Update Day: Celebration Time

Today is the last Friday of the month, so it's time for another Update Day for the Got Goals? Bloghop, where a few of us writerly bloggers share updates on our (lack of) progress towards our big and very important goals. If you're curious or want to join in, click here.

September was a hectic month for me. The first few days was filled with panic and anxiety. The few weeks after that were filled with good times because one of my oldest writing buddies came all the way from Seattle to visit. At the same time, I had a major work function, major work deadlines, and... just general chaos around moving house. And I haven't even physically moved house yet. Long story.

In short, most of my goals for this month fell by the way-side. But on the positive side, I had another record earning month despite all the chaos and I missed one of my major stepping stone goals by a relatively tiny amount. I was a bit peeved when I realized how close I got. But then I had a bit of a think and realized: Bloody hell. Two years ago, I started with starry eyes and an impossible goal. People told me not to even try this full-time writer thing. But here I am.

Full. 

Time. 

Writer.

Was it easy? No.

Was it fun all the time? Hell no.

Yet, despite all the challenges and the impossibility of what I was doing, I managed to build a thing. So yeah, a lot of other things took a knock so I could get here. This includes my writing and blogging, etc. But once we're settled in our new house, I'll be in a better place to actually write my own stuff than I've been in five years.

So all in all... Not bad.

I'm going to celebrate this month. And uh... move. Wish me luck.

How did your September go? Anything you're celebrating?

While we're on the subject of celebrating, an anthology I'm part of is now available for preorder. 

Enter our mysterious realms where the stories are as varied and rich as the types of soil on this and other planets. Enchanted forests are knotted with roots and vines. Dreaded paths take us through strange, unexplored places.

Investigate new worlds and houses frequented by ghosts. Come across witches and wizards and an assassin tasked to kill Death.

Meet hot robots, hungry winds, and the goddess of chaos. Explore alien lands, purgatorial realms, and a shocking place where people bury the living with their dead.

Encounter paranormal detectives, imprisoned dragons, dark demons, cursed jewels, and handsome prophets. Search shifting worlds trapped in mirrors and a disturbing future where a president aims to rid the world of Otherkind.

Experience a haunted journey on a riverboat, water sprites borne of pennies, preternatural creatures, ancient serpents, and the Lady of the Lake who lurks in dark waters.


From USA Today bestselling and popular science fiction and fantasy authors comes Elements of Untethered Realms, a supernatural compilation of the anthologies Twisted Earths, Mayhem in the Air, Ghosts of Fire, and Spirits in the Water. These forty thrilling tales feature authors Angela Brown, Jeff Chapman, Cathrina Constantine, Julie Flanders, River Fairchild, Gwen Gardner, Misha/M. Gerrick, Meradeth Houston, Graeme Ing, Simon Kewin, M. Pax, Christine Rains, Cherie Reich, and Catherine Stine.

Amazon.com | Amazon Universal | Kobo | iTunes.com | iTunes Universal | Nook | Google Play

Update Day, May 2017

Hey all! I decided I'm going to try something different today. As you know, I have been vlogging for a while, but I also realized that not everyone can watch the video whenever they visit my blog. 

So today, I decided to put the video up top, and then follow it with the script from which the video is based. Please let me know what you think of this format!


Gosh, I can’t believe how much time has been flying by lately. It seemed like a few days ago that I last posted a vlog update, so I was quite shocked to see that it was three months ago. But there you go. Sometimes life and time get in the way, and the next thing you know, it’s the end of May. Ugh. Untentional rhyme.

But because we’re now on the last Friday of May, it’s time for me to share an update for my GotGoals bloghop. In case you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about…

I’m co-hosting a bloghop with Jen and Brittney, where we set some crazy, big or just really important writerly goals. Then on the last Friday of the month, we post updates on the progress we’ve made.

I also find it useful to set smaller monthly goals, which I then use as stepping stones toward my bigger goals.

So how did I do? 

Well, for the fact that I somehow completely let time get away from me this month, surprisingly well. Okay so I have to say that I didn’t set the bar particularly high, because I was trying to find my feet after quite a lot of crap. But I did say I wanted to write an average of five minutes per day.

