Three borrows in two months: it’s nice to have new readers for this oldie.
When I first started self-publishing, back in 2011, two organizations competed for authors: Amazon, which distributed e-books and print books to its own store; and Smashwords, which distributed e-books to a lot of retailers. I began by uploading my books to Amazon, but before many months passed I also uploaded to Smashwords.
Over the years, other services popped up. Barnes & Noble made it possible to uploads your books directly to them, bypassing the middle men. Another service distributing to retailers was Draft 2 Digital. I made the decision that it was hard enough keeping up with Amazon and Smashwords that I wouldn’t mess with D2D too.
In fact, I had very few sales through Smashwords, and didn’t bother to upload most of my latest books.
Then, a year or two ago, D2D bought out Smashwords. I waited a long time to transfer my books, but finally did early this year. I spent almost no time learning the D2D system. I had too much on my plate, between writing and household and health, to read up on how D2D did things.
In September, I received an e-mail from D2D saying my August sales report was available. That surprised me. I opened the report and found I found I’d sold 1 copy of Dr. Luke’s Assistant and one of my short story “Charlie Delta Delta”. The royalty for each was 32¢! That couldn’t be. I contacted D2D and learned that Hoopla was a different type of retailer. It’s more of a library service, and a “sale” is really a borrow.
Then, Wednesday I received an email from D2D saying my September sales report was available. I downloaded it, and learned I had five sales, all through Hoopla (so really five borrows. One of Documenting America Vol 1, two of Documenting America Home School edition, and two more of Doctor Luke’s Assistant. The problem is: how do I account for these borrows in terms or recording sales. Is a borrow a sale? or something less than a sale?
A borrow means a reader. A sale means a reader—or so you hope. So in terms of readership, a borrow is the same as a sale, maybe even more likely to result in a reader. So, at least for now, I’m counting each borrow as a sale. If that skews my sales number, I may have to rethink that.
Of course, with the delay in D2D reporting, I won’t know each month’s sales until almost a month after the last day of the month. But that’s okay. I’m glad for the additional readers.
October 1, falling on a Friday—a regular blogging day for me—is the perfect day for recording what I accomplished in September, and for establishing some goals for October. Here’s the progress.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Done, though one Saturday I realized I had totally forgotten to post anything on Friday, so I got a post up a day late. And one Monday post, that I wrote the previous Friday, accidentally got posted on that Friday, #usererror. But every regular blogging day was covered. To help me be a little more regular with my posting, I actually have four blog posts started as drafts.
Wrap up my research project on our church’s charter members. Done! Wednesday I made a final tweak in the list of probable charter members. I started putting my notes into usable form, which I should finish doing in October.
Finish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, the short story I’ve been working on for two or three months. Done! I finished this around Sept 20 and sent it by e-mail to my critique group.
Link the books in my Church History Novels series on Amazon. This is an easy process. I’ve been holding off until the new covers were done, but it’s time to just do it. No, I didn’t do this. Shame on me. It’s an easy task. I guess I was hoping to have the covers re-done first, so I kept putting it off. Back on the to-do list for this month.
I still have a few more tweaks to do on the church centennial book. I’m going to work on it after I finish this post and may finish them today (Friday afternoon). Done! Though see what I put in my October goals.
Attend my writers’ groups. At the moment all three are scheduled. Done! One was cancelled, the other two met in person and I attended. I also attended two meetings of a weekly on-line writing group. I don’t know whether I’ll be a regular there, but it was good.
Document one Bible study idea I had and put it in the queue. Done! I recorded it in my journal. At some point I’ll have to transfer it to an ideas folder, either on paper or on the computer, but at least it’s documented and I’ve been able to let my mind sort of forget it.
Alright, September was a productive month. I event added a couple of thousand words to my next work-in-progress, something I hadn’t planned on. Now, what about October? Be bold, or be cautious, in my goals. I’m just going to type and see how it comes out.
Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. I have a couple of conflicts coming up, so maybe those pre-written and to-be-scheduled posts will come in handy.
Work on my work-in-progress, The Forest Throne. I can’t remember what I’ve written about that here. I may have to include a post on it. I won’t give a specific word count goal for now. Possibly I’ll edit this in a week or so.
Link the four novels in my Church History novels series. Why do I keep putting this off?
Begin formatting the church Centennial book. I received one of three outside contributions and pasted it in. I have a promise of receiving the other two very soon. Meanwhile, I’m proofreading the book, which has caused me to realize I have three blanks to be filled in. They are just names and dates, but, still, they will require a little work. I hope to have that done today or tomorrow. Then the formatting and photograph additions will begin. Possibly I will have the formatting done by the end of October and will be ready to go to print.
Attend writers groups this month. I’m not sure how many it will be. I may have conflicts with the meeting dates of two of my regular groups. Maybe I’ll be able to get in on the new group a couple of times.
Publish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, once I get critiques back from the Scribblers & Scribes. I have one back already. Publishing will mean cover creation, but I’m already pulling ideas together.
Take a look at, but don’t necessarily write more on, the Bible study I was working on during the spring and early summer. I’ve been so busy with other things I don’t remember where I left off. Since I might start it soon, as in two months or so, it would be good to have it swimming around in my mind even now, occupying a few gray cells.
That’s enough. As with last month, there’s always the chance that something else could pop up.
Six ads running for this, getting impressions, clicks, and a few sales. Other promotion is bearing fruit.
This morning I went outside to work shortly after I got up at 6:45 a.m. The temperature was 60°, and it felt good. I planned to work a half hour, mainly cleaning up a few things and pulling a few weeds from the backyard. When I did what I wanted and went inside, I was surprised to find I’d worked more than 45 minutes. I was way past scheduled time for my blog post, but I wasn’t worried about it since I had a post partially started—two posts actually—and thus could post it quickly once I got to it.
Alas, I finally came to my dashboard here, found there was only one post, and realized it is no where ready to be posted. Bad memory I have.
So here I am with nothing prepared to say. I could talk about any number of things off the cuff: what I’m writing, what I’m reading, how book sales are, what I’m doing for book sales promotion, life in general. I guess I could tackle all of those.
I’m still working on little changes to the church centennial book. I got some new information yesterday that will require a minor change. I also have decided to double-check a couple of places in the book. One I’m fairly sure will require a change, the other one maybe or maybe not. Still, I come closer to done on this every day. Also, my short story inches along. Every couple of days I open the file, re-read it to remember where I was, and add a few hundred words. I need an uninterrupted , undistracted couple of hours to finish it.
For reading, my time is taken up with Way Truth Life, the book for our Life Group lessons. I’m also reading a book on the Genesis flood. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact title, except that it might be The Genesis Flood. It is a scholarly work from the late 50s-early 60s. I’m not enjoying it a whole lot, but will stay with it a while longer. As to recently finished books, I have four sitting here on my work table waiting for me to write my book reviews.
Book sales are good in September. So far I have 14 sales outright, and I think two accesses from Kindle Unlimited with both people finishing the book. This is my first time to have KU reads (not many of my books are in KU), and I need to figure how to account for them in my stats. I suppose as 2 sales, bringing the total to 16. That’s a good start to the month.
Sometime soon I’ll make a presentation to the local Civil War Roundtable. That will be my first author event since June 2019.
I have been a little more active in book promotion the last week. I still have my Amazon ads running for three books, and they seem to be generating sales. I contacted two influencers in our denomination, both men I’ve interacted with in the past, about giving a shout out to Acts Of Faith. I heard back from one on Friday and he is going to put a promo in his next newsletter. Another promotional item concerns my Civil War book, Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Back in July I gave a copy of it to the president of the local Civil War Roundtable. I heard back from him yesterday. He liked the book and wants me to make a presentation to the Roundtable. I don’t yet know when that will be, but should know today or tomorrow. So book promotion is in progress and, at least a little, seems to be working.
