After having taken the month of June off from writing—except you can’t fully take that long of a time off from writing—what you do is back off of new writing and pretty much maintain things like the blog and promotion—I’m now back at it, working on a new book in my Documenting America series.
It felt a little weird at first, to come down to The Dungeon in the morning and do things other than writing. But my routines, interrupted for a mere 30 days, have quickly re-established themselves. I have a goal as to where I want to be at the end of July, and I think that I’m either on pace of maybe even a little ahead of where I want to be.
That gets the long-suppressed dreams of a writer going in my mind. As I work on a new project, other projects come to mind. Even as I plod along toward daily goals, and book sales trickle in at Amazon (10 in June, so far 3 in July, plus one personal sale), other new projects come to mind. Specifically, things I could write and publish serially on Kindle Vella. Four non-fiction series are rolling around, taking up brain space that should be going to the new book. Well, one of those projects is related to the Documenting America book.
The other three potential Vella projects are pie-in-the-sky stuff, things that are more dreams than real projects. Things that would spur sales and generate a little income, get my name a little more wide-spread. Things that would take up time.
And that’s the problem. Do I want to hop over to Vella series from books? That makes no sense. I have no idea how well Vella series sell. Most that are there seem to be fiction, and my ideas are non-fiction. Last month I browsed the non-fiction titles there, and could draw no conclusions. Would my non-fiction series gain an audience there, or not?
In my dreams, they would, and not just a small audience, but a fantastic, large, and ever-expanding audience, waiting for the next in each series, almost begging for more. I won’t share the dreams of how many dollars those series would bring in, because if I did, someone would say it’s time for an intervention, to bring me back to earth.
Such are the dreams of the writer. Working on one project while dreaming of four others while watching anemic sales show up in the Amazon sales report while wondering how to better self-promote. I suspect I’m not alone in that.
Time to move on to the next daily task on the new book. Push the dreams into the background for a couple of hours, and see what I can get done.
Enjoyed your thoughts! On our trip, we had dinner one night with my husband’s cousin, who is a self-pubbing writer. She talked a lot about Vella. I really didn’t know anything about it. She works full-time but writes her Vella stories (a chapter each week, I think) on Saturday. She said, at least at the beginning, she was making “thousands” each month!!! I couldn’t believe it. Of course, she writes romances and paranormal fiction — neither of which are my genres. I’ll admit though, it made me do some considering. If you try it, write about it! I’d love to hear someone else’s experience.