And you know what? I hit that average on day two. It’s funny how averages work that way.

That said, the one thing that did take a hit this month was my freelancing. I’ve basically been endlessly working on some job or the other for the past three months, then got a big job at the end of last month and then… crickets. The frustrating thing is that I got that job and it was supposed to take two weeks, but my client hit a snag with the content I’m supposed to format. It’s really not her fault or anything like that, but the net effect is that I’m stuck waiting for her to get back to me. I know eventually that’ll get done, though, so it’s nice to know the money is still hanging around somewhere, waiting for me.

Then I went from nothing to having three jobs to do, but they all only came in over this past weekend, so I will only be able to record the income in June.

So things are really not going badly, but the sudden three week silence really got to me, because I’ve let everything else fall by the way-side over the past few months. It’s really annoying when I wish I could say I spent my empty days writing, but no, they were all spent catching up on a huge admin backlog.

I just realized that if I want to make any progress to the next level, and… you know, actually have more than five minutes a day to write, I need to get some help in. Luckily for me, I have an awesome brother who wants some flexible part time hours while he studies, et voila. I now have an assistant who’s going to help me keep everything rolling on schedule.

Which means that I’ll be able to regularly update as well. Eh…hopefully.

So with that in mind, next month’s goals: 

1) Write an average of 10 minutes every day.
2) Earn $1000 of writing or publishing related income.
3) Weekly updates to my vlog.
4) Sort out the snarling mess that is my social networks as a whole.

That’s it from me for this month. Please do leave me a comment about today's post structure. And how did your month go? Got any crazy writing goals that you’re chasing down? If you'd like to join the bloghop, you can find more information here. 

Back, and I've brought back-up.

Hey lovely people.

So as I mentioned before, things are going better here, but I've still been quiet.

The reason for this is rather silly and kind of good, but annoying all the same.

The truth is, I've been so busy with freelancing jobs that I haven't been able to even so much as look at any of my social networks for almost two months. The only exception being my monthly update posts, and even that one I almost missed in April because I was so busy and exhausted.

In fact, it's come to the point where I didn't know how to get ahead again. I already had my first inkling back when I first hit my $500 goal.

I'd made it and that's *AMAZING*, but I only just made it. As in, I hardly had any time left after doing the work. But for the past few months, I've been doing month after month at around a $300 level, but unable to break through the barrier simply because I'm not ready to raise my rates to make more money per job, but I don't have more time to work either. And the worst is, it's not actually the work that's killing me. It's all the admin that comes with it.

But then I had a bright idea.

My brother was talking about how he wants a really nice and flexible part-time job while he studies, and I realized I could really offer him that. In exchange for a fixed percentage of my writing/editing income, he's going to start working for me for a month to see if we can make things work.

If it does work out and we can streamline the work, I might finally be able to do more, and finish my book, and actually have time to visit blogs etc. etc. And if that's the case, he can actually make a really nice income right along with me, all while studying at the same time.

I'm really excited about this, because it might be an excellent way to expand the overall publishing business that is me.

How are you guys doing?

Update Day: January is Over

Today is the last Friday of the month, which means it's time for another Big Goals Update. For those of you wondering, fifteen of us have set some crazy or crazy important goals, and we update once a month on the last Friday, sharing our progress and encouragements.

You're welcome to sign up, if you want. Just fill in what you would like to achieve, and then write a post today, or the next last Friday of the month. 

So how did I do? 

My goals for January were mostly loose-form. I basically wanted to write every day, finish overhauling my published books, do regular social network updates, and make $500. 

I didn't achieve four of those goals. 

Mainly, though, because the one I did reach was a doozy. 

To illustrate:

The line graph is my monthly income goal. The bar graph beneath is the amount I've generated in a given month. 

To put that into perspective, each bar corresponds to the amount of income I've generated in every month since September. And in January, I more than doubled my previous record. And I basically did that in fourteen days. 

Which is why my writing graph looks like this: 

Womp womp womp. 

Started off very well, with me actually breaking my daily writing record by writing 10k words. In fact, I started off so well that I was convinced that I could write 100k words in But that was before the jobs started coming in. 

I hadn't expected my work-load to grow like it did, so I didn't plan accordingly, and in the end, my writing went stagnant. 