Life in general is good. I’m still having trouble losing weight, but in general my weight is dropping very slowly. My blood sugars have been under control, though just a little higher than I’d like. This morning’s was good. My right knee has been hurting more of late. Perhaps replacement surgery will have to be moved up. Although, the last three or four days I’ve done a few different things to try and ease the pain and it seems to be working. Four nights of good sleep in a row. Yardwork is in much better shape than in past years. Household projects are slowly being done. My devotional life remains consistent, with room for improvement.
Life goes on. I’ll have a better post on Friday, and will start getting some of these book reviews done.
I must be losing my mind, for I forgot that, at the change of the month, I was supposed to do my usual progress and goals post. No, not losing my mind, but totally absorbed in a research project. I finished that Friday (I’ll discuss it in the progress section below) and it was like blinders came off. I realized I needed to do this post. But, having already made a post on Friday Sept 3, I’m writing this on Friday but will schedule it to post on Monday Sept 6.
First, here are the goals I posted to begin August and what progress I made against them.
Continue to tweak the church anniversary book. I can think of only two more interviews to do. I may add in photos this month. Well, I more or less did this. I tweaked the book. I did all the interviews I intend to do. I even reached out on the internet to find relatives of our church’s charter members, with some success. I added a few photos, but for the most part let the research of charter members overwhelm the tweaking/finishing the book, so it will be a September goal.
Finish a short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series, tentatively titled “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”. I wrote four pages in July to share with the Scribblers & Scribes critique group when we met that month. With just under 2,000 words written, I believe it’s 2/3 done. I guess I did some work on this, since it sits at 3600 words, but it’s not done. Add it to September goals.
Work on the middle grade novel I started in July. The Forest Throne is technically to be co-authored by my oldest grandson, though I’ll do most of the writing and he will edit it, helping me to understand what 10-13 year old boys like. I wrote the first chapter of this in July and sent it to him for comments, receiving his approbation of the sample. I’d like to add another 5,000 words to it this month to go with the 1350 written so far. I’ve brainstormed out most of the plot but not specific scenes. No writing on this at all. I brainstormed the plot some more (which is work and progress) and figured out how to solve another plot problem that I was uncertain of. Hoping to get back to this in September.
Blog twice a week, as always. Did this, as always.
Do some work on my website. I’m not sure what, but I have to overcome this technophobia and improve it. Nope, put this off again. I still need to do this. Oh, if I were only a techie!
Attend meetings of my three writing groups, assuming they don’t get cancelled because of local corona virus outbreaks. Two of the groups cancelled, with the pandemic figuring in each. The Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista met, and I attended.
If the cover artist gets the covers re-done, re-publish the three older church history novels, updating them for new copyright info and list of works, as well as link them in a series. The cover artist wasn’t able to do this, so my goal remains not done.
So, what are my goals for September 2021? Just about everything from last month, I reckon.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
Wrap up my research project on our church’s charter member. I’ve come to a stopping point of sorts. What remains is to get my research notes into a useful format so that a future researcher, maybe at our 150th anniversary in 2071, will find the notes legible and useful and the research accurate.
Finish “Foxtrot Alpha Tango”, the short story I’ve been working on for two or three months.
Link the books in my Church History Novels series on Amazon. This is an easy process. I’ve been holding off until the new covers were done, but it’s time to just do it.
I still have a few more tweaks to do on the church centennial book. I’m going to work on it after I finish this post and may finish them today (Friday afternoon).
Attend my writers’ groups. At the moment all three are scheduled.
Document one Bible study idea I had and put it in the queue.
That’s enough. I wonder if I can achieve much of this in September. See you in early October. October 1 is a Friday, so possibly I’ll post progress and goals on the 1st.
