RoW80 Update: Let’s Stay Together.

Now that I’ve pretty much officially moved into the boyfriend’s apartment (the cats are settled, so that makes it legit), this next week or two is going to be about getting all my crap moved over (no easy task, as there’s significantly less room here) and finding myself a new routine that works around sharing my time and space with someone else. In a way, Friday’s post about breaking from the tyranny of the clock was borne from this exact thing. He likes to sleep in, and I feel bad waking him, so I no longer set an