Verly close to finishing the book. Individual chapters going up on Vella each week.
…so busy that I didn’t prepare a blog post for today. Yesterday I worked hot and heavy on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, completing two chapters and doing a little restructuring. I had a number of phone calls and messages to make regarding work to be done at the house and upcoming travel.
Consequently, I didn’t prepare a blog post ahead of time. And you get this filler post. I may come back and say a little more later. Right now I’m preparing for a City inspection of some work and our quarterly pest control treatment. Also need to call about a car in the shop, accommodations for our next trip, and something else that’s escaping me right now. Oh, yes, find out what’s the hold up on getting an estimate on some work we want done.
Possibly I’ll get back later to add something to this.
ETA, 3:01 PM Friday 22 September 2023
Well, today I finished DA:RUTR. I wrote the last two chapters this morning. I also edited Chapter 17, putting me more than halfway through the editing process. In addition, ten episodes are uploaded to Kindle Vella and scheduled to be published on Mondays and Fridays. I think that, by this time next week, all episodes will be edited and scheduled to be published.
It’s always a good feeling when you say “I’m done” with the first draft of a book. Better even when it is fully edited, and then when it’s published. At least the first part is done.
Now to figure out what to write next. Most likely I’ll move on the A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1.
I don’t know how this will work, but I did it. The first episode went live this morning. The next will appear on Thursday. Then the episodes will come two a week, Monday and Thursday, until all are published.
Today is the day that I have become a Kindle Vella author.
But it was one day last week that I officially took the plunge. I won’t give the full story right now. Here’s the short version.
I’ve been working on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, since June. I did the research for this back in 2021, but other writing got in the way. But I made good progress on it in June, July, and August. I felt I was working toward a schedule that might have the book published in October if everything went right, or in November if not.
Completing the fourth book in the series would feel good. I published the last one in 2019. I can’t believe it’s been four years since then. I had enjoyed writing the series and always planned for more volumes, but other books got in the way. Finally, I made the decision that this one would be next. The fact that I have more sales in this series than any other was a strong inducement to get back to this.
But my plans were interrupted by Kindle Vella. For those who don’t know, Vella is a place where authors publish their stories/books as a series. Chapters are called “Episodes,” books are called “Season.” They can be published on any subject, at any frequency the author wants.
Volume 3 of Documenting America, on the events that bought us the Constitution, was published in 2019. I waited too long for the next volume.
Vella has a combination of fiction and nonfiction titles, but fiction dominates. I’ve browsed the nonfiction lists and haven’t been impressed with what’s there.
I’ve been watching Vella a couple of months. No one really knows if it is going to be successful. I finally decided there was no downside. I publish episodes while I’m still finishing up the final chapters. Vella allows you to publish the season as a book thirty days after the final episode appears. So I put it on Vella first. That causes me to be disciplined, to keep writing, editing, uploading, formatting, and promoting. When done, I’ll pull the episode back into a book and publish it that way.
Maybe I’ll make a little money with this volume on Vella, maybe not. But the book will be published, perhaps three or four months later than intended, but it will be published. Maybe it will join the ranks of its older brothers in the series and increase my sales later on.
Here’s the link to the series on Vella.Or maybe that’s just to the first episode. The first three episodes are free for anyone to read. Some number of free tokens are available to new readers. After that, you buy tokens and use them to read episodes. I’m not quite sure of the cost to read a book like this. But check it out.
Time to work on a cover for the newest volume in this series?
It’s that time of the month—time for accountability of writing goals. How did I do last month vs. what I planned? First, the progress.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. As usual, I achieved this. Only one time did I find myself late and have to throw something together.
Attend three writers meetings. One writers group is folding, so I’ll only have three most months henceforth. Attended all three, as well as an online social gathering of writers.
