically only be $100 to go after. Instead, I'm lifting the goal to $300. 

That's it from me. How did your October go? Are you doing NaNoWriMo?