Is this considered a craft? Oh, no, I did a craft! What’s to become of me? I feel the dendrites in my nervous system getting all worried.
Whether the pandemic is over or not, it’s good to be coming out of it. To go to the grocery store and not wear a mask. To go to church, not wear a mask, and get a cup of coffee (while staying 6 ft. distanced the whole time). To have long-interrupted groups meet for the first time in over a year. Yes, while we realize the spread of the virus isn’t over, and questions remain as to the effectiveness of the vaccine against all mutations of the virus, it’s still good to open up.
One group I belong to has been meeting. The Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers took a few months off, then decided to meet outdoors. I joined this group in March 2020 and attended one meeting before the pandemic hit. These are people who enjoy writing letters, on paper, that get sent through the mail. We have been meeting at a church not too far from me, under a drive-under at the back door, skipping the coldest and hottest months. That was good to keep seeing each other and talk about our letter writing activities.
Another group I’m a member of is the Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. This is a writers critique group. We had our last meeting at a library in early March 2020. We typically had four or five people attend out of six active members. One of those has moved away; two others were new and we don’t know what their current interest is. Three of us were core members who rarely missed a meeting. While we were shut down, we sent pieces for critique by e-mail and received feedback the same way, but it wasn’t quite the same as reading pages in front of other writers and receiving comments then.
We began meeting again last Tuesday, all except me, as I had a one time church meeting to attend. I e-mailed in for critique the beginning of a short story. I’ll have to wait for the July meeting to see them all again. Anyone reading this who is interested in a writing critique group can find us through MeetUp.
The other group I’m a member of is the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets. This group is a diverse bunch of writers, a fair number being poets. They met once a month at a writers retreat center in Bella Vista, sometimes as many as 20 people. The meetings were about inspiration for and education concerning writing, along with read-around of our work. Then the pandemic hit. The March 2020 meeting was cancelled. By April we were ready for Zoom meetings and did this every month during the pandemic.
In May, the State having lifted many restrictions, we met at a coffee shop, just five of us, and did some planning and dreaming. In June, we met at a pavilion of one of Bella Vista’s parks. One of our two group leaders led us in an exercise. Now, I hate writing exercises. I’m not sure why; I’d just rather write what I want to write and be done with it. But I took part. The leader had brought plucked off leaves, colored pens, pencils, and sketching paper. We were to trace a leaf (or leaves, whatever we wanted), then take fifteen minutes to write about it, after which we read our exercise to the group.
Not trace. I’m not exactly sure what this craft is called. Put the leaf on wax paper, then a sketch sheet above it, and rub the leaf through the paper so that the features come through. Leaf rubbing I suppose it’s called. My leaf didn’t want to cooperate. I chose yellow as my rubbing color. Probably not the best, as yellow doesn’t show well. The thick parts of the leaf didn’t show well, so I took a green pencil and traced them.
As to the writing, I stared at my leaf and couldn’t think of a thing. Then I took note of the dendritic pattern of the leaf and remembered an e-mail discussion with my now-deceased friend, Gary Boden, and a train of though came to mind. Here’s what I wrote and read to the group.
Dendritic Passage
As the trace of the leaf shows more prominently the division of segments—i.e. the spine and the hard, thick parts, so is my writing life and all that has brought me to this point. These start at the periphery and end at the bottom of the stem in what is called a dendritic pattern.
Dendritic? Yes, that’s the term. We used it in hydrology to describe the nature of a drainage basin, coming together from the far-flung edges and arriving at the main channel. But I think the word comes from the natural sciences, for I first heard it from Gary, a zoologist by education who ended up his career in computer systems. Branches coming together but with a fabric between them is what makes a dendritic pattern.