Begin serious writing work on Documenting America: Run-Up to Revolution. I don’t know how fast this will go—or how slow—so I won’t set a word goal. I actually began this on Saturday, and was able to complete the commentary part of Chapter 1—first draft, of course. This bodes well for future writing progress on this book. Yes! I made some major progress on this. As of 8/31, I had 12 of 31 chapters complete. The rest have the source documents fully edited and are ready for my words to be added.
Read more in reference documents for my new Bible study idea. If everything gels, get started on the study overview and outline. I didn’t read any more source documents, but I did spend a little time improving the outline.
Continue to work on digitizing/discarding of genealogy papers. Yes, I did this, though made less progress in the last week than previously.
Now for some goals. I’m a little hesitant to set any, because my mind has been too active on some potential new projects. But, if I don’t set some goals I’m just drifting to the future instead of steering a purposeful course. So here they are.
Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. I suspect my readers are tired of seeing that goal each month.
Attend three writers meetings, plus the online social gathering.
Complete the first draft of Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. This is very doable, but I will have to be disciplined, especially in consideration of…
.. Decide on whether to post my new Documenting America book to Kindle Vella and, if I do, get the first chapter/episode published on Wednesday, September 6.
Tie down the new writing idea that came to me on August 28-30. Write all I can about the idea in manuscript. No, I’m not sharing what it is now. Heck, I don’t know when I would have time to write it if it seems viable.
Enough! I’ll also be working on the genealogy papers digitization project. I have a very large notebook open on my desk that I’d like to get all the way through in September.
Last day of the month, time to enter my progress for last month and goals for the next.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this. I think only one time did I do a somewhat minor post. The rest were all more meaningful.
Attend two writers meetings, one of which I’ll present at. A third meeting may happen and I’ll attend, if the library can schedule them. I was able to attend only one writers meeting, due to a change in travel schedule. It was the one I presented at.
Work on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Last month, even though it wasn’t on the schedule, I managed to copy most of my source documents and load them into a Word document. The next step is reading and condensing them to the right length for the format of the series. I anticipate this will take all of July and possibly even longer. I was able to complete this. It was a fairly large task, cutting 130,000 words in the source documents down to 30,000 for my book. Happy to say I completed that on July 25th!
Write up my recent Bible study idea into a proper outline of what it would be. It turned out I wasn’t quite ready to write this up, except for some minor, handwritten notes. I continued to do more reading in some reference documents. Possibly I’ll get to it in August, or I may put it off until September.
Not an official goal, but I did a lot of scanning, saving, and discarding of genealogy papers. Having a good electronic filing system in place has really streamlined the process. That, and getting to the point of simply discarding stuff rather than scanning it.
So what about goals for August? Summer and family travel appear to be over, so maybe I can get some good writing time in.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
Attend three writers meetings. One writers group is folding, so I’ll only have three most months henceforth.
Begin serious writing work on Documenting America: Run-Up to Revolution. I don’t know how fast this will go—or how slow—so I won’t set a word goal. I actually began this on Saturday, and was able to complete the commentary part of Chapter 1—first draft, of course. This bodes well for future writing progress on this book.
Read more in reference documents for my new Bible study idea. If everything gels, get started on the study overview and outline.
Continue to work on digitizing/discarding of genealogy papers.
That doesn’t look like much in the way of goals, but it’s all I can think of at the moment.
I had thought my children’s time travel books might spur sales, but, alas, not so.
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.
I haven’t yet promoted the sequel. I know I should, but it just seems meaningless to do so.
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.
In that post, I said my main project would be the next Documenting America series, Run-Up To Revolution. I started working on it yesterday, creating the Table of Contents and cataloging the source items already in the Word document. I turns out I only have five more documents to either find and copy or type. That’s a good start.
But is it the right thing to write? The last couple of days I did some more looking into Kindle Vella. For those who don’t know, that’s an Amazon platform for stories/books brought out in serial form. I thought maybe I could publish my nascent memoir, Tales Of A Vagabond, there. I have five “episodes” as K-V calls them) written, and a little inspiration caused me to start planning the broader book.