That said, I think I can get more done with proper planning. 

Which brings me to my next point. 

Goals for February

I have various goals that need to get done this year, but for this coming month, at least, I want to continue with my writing and income goals. 

So. 

I'm going to share first priority between writing 100k words (or close to it) and earning $1000 in income in a month. 

I realize that both of these are actually crazy big goals, but that's why I'm picking them. They make me reach. 

More than that, I actually think I can make it. 

It's all in my planning. 

So the short term plan for now is to figure out a structure that will actually help me get both done. 

How are you doing? Did you set goals? 

Balancing

I'm stealing a few moments to check in. It's really busy here on my side, since I'm trying to write 100k words this month and I got three editing and formatting jobs to do.

Not sure what I'm doing right to get all those jobs, but I'm not going to argue with it. I have to say, I'm really glad that I decided to augment my publishing income this way, because I'm actually enjoying it a lot. More than that, spending most of my working hours on this means that I'm really getting paid (and incentivized) to sharpen skills that I can use on my own publishing efforts later.

My major thing this week is to get these jobs done by Friday, because then I have enough money to pay out my Payoneer account, which means my cash flows at least until next month again. Yeah yeah. I know. Business. Bleh.

I realize the need for balance, though. I can't keep writing so much that I don't actually check in on my social networks. (I know. I'm TERRIBLE.) I can't freelance so much that I can't actually write. There has to be a way to make everything fit in.

So now I'm giving myself regular breaks on editing gigs. Usually, I have a tendency to sit down and power through the entire manuscripts in as close to one sitting as possible. I just get lost in what I'm doing, so I don't realize that I haven't moved in four straight hours.

Which is a terrible thing. Very bad for my health. So.

Now I have a timer running. I set it for 30 minutes to an hour, and stop, move around, blog, check in on twitter etc for a short while before starting again.

That way, I also get to refresh my mind, which I imagine will only serve me even better for getting frequent rests than it does without them.

I'm also hoping that giving myself frequent short breaks will keep me from being too tired once I get around to writing. I don't like pushing through exhaustion too much. It's too risky, because if I burn out, it'll be months before I can write, and I've given myself an official(ish) deadline for Book 3.

Luckily for me, writing is feeling like fun at the moment, which means my brain isn't picking up that it's actually a hell of a lot of work. Unless I'm tired.

So it's much better not to tire myself out. I'm way more productive that way.

How are you doing? Any tips for me to stay balanced?

Insecure Writer's Support Group

Hey everyone. It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. For those of you who don't know, the IWSG is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. Once a month, we share our insecurities, then visit each other and encourage each other. You're more than welcome to sign up. For more information and the entry list, please click here.

This month's question actually ties in quite nicely with my insecurities... 

In terms of your writing career, where do you see yourself five years from now, and what’s your plan to get there?

I'd actually like to be writing (and doing writing-related activities) full-time by the end of next year. (Actually, I'm basically working as if I'm full-time already, but it'd be nice to actually make a living from it.)

Five years from now, I'd like to be making a very comfortable living from my writing.

As for my plan to get there:

I'm using my writing skills to freelance as an editor/beta reader/article writer on Upwork and Fiverr. I'm also working on building a Patreon following, and obviously I'm selling books. Right now, I'm putting all of the money I'm generating back into making more money (E.G. through marketing, or through paying for products that aid me in writing, editing etc.)

Eventually, I'll hopefully be in a place where my writing earns enough for me to make a living. And actually, it's not all that impossible. The lucky thing is that I live in South Africa, which means I'm earning in Dollars and living in Rands. So, if I managed to make $500 a month after expenses, I'd actually have the same income as a good starting office job salary. (And 2.5 times my country's minimum wage.)

My insecurity right now, though, is my life at the moment. I'm not going to go into exactly what's going on right now, but every time it feels like we've finally clawed our way out of the shit we'd been dragged into, something comes by to shove us back in.

So at the moment, I'm trying not to feel like I'm never going to get anywhere again, but the thing is, the thought is there. It exists. And the only way for me to make it go away is by pushing through and working anyway to build up the life I want.