As I look at this leaf from an unknown plant and see its dendritic pattern, I see my writing. Each little spine is a genre that captures some of my time and results in a book or story. The latch-key teen experiences resulted in the Danny Tompkins stories. The many places visited early in adult life are being turned into the Sharon Williams stories and Operation Lotus Sunday. My love of God’s story and His word & church has moved to a branch that is the church history novels and
Hydrology, botany, and neurology (if that’s the right word) all make use of the term dendritic. Who knew?
At that point the leader said “Time.” When I read what I had to the group, someone talked about the dendritic pattern of the nervous system. I later looked up a dictionary definition, and both the pattern of a tree and the nervous system were used in the definition of dendritic. And the word “dendrite” for the first time came to my attention. Guess I should have figured that.
This is not a profound post. I have no conclusion to draw, no inspirational thing to write. Just an observations. Groups are coming back. I took part in a writing exercise. I did a craft-like thing and lived to write about it. All is not right with the world, but it was better that day when we met.
My camera is not with me right now. When it is, I’ll edit in a photo of my leaf rubbing, quite possibly the first and last I’ll ever do. Now, on to my day’s dendritic activities.
Oh, and why did I write “Passage” instead of “Pattern” in the title? I guess I don’t know.
It was about nine years ago—or maybe eight—when I finished writing and publishing a book, I forget which one now. I could probably look back at posts on this blog to see which one. But my point is that I didn’t have the next book or story planned. I didn’t know what I was going to do next.
I had several things in mind that I wanted to write, things that I had outlined at least in part. Which to do? I decided to write the first chapter of each and see which one seemed right. I did this for four full-length books. One just seemed to flow with no trouble at all. One was really labored. The other two were in between. So I wrote the one where the words flowed best and set the others aside until later.
A second Bible study? Might that be next?
That’s where I am now. I finished writing The Teachings in February and published it in May. Since then I’ve been working on the book of the history of our church in advance of our 100th anniversary. I’ve been kind of poking along on it, since the deadline is so far out. I might finish it this month—the words, that is. Illustrations will take a little longer. I do a little on it almost every day. But the end is in sight. Time to be thinking about the next project.
But what to do? As I said before, I don’t have any real sense of what it should be. Therefore, I now plan to do what I did before: write something of each of the projects and see which one seems to flow easiest; that will then be the one I write. What are those projects, and where do they stand at this time?
First is a Bible study. Our Life Group studied the Last Supper over Lent and Easter this year. As I prepared lessons, I wrote notes that would go into a Bible study. Since I teach only every other week, I didn’t tackle this from beginning to end, but as I studied for the weeks I taught and as I took time to do it. In preparation for this post, I looked at my files and find them confusing. I have three Bible study files. The one most recently saved is clearly not the most complete, based on word count. I’ll have to somehow merge the files. My best guess is that I have a little over 8,000 words written. The full study will almost certainly need 30,000 words.
Second is the next volume in my Documenting America series, tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution. As I’ve said before, I completed the basic reading for research, but have yet to do any actual writing. I started outlining the book, and accessing source documents for editing. There’s a lot of work there. But, I actually have two chapters that are borrowed from the first Documenting America book (with a few edits). I expect this book to run 45-50,000 words.
I’ve left Sharon alone for a while. Maybe it’s time to add #6 to the series. It will be set in Saudi Arabia.
Third is a short story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca, Unconventional CIA Agent series. The story line has been rolling around in my head for some time. Sunday and Monday I decided to begin writing it. It currently stands at about 1,100 words, with 6,000 words the probable length. This writing went very easy.
Fourth is the story I mentioned in my last post, The Forest Throne. A short-ish book for 10-14 year olds, this will be my first time writing for other than an adult audience. I’ve brainstormed some of this but am not 100 percent sure how it will come together nor how long it will be. According to plan, I began writing this on Tuesday. the words flowed easy. I worked at it only an hour or so, and was surprised to find I’d written almost 1,400 words.
So what is going to be next? Darned if I know. It will be either the short story or The Forest Throne. I’ll have to write a little more in each. You can be sure I’ll say something about it here.