But wait, because that new Bible study I mentioned in a previous post continues to pull at me. I did a little research reading for it yesterday in the second source document, and a proposed outline has started to come together in my mind. Nothing is on paper yet.
But it also occurred to me that maybe I should return to working on the eight-part Bible study A Walk Though Holy Week. I’ve written about that before. Parts 4, 5, 6, and 7 are written, and Parts 4, 5, and 6 have had one editorial pass. These four could be ready to publish in a couple of months, Parts 1, 2, and 3 are fully planned, and Part 8 partially planned. It occurred to me that maybe I should shift to writing Part 1, for I don’t know if it makes sense to begin publishing the series at Part 4. What to do, what to do?
Then, our adult Sunday School class has begun re-studying C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. We went through it around 2008, and I wrote four chapters covering four letters. I found them useful in teaching fifteen years later, and I feel the itch to work again on it again. But, that would be quite time consuming and energy sapping. What to do?
And that’s not all. A couple of months ago, finding myself at the time of our critique group and me with nothing to share, I dashed off the first four pages of the first book in my long-planned-but-never-started Alfred Cottage Mysteries. The crit group seemed to like it, as they had liked the series summary I had shared earlier. I’ve wanted to write that series for a long time but have hesitated since it would be yet another genre—something I don’t really need.
And one other thing occurred to me. Perhaps it’s time to get going transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, as I did with the letters from our years in Kuwait. I want to get to that while I still have strength of mind and body. That’s not a commercial project; it would be only for family. But it’s important to me to see it done. I think, among all these things I’ve mentioned, it is the least likely to pop up to the surface at this time.
With all that, I actually have one or two other ideas floating around in my head, things that have come to me recently that haven’t gelled sufficiently to think of a title, an outline, or a purpose and scope. But they are there, consuming brain cells, and interrupting my reading on more immediately pressing projects.
Ah, the life of the writer with Genre Focus Disorder, too much immediate time, and too few years left in an already fruitful life to write everything that sits a while in my mind, never mind those ideas that flit through.
How can I possibly have progress in a month that I was taking off from writing? Well, taking time off for me is different than for others. It’s hard for me not to keep up with writing even during my month off. So I got a few things done. I’ll list them along with the goals, then I’ll see what kind of goals I can set for July.
Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, as always. Even with grandparent busyness, I was able to get this done. Each day had a real blog post written and posted.
Attend writer groups meetings as I can based on travel schedule. As expected, travel kept be away from all but one of the scheduled meetings.
Proofread as much as I can of the four completed volumes of A Walk Through Holy Week. I proofread parts 4, 5, and 6 (which I didn’t remember proofreading last year). Part 7 will be a July goal.
Work on the cover for the AWTHW series. I don’t sell enough books to pay for cover creation, so I just have to do it myself. I have a concept I want to use, if I can do the graphics. Which leads to my last goal… This is done, sort of. I worked with my 10-year-old granddaughter, who shows some artistic talent, to go from my preliminary concept to a working prototype. Whether it’s a fully workable prototype, I’m not sure.
Work with G.I.M.P. on how to do more artistry in covers. I’ll have to find some tutorials.
Other things I got done were:
Catching up on correspondence, both new writing and filing all unfiled correspondence for 2023.
Publish The Key To Time Travel. I didn’t mention this as a June goal because I wasn’t sure of the timing for getting the cover. After dealing with some health issues, the cover designer finished her work, and the book went on sale this month.
Work on the source material for the next Documenting America book. See the July goals.
Do more reading than normal.
Brainstorm an idea for a new Bible study, and read some source material for it.
Made a few updates to my website—not major ones, but things that needed doing.
And one thing that wasn’t writing related, but which I feel like mentioning, was digitizing my genealogy files. No, they are not done—far from it. But I added to what I did in prior months and fine-tuned my filing system as I went along. At the end of the month I felt good about how much of this I accomplished.