It'd just be nice if I didn't need to worry as much.

How are you doing? Do you set five year goals? 

Finally! A chance to update.

I'm finally back, with enough breathing room to let you know how I did with my crazy goals bloghop. This... isn't really a good thing, but because I'm tired of complaining, I'm just going to ignore the reason why I haven't been able to spend time in front of my computer and leave it at that.

There's no point to talking about the situation yet, because I'm just going to depress myself when things could actually be okay.

So.

I ended up resetting my goal in September to allow for any income related to my writing skills to go toward my $7500 a month goal goal. (Which means, editing, ad money from a writing blog, money for hosting writing classes, royalties etc. all count.) 

On this new system, I'm taking a look at income generated and word-count, because I do really want my actual book writing to add the majority to my income. 

Generated Income

Last month, I'd set a goal for $300 generated which is the sum of incomes generated previously and future income. Yes, this means I count the incomes twice, but it works because I want to see how my income generation grows while also seeing how much I'm actually getting in every month.

This month, though, some royalty money I'd loaned to my family got paid back, and it was enough to actually boost my income so much that I lifted the goal to $500 about half-way through. (And then still managed to get over that.) 

But because most of this money is a real windfall (writing related as it is), I decided to keep the goal at $500 this month, because it's a nice, lofty goal to reach for, which should keep me busy for time being. 

What am I spending all this money on? Mmm... first, the programs I need to update my books. Second, I bought a new web domain (with a custom e-mail address.) Other than that, I'm buying a map for The War of Six Crowns and everything else will go into a kitty to either carry me if I happen to go into a lean month (which feels like it might happen this month) and marketing. 

I'm delaying most of my marketing plans until my books are updated. (Just makes sense to me.) So really, finishing those updates are vital. 

Writing

When it comes to writing, I didn't achieve most of what I'd wanted to do, but I did win NaNoWriMo. In fact, I ended up writing 60,000 words.

I still feel like I've got 100,000 words to go. (Yes, I'm aware this book is huge.) So, I have a bit of a monster task in front of me. Especially now that I have a fraction of my time available. 

So... I don't think I'll be able to finish the book this year. (Which makes me really, really upset. Deep breaths.) 

I also need to finish updating my books this month so I can start pushing with marketing. I'm hoping to start with this over the weekend. I'm just glad to have all the tools at my disposal again. I just need time. (Deep deep breaths.) 

So how are you doing? 

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?

Insecure Writers' Support Group: Like a circle within a circle...

Goodness! I've been so busy lately, I almost lost track of time! Today is actually the first Wednesday of October, which means it's time for my Insecure Writer's Support Group post. For those of you who are familiar with IWSG, it's a monthly bloghop hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh, where we share our writing insecurities and encouragements with each other.

For more information or to sign up (you're more than welcome!), please click here.

Also, if you'd rather read this post on Wordpress, please click here.

My Insecurity

My biggest insecurity this month is one I've been able to push aside for the most part, but once I've started looking at it, it's actually a big one. 

See, recently I decided to take this writing gig full-time. (Long story, but don't worry. I didn't quit the day-job either.) The biggest difference that this decision has made is that I'm actually devoting most of my day to either writing or marketing in an attempt to bring in money. 

The thing is that I started doing this with $100 in the bank, which is currently stuck there because Payoneer has a $200 pay-out limit. 

So. Paid marketing platforms are out for me at the moment. As is basically anything I want to do to my books until my money is out (because I need to pay for my Adobe programs.)

And while my advertising for beta-reading, mentoring etc on Fiverr by far gets the most clicks, I think people might be scared of booking me when I have no reviews. (Annoying, because I've done six years' worth of critiques for my blogging buddies already, so I have the experience.) 

Which means that right now, I'm pretty much stuck. I want to refresh two of my three books to get more readers for those... But... I either have to pay a formatter (which I can't.) or use at least Adobe Acrobat. (Which I can't.) 

I have $4 stuck in Fiver at the moment (because they have a $50 pay-out limit) and I can get $1 more to try out a $5 marketing spree (I can use the $4 as credit). But there's little point to doing that until my books are updated. I need every dollar to go to maximum effect. So I can't just spend $5 on something I don't think will make a difference until I have everything in place that I need in place. 