For the first time in many years, I start the new year with uncertainty as to what I want to accomplish in my writing. Perhaps this is a residual effect of the corona virus pandemic, which caused a general uncertainty in the world and made life difficult to plan. I didn’t get as much writing done in 2020 as I wanted to, not so much because of corona virus but because of being diverted to other things (health issue, de-cluttering work, letters transcription).
But, a writer who is publishing is running a business, which should have a business plan if it wants to be successful. So here is my plan. It’s a starting point. I will be thinking much about this over the early part of the year and may modify it based on further consideration.
These books have been waiting for the book that goes between them to be written. I’m finally back to working on it.
Finish and publish The Teachings. A little over a week ago, I got back to serious work on this novel. As of today’s effort, I have 37,000 words in the first draft. If 80,000 is the minimum size of the book, I’m closing in on halfway done. But I don’t feel that the story is halfway done, so perhaps this will be a 90,000 word novel. Either way, at my current pace I could be done in mid-February, which means I might have the book ready to publish in April. For now, those are my goals.
Write and publish one Sharon Williams story. Believe it or not the next story in my series Sharon Williams Fonseca: Unconventional CIA Agent, is starting to roll around in my brain. This is happening unsolicited. I’m not trying to think about it, yet the story is developing. That may be a sign that I should write the story this year.
Write and publish one Documenting America volume. I’m planning for this to be Run-up To Revolution, covering 1761-1775, the documents that led to our rebelling against England. I did some reading for research in 2019 and a little more last year. I need to figure out where I was and see how quickly I could do this. Writing these volumes is always pleasurable, and I’m looking forward to this.
I know which Bible study I want to write and publish next, but it’s going to take some work. Not sure I’m quite ready to do that..
Write and publish a Bible study. I’ve planned out what I want the next one to be: Entrusted To My Care: A Study of 1st and 2nd Timothy. I have a fair number of notes on this, have taught it twice, and think I could do this one with the least amount of effort among all those I’ve developed. Yet, it would still be a pretty significant effort. This would be later in the year.
Maintain a twice per week blogging schedule. The last two years have shown me I can do this. On occasion I may have to make a dummy post or even skip one, but for the most part I should be able to do this.
It’s been a long time since I wrote most of the poems in this, around 2005-6, I think.
Write some poetry. The desire to write poetry again has become active, even if the words aren’t rolling around yet as they are for the short story. I know the poetry book I want to write. My question is: do I wait for inspiration to strike or do I apply some perspiration and just get on with the writing? That’s what I’ll be thinking about the next few weeks.
As I say, this is a start. For now I’m concentrating on my novel. Once I get that done, I’ll give this plan serious re-evaluation.
The 5th story in my Sharon Williams Fonseca – Unconventional CIA Agent series. Published in January 2020, I’ve sold one copy.
Ah, 2021 is starting out good, with January 1 falling on Friday, my regular blog post day. I always start a new year here by summarizing the year just ended and making some goals for the year just starting. I’ll do that today with a recap of 2020. On Monday I’ll put some writing goals for 2021, assuming, that is, that I formulate some goals between now and then into a publishable state.
Retired from my day job (for the 2nd year), cooped up due to the corona virus pandemic, you’d think I got a lot of writing done, right? You’d be wrong. I’ve said all this before on the blog, but let me go through it again.
In January I published “Tango Delta Foxtrot”, the next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series. That was written in 2019 and passed through my critique group. It all came to January and I published it then. So far I’ve had one sale. Yippee.
Also in January, I continued work in the next novel in my church history novels series. Begun in late 2019 and tentatively titled The Teachings, it falls chronologically between Doctor Luke’s Assistant and Preserve The Revelation. The action takes place during the first Jewish war of 66 to 70 A.D. I got a few chapters in, running them by the critique group, when I bogged down on making my story fit into the historical events. I spent a lot of time reading in source materials, adding a little text, setting it aside, and going back to the sources again. By mid-March I had about 21,000, or between 20 and 25 percent of the intended length. Feeling frustrated with it, I decided to stop my major work on it.