Now, for some July goals.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
Attend two writers meetings, one of which I’ll present at. A third meeting may happen and I’ll attend, if the library can schedule them.
Work on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Last month, even thought it wasn’t on the schedule, I managed to copy most of my source documents and load them into a Word document. The next step is reading and condensing them to the right length for the format of the series. I anticipate this will take all of July and possibly even longer.
Write up my recent Bible study idea into a proper outline of what it would be.
That’s a good number of goals for a month after a break. Documenting America will be my main task for the month.
I’m hoping that, by the end of the year, this will not be the only Bible study in my bibliography. Alas, I wrote that caption in 2022, and here it is 2023 and it’s still my only published Bible study. But I’m much closer to that goal.
Since early February, my main writing focus has been the Bible study on Holy Week that I developed. I wrote about it here. With a good writing day Saturday, reaching back to work on Part 5 (Part 7 being caught up), I got to the point where I can see light at the end of the tunnel on both Part 5 and Part 7. An introduction for the series, to go in the as-yet-un-started Part 1 also came to me this weekend.
Thus, it’s time to be thinking about the next thing to write. The second book in The Forest Throne series, The Key To Time Travel, is done, just waiting on cover creation. I will most likely give it the once over, checking to make sure the dates are correct. That’s a one-day task at most.
This was one of my two new publications in 2022. The sequel will be out within two months. When will I do the next one?
Somewhere around June 1, I will be looking to start something else—unless I take a month off from writing to do some major decluttering work, in which case July is the more likely date for writing something new. I actually started something else last week, the first volume in the Alfred Cottage Mysteries. That was mainly to have something to bring to critique group. I don’t know if I’m ready to begin work on it as yet.
But what do I write next? My Genre Focus Disorder (GFD) is so severe, I have any one of several directions to turn. I’ve spoken about GFD before, and if I can find the posts, I’ll put in a couple of links. It is a self-defined, self-diagnosed writing condition. It’s the inability to stick to one genre and build an audience in it. I’ve got it bad. I’ve met a few other writers with it, but I believe their cases are less severe than mine. Now that it’s time to pick a new direction to go in, what do I choose?
This was the last volume published in my Church History Novels series. When Ill I do the 5th?
I could write the next book in the Documenting America series. I have sold more in that series than any other. I did the reading research for the next volume, which will be titled Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, around two years ago. Hopefully my notes are comprehensive enough that I can jump right into the writing.
Or how about the next book in the Church History Novels series? I have four books in that complete. That’s my second-best selling series (which isn’t saying much). I know what the next volume will be about, though I’m not sure of the title yet. Actually, I know what the next three or four books in the series will be.
It’s been a long time since I wrote most of the poems in this, around 2005-6, I think.
Then there’s a book of poetry I’d like to write. It’s tentatively titled On Of My Wishes. I created the document last year and grabbed close to 30 poems from my “inventory” that will fit the theme. Alas, inspiration for the 20 to 30 others I need to write to flesh out the book hasn’t come. I’ve been so busy with prose, poetry is almost a distant memory. Could I rekindle the desire to write it, at least for one more book?
I could keep going with the Holy Week Bible study. I’ve completed Parts 4 and 6, and, as I said earlier, and very close to done with Parts 5 and 7. That leaves Parts 1, 2, 3, and 8 to be written. I could just continue on with them while that’s what’s been on my mind. Or, I have another ten Bible studies developed and taught, and a few more in development that would probably make decent books. Maybe that’s where I should go.
I have one Carlyle book published and two more started. And essays about him on my mind. It’s probably an obsession that I ought to get treatment for.