So it's a vicious circle. Because without effective marketing, I'm not going to sell more books, which means I won't be getting $100 anytime soon. 

And EVEN if I make $100 in book sales, it'll take at least two months before I get the royalties. 

*Headdesk*

Right now, the quickest way for me to get that $100 would be to make it on Fiverr, or if people pledged support on Patreon. (Because that would take until the end of the month.) Both will take time building up, though.

So yeah. It's a vicious circle. 

Now for the IWSG Question...

When do you know the story is ready? 

Depends on what the story is supposed to be ready for. 

I know a story is ready to be written when I know the climax and ending. 

I know it's ready for editing when I no longer feel as if every word in the draft is precious and needs to be protected at every cost. 

I know it's ready for publishing when I spend an hour moving a single comma around. (Or some such.) 

What about you? When do you know a story is ready? Thoughts on a way for me to break my vicious circle?

Update Day: Hitting the Reset Button

Hey everyone! Today is the last Friday of the month, which means it's time for another Update Day!

I thought I'd do things a bit differently, which means...

Tada!

Vlog post.



To sum up for those of you who haven't the time to watch the vid:

This month, I decided to stop moping around and approach my writing career as if it's already my full-time job. My thinking is that I'm a business person anyway, so I might as well turn this writing thing into a business.

Making this work meant I had to rethink the way I'm going about this.

So...

TL:DR:

I'm hitting reset on my goal. 

My five-year goal is still $7500 a month, but now it can be from any writing related activity, whether it's me actually writing, or me using my writing expertise in some way.

I'm starting over. 

This is actually year three, but the change is so major and the mind-shift so big that I decided to start again. So September 2016 is month one of Year One. I basically did this, because I want to track my growth. And since my income basically flatlined for the past three months, I thought it would be a good thing to start since this major change got brought in.

I've been keeping track since 6th (which was when I decided to kick things up a notch), so that's enough for me to actually get some stats in.

Speaking of stats...

I'm also going to change the way I report on my progress. 

I might get back to the to-do list eventually, but I can't help feeling that people really don't care about those all that much.

A lot of people have been asking me how I'm actually doing with my five year goal, so I will be reporting on my money coming in and going out, since this full-time-writer-with-almost-no-money-to-start-with thing is probably something that might interest a lot of people.

Which means that I'll be posting monthly stats for the year. Two, in fact, but I'll explain more in a minute.

So how did I do? 

Basically, this full-time thing has two components: Me selling stories and services I already have, and me creating more stories. For ease of reference, I will call these Marketing and Writing. 

Marketing

Since my marketing results can only be measured in terms of income, I'm keeping track of that instead of the hours I'm putting in. 

My income basically gets divided into three groups: Income from previous months (since there's up to a 3 month delay on royalties etc), income earned within the month and income generated for the future (so I'm keeping track of books I sold today so I know how much I'll get in three months.) 

I set my goal for Total Income Generated. Which means that if I say $100 is my goal, I'll see that goal as achieved even if $100 came in only from previous months sales etc. 

Since I'm also concerned about my income's growth, I'll be keeping track of how much income I generate within a month and for future months, separately. So there will be a separate graph, where the goal line is calculated by subtracting my Income Generated Goal from the amount that came in from previous months. 

Okay? 

Okay. 

So first, let me look at income generated in past months vs income generated within this month and for future months.

Basically, the income accrued in previous months is money from Patreon (which is currently around $10). 

As you can see, most of my money generated this month was for current or future earnings. Let's see how those look. 

So since starting this whole exercise, I've critiqued one short-story on Fiverr, and actually sold some books on Amazon (which is definitely an uptick, because my book sales have basically been dead lately.) The Patreon income is basically the $10 from patrons who'd signed up before and $1 from a new sign-up. It will show up again next month as income accrued from previous months, since every month's subscriptions only actually hit my account in the following month.

Goal for October: 

It's such a nice, round number, so for now, I'm keeping to $100 as my goal. Fingers crossed that I actually hit the line next time. 

Writing

This month I basically set writing goals as I went along, which is why my goal line keeps jumping up as I hit my targets. 