Stephen Cross was quite a character. Frequently in court, involved with a pirate, taking part in two military excursions, he left a lot of footprints that I’ve been able to follow.
Instead, I pulled out some genealogy work I had begun some time ago. This was the lives of Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney. Elizabeth is a gr-gr-whatever-aunt of Lynda’s. I began studying them two or three years prior and realized I had enough material on them to make a short book. I organized the material back then and wrote the beginnings of a book. I picked up that work again and saw that yes, I could make a book out of their lives, but I really needed to do more research. I worked on that the second half of March, making good progress.
Then Lynda went into the hospital on April 3. I couldn’t go in to see her, of course, so to keep myself busy, instead of going back to The Teachings, I focused on Stephen and Elizabeth. By the time Lynda got out on April 21 I had most of the research done and was back writing the book. My labor on it continued after Lynda came home. It all came together around the end of May, I edited and formatted in June, and published it in July. Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Newbury has—wait for it—one sale so far. That’s fine. This isn’t intended to be a best seller. Hopefully some day a few Cross and Cheney researchers will find it.
From there I moved to decluttering/dis-accumulation work at our house. I dug into boxes of papers left behind by my mother-in-law. That caused me to also look at our own boxes of papers and begin culling. In the process I found our Kuwait years letters. I collated them, indexed them, and then decided to transcribe them. This took up some of July, all of August, and some of September. Someday I will add photos and make it a book for the family. For now, it will sit in the cloud.
During this time, I occasionally picked up The Teachings and did a little work on it, either research or writing. I added 500 words here and there. But I still couldn’t focus on it.
I updated my first Documenting America book for conditions in 2020: correcting typos, correcting formatting, adding new text for 2020.
In September, I think, I decided to re-publish my first history book, Documenting America: Lessons From the United States’ Historical Documents. I published it first in 2011 and decided it could use some updating for conditions in America in 2020. I think it was September to early October that I: re-read it; corrected a few typos; and added text to each chapter for what’s going on now. I also had to improve the formatting because, in 2011, I didn’t know much about print book formatting and made some errors. I completed this work in mid-October and re-published it.
Meanwhile, I had been dissatisfied with some formatting and illustration quality in the Cross-Cheney book. I tackled that in October as well, substituting some figures, improving the pixel quality of others, and re-published it. I still wish they were better than they are but at least they are better than they were.
Writing related, but not new writing, was taking part in two week-long on-line seminars about using Amazon advertising to boost book sales, once in July and once in October. I saw an increase in sales as a result, though the ads really are not paying out. I’m still within the budget I set, so I’ll keep the ads running. I’ll take the challenge again this month, then see where I go with it.
Finally, in the second half of December, I was ready to return to serious work on The Teachings. Over the last few days of the month I added over 5,000 words, bringing my total to just short of 33,500. I have much of the rest of the book planned, and should be able to make good progress, so long as other things don’t get in the way.
Here’s where my Church History Novels series stands. Working on that “gray” one.
Things such as a new short story, or deciding to transcribe more letters, or let decluttering overtake me again.
Was it a productive year, writing-wise? Perhaps. I wish I had more to show for it. May 2021 be better.
Here’s what I had for my March goals and how I did relative to them.
Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this. Once I did a “can’t write much today” post, and once I didn’t get my Friday post in till Saturday, but I got them done.
Make significant progress on The Teachings, my novel-in-progress. I need to make this measurable, so I’ll set 20,000 words to be added this month. That means, at the close of March 31st, I should be at 32, 122 or better. Failed miserably on this when my genealogy book and research took over practically all my waking hours. I ended the month with around 23,250 words. Not awful, but not what I hoped for.