A couple of other non-fiction projects I started on are about Thomas Carlyle. One was a comprehensive, chronological bibliography. I’m well along with that, maybe 70 percent of the work, with the hardest parts complete. I pulled the document up Saturday evening to check to see if I had a certain of his compositions in it. I did, including documentation from his letters. Also, I began putting together a book about Carlyle’s Chartism, a pivotal work for him I believe. That may also be around 70 percent done, though I haven’t looked at it for at least five years. Why do either one of them, when the one volume about Carlyle that I edited and published doesn’t sell? Beats me. Mainly to complete unfinished projects. I hate leaving things unfinished.
A period of intense research is what led to this book. What will come of this new time of research?
Another thing that’s nagging at me is a genealogy book about my wife’s immigrant ancestor, John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. I actually have much work done on it as far as research of his personal life is concerned. I researched, wrote, and published books about two of his descendants. I’d like to do a book about him, and maybe about four or five more about his children. This is more a dream, a hobby almost. Still, I’d like to get that done.
I could always stick with the Alfred Cottage Mysteries. They are cozy mysteries based on young Alfred’s genealogical studies. For some reason, I think they would sell. More dreaming, I guess.
One more short story to go in this already published collection has come to mind. Maybe that will be next?
And that’s not all that’s available for me to add to. The Gutter Chronicles could use a third volume. Ideas for series that I’ve fleshed out include The Waterville Dome, one about stock trading that’s partly planned, and…it seems that I’m forgetting something else. Oh, yes, the next two volumes in The Forest Throne series. The next one is partly planned out. And I haven’t even mentioned short stories.
See what I mean about Genre Focus Disorder? Maybe I do need to take that month off from writing, get some serious decluttering/dis-accumulation done, then see where to go. Whatever I decide, I’ll report it here.
A few days ago, I gave some January goals. I did that before I had given a lot of thought to 2023 as a whole. I’ve since been able to do that, and have come up with some goals for the year. Here they are.
Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel
Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books.
Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW
Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW
Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it.
Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course.
Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study.
Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution.
One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to go, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done.
Since these are goals covering a full year, and since way leads on to way along this path through the woods, I reserve the right to change these as the months go by. Possibly there will be updates. If not, look for a post in late December 2023 as to how I did in 2023 relative to these goals.
I said on Monday this would be a busy week, and it was, even busier than I thought it would be.
Tuesday, I made my presentation to the NW Arkansas Letter Writers Society. This was a repeat of my presentation “The Universal Postal Union: The Letter Writer’s Friend”. We were eight in number at the meeting, and attenders seemed interested. At the end of the presentation, we brainstormed other things I might talk about in future meetings.
Wednesday, I went to John Tyson Elementary School in Springdale, AR, and presented copies of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel to my beta readers, Heny and Izzy, and to their E.A.S.T. facilitator, Jennifer Bogart. It was good to meet these two students and chat with them a while. The school had the school district media people there. There was a post about it on the school district’s website, but I can’t find the link now.
Then Thursday was the semi-monthly meeting of our critique group, the Scribblers & Scribes. We had five in attendance, one who was a new member and another I hadn’t met before. All five of us had some writing to share, and we went from 6 p.m. to a little after 8:30 p.m. It was quite a variety of writing to review.
I had a good time making the last-minute presentation to the homeschool group—and I sold a few books as well.
That’s what I had on the writer/author schedule at the beginning of the week. But Thursday I received a message from a woman I’d sold some books to (both used books and some of mine), saying I should look for a text. It was already there, asking me if I would make a presentation to a homeschool group at their Constitution Day, which was the next day, Friday morning—this morning. I said yes, of course, knowing I had only 24 hours to prepare. The meeting was at a park in Bentonville. The students were from ages 5-17, including a good group of teenagers, and all had a parent or grandparent with them. I made what I think was a good presentation, though mostly at the level of the older kids there rather than the younger. The parents all seemed to like it, based on comments I received afterwards. I sold a good number of books in my Documenting America series. And I got a few orders for books that people will want around November.
So now I have an easing in my schedule. Time to take care of car maintenance and yardwork and grocery shopping. And, perhaps, squeezing in a little writing.
