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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
I hope everybody’s
been enjoying this Holiday Season! I had a groovy Christmas Eve and
Day. I was in Fresno during that time visiting the family there. My
brother took me and his son to see Star Wars the Last Jedi
which was just awesome! And only last night, did I see The Force
Awakens on DVD. That is, I saw it for the second time only
yesterday since seeing it in the theatre two Christmases ago, also
with my brother and his son. (Hey, I think a new Holiday tradition is
forming in my family!) Now you’re probably wondering why I’m
watching the two movies out of order? Well, I hadn’t actually
planned on watching the latest movie until I returned here to
Sacramento, because I wanted to refresh myself on Force Awakens
first. But since I
only see my brother and his family a few times throughout the year, I
couldn’t resist an invitation to see a movie like Star Wars
with them. But now that I’m back, I’m
watching
the two movies in order and so will see Last Jedi again
by the beginning of the new year. So this year’s been ending well.
Often a person feels
a little sad when the year’s coming to an end, and you don’t
quite know what to expect on the other side of the door between the
old year and the new. But if great things happened in former then
great, if not greater, ones will happen in the latter as well. So I
thought it would be good to close out this year by looking back on my
writing accomplishments of 2017 and what I learned from them that I
can take into the upcoming year. These accomplishments were:
1. Guest-bloggingabout RPG and writing on Christine Rains Blog: when you
guest-blog on a fellow author’s website, it introduces you and your
work to other authors and readers. I don’t guest-blog as much as
other authors already do, so I
consider this
a big accomplishment in
any year.
2. Completing myfirst novella’s first draft: I’m not a big writer of long fiction
such as novels, so completing my first novella in its rough draft
form has been a significant success for me. I read over it too, and
noted revisions that needed to be made but then decided, at least for
now, not to continue with the revision process. It’s not a story
that I think I’ll be able to stick with, knowing the short
attention span I have. What is important about this accomplishment,
though, is that I committed myself to writing a full first draft of a
long work, a form of fiction that I’ve never written before. Having
done that, writing the next novella will probably come easier to me.
3. Publishing thepaperback edition of “Circa Sixty Years Dead”: This isn’t the
first time that I’ve published a paperback, but even the
self-publishing process can be trying whether it’s for a print book
or e-book, and so this is definitely a significant accomplishment for
me.
4. Producing mybusiness card: For at least two years I had been saying that I was
going to officialise myself more as a pro author by coming out with a
business card but kept putting it off. I did that just so I could
work on the product of the business, the writing itself. Not so in
2017!
5. My first vendortable at a convention and making sales from my books: Like with the
business card, I kept telling
myself I would set up a
vendor table and kept
putting it off until this year. One of the reasons why I kept
postponing it was because I knew how hard it was to break even by
selling books at live events. And do you know what happened? I didn’t
break even. But I did sell some books. Now what’s so successful
about selling books but not making a profit? The success is about the
promotion of those books. The more books you get into people’s
hands and the more money you make in doing so, the more you enhance
your rep as a professional author regardless of profit.
6. Participating ina blog hop: This past Halloween
I volunteered my time posting
for author
Patricia Lynn’s Trick-Or-Treat Blog Hop. As with
guest-blogging, I probably don’t do blog hops as much as most indie
authors do, and so this too was a major achievement in promoting my
work.
So, what have I made
of all these accomplishments? I’ve learned that when an author puts
him- or herself out in the community, online or off, it can make a
big difference. I’ve promoted and sold plenty of my books online.
But I didn’t imagine I would sell any on my first day of retailing
them at a live event, which is exactly what happened at Sac Con back
in October. The more you put yourself out there in the community, the
better connection you’ll make and the more sales you’ll make. But
even if you don’t make any sales, readers of your genre get to know
you more both as an author and reader. So expect to see me at at
least one other live event selling books and talking sci fi/fantasy
in general this upcoming year of 2018.
So what are your
writing accomplishments of 2017? For those of you who are more avid
readers than writers, what are your reading accomplishments of the
year? For example, did you get through a bigger number of books this
year than you did last year? Or did you finally start reading that
author you’ve been declaring to read for several years?
Until next year of
2018 . . . !
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