Make a final decision on what Bible study to work on this year. I decided this: it will be Entrusted To My Care: A Bible Study of 1 & 2 Timothy.
Attend three writing group meetings this month, two for Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista and one for Village Lake Writers & Poets. Due to the corona virus outbreak, two of these three meetings were cancelled. The first one, on March 4, we did at the Rogers library. The 2nd Wednesday Noon group will meet as a Facebook livestream followed by a Zoom conference this month, and I’m the speaker.
Spend a little time going through the genealogy book I started over two years ago. My goal is to make a judgment of how much work would be involved and whether I could publish it this year. I haven’t talked much about this on the blog. I’ll have to do a post or two on it. I accomplished this—big time. I’m working hot and heavy on the book, to the detriment of all other writing tasks, and it’s coming along well. Up to 88 pages and the end is not yet.
Republish the two stories in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series I didn’t get done last month, to add my current list of published works (and correct any typos I might find). Did this! All five Sharon Williams Fonseca stories are re-published with most recent data on my published works, as well as a correcting a few typos in each.
Continue reading for research in the next Documenting America book. This will include searching for available documents. I have a few already chosen, but more are needed. This month I may be searching for documents more than reading them. I don’t know if I can claim having done this or not. I found some new on-line sources and skimmed one and bookmarked the site. I guess I can claim it.
So, what about April? I’m somewhat uncertain due to this genealogy obsession that has to run its course before I can get back to other work. Thus I think my goals will be modest this month.
Blog twice a week.
Get as far as I can with the genealogy book.
Spend at least some time in The Teachings. I should set a word goal. Let’s say 3,000 words is my goal for the month.
Give my talk to the Village Lake Writers & Poets on April 8.
Do some research into the next Documenting America book. Maybe it will just read the document I found. Maybe it will be to peruse the site that document came from and note other documents for use and at least skim them.
That’s all for April. It will be a busy month, just not in the things I had on my master 2020 list.
Early in the month I postedmy February writing goals, saying at the time they were modest goals, as befitting my schedule of other activities for the month. Time now to see how I did on them.
Blog twice a week. Based on past experience I feel good about this. Did this. Once I had a “sick day” post that didn’t really say much, but at least I posted.
Attend the mid-month meeting of Scribblers & Scribes of Bella Vista. I’ll be away for the other two writer group meetings I normally attend. I did this. It was a good meeting, with just the four regulars.
Write a large amount in The Teachings. I started this last month and would like to get a lot done. I hesitate to set a word goal, as I’ll be doing some research/reading simultaneously. However, goals should be measurable, so I’ll set 10,000 words as my goal. Ideally I should be writing more, at least 1,000 words a day. Maybe, as I get further into it, I’ll write that much a day. After a fast start, my cold slowed me down. But, as I came out of the fog of the cold, I had some good days. As of right now, The Teachings stands at 12,122 words. Since I started the month with less than 300, I met my goal.
Review the Bible studies I’ve written before, and ones I have planned, to see which one I’ll write next. I don’t plan on beginning it just yet, but I want to know which one I’m doing so I can be thinking about it. I reviewed the Bible studies several times this month. I ruled out some, ruled others in. As of today I’m close to having made a decision. It’s down to two or three to choose between.
Finish re-publishing the Sharon Williams Fonseca short stories. I have two more to go. Doing this to correct any typos and to add all my books and stories to the document. No, didn’t do this. In fact, I forgot about this. It would have been an easy thing to do on days when I didn’t feel like writing. I’ll add it to March.
Do more research for Documenting America: Run-up to Revolution. I have two main research books in hand, but will look for other sources, including on-line. I did about as much as I intended. I wish I had done a little more, but at least I got some reading done. Alas, the document I read (a 60-page pamphlet from the pre-Revolutionary War era) looks like it will be hard to use in the book.
So, that’s not bad for accomplishing my goals. May this new month be even better.