I basically only started writing on 11 September, and then only sporadically. Then, on 24 September, I started timing my writing and trying to write every day. The effect on my daily word counts are quite staggering....

Let me put that into words real quick. I wrote over 16k words this month. 10k of those were written last week.

Goals for October: 

I have three big ones: 

1) I want to finish this draft of Book 3 of The War of Six Crowns before the end of the year, which means I'll basically be chasing NaNo targets every month for three months. Thanks to timing myself, I know I can type 2k words in 80 minutes. 

2) I want to write the story I have in mind for the Insecure Writers' Support Group competition. 

3) I want to re-format and update my currently published books, specifically The War of Six Crowns to prepare for the new covers I made for them. 

There are, of course, more goals (we're talking about me, here), but these are my priorities. 

How did your goals go? What do you think of this new format for my Update Day posts? Are you interested in the outcome of this experiment of mine? 

The Thing with Being a Writing Entrepreneur...

Now that I've decided to make a dead serious go of making a living, I'm having to completely rethink the way in which I'm spending my time.

And the thing is that I'm currently spending more time sorting out my social networking stuff than anything else. And there's so many things that depend on other things that depend on still other things, that I'm finding it really difficult to decide where to begin on a given day.

So, to help myself, I decided to create a nifty, colorful mind-map to simplify things visually.

This is the result...

*Headdesk* 

How are things going on your end?

Some More Perspective on the Full-Time Writing Thing

So lately, I decided to approach my writing like a business. And I'm calling myself a full-time writer, which has a few of you guys confused and worried.

Worried... might be somewhat accurate, although you guys are worrying for the wrong reasons. My other business(es) that I started to recover from the last SNAFU have entered the dreaded hurry-up-and-wait stage. Which is... Yeah. That bit worries me, and you're welcome to worry/pray with me. (Although I find that, upon praying, I worry a little less.)

The thing is that, while this hurry-up-and-wait phase is ongoing, I have hours and hours worth of time that I can use more constructively. And I decided to use those hours to be a full-time writer, because I'm basically working 40 day weeks at this writing thing (even, by the way, while I'm doing the day-job too.)

So really, this foray into full-time-writerness isn't new. At least, the time I can spend on it isn't. The major difference is that I've decided to set myself up better. Instead of saying I'll wait for quiet time and then waiting for an hour or two in case day-job work comes in, I'm asking if there's anything I have to do that can be done right now.

If there isn't, I'm immediately going into full-time-writer mode until such a time that something does come up at the office. (This happened on Wednesday, which I was super grateful for. But now offers have been made and we're waiting for clients to come back to us.)

In other words: No. I'm not refusing to do anything else that could bring me a more stable income just so I can write. 

It's just the case that, since I have to wait for my income anyway, I might as well spend it furthering my writing career instead of sitting around and doing nothing, waiting for the hours to pass.

Admittedly (as mentioned on Monday), pushing my writing career on a shoe-string budget is a pain in the ass.

That said, I'm not sure that it's a bad thing. 

Yes, I'm stressing about money. Yes, I have to literally turn every cent I get over twice in order to make this thing work. Yes, I'm currently having to do 90% of EVERYTHING myself and there are never enough hours in a day.

But.

Turning cents over twice is good business practice. Even when I do have money to splash around on my writing venture.

It's making me so sad to think how much money I wasted being inefficient with my time and money just because I assumed there would be another salary next month.

So yeah. EVEN if -- ahem -- WHEN my clients come back and my other job brings in some money, I'm only going to put back the royalties I've earned and used to other purposes. And IF I need more money for something, I will do so on a strict loan basis and keeping track of everything.

Because I want this thing to work. And it's not going to work if I'm lackadaisical about my writing business.

Business is a serious thing.

And I think, in retrospect, that saying "oh I'll make a career of writing someday when I have money" is bad business. (Sorry not sorry.)

So I'm putting my foot down right now.

I'm saying: Writing is my career now, regardless of my other jobs/obligations/present circumstances. 

I will approach it with the same seriousness with which I approach all of my other business activities.

Writing will support my writing.

And I will support my writing by writing even more.

Which is to say:

I am building an empire, even if I have to do it with my bare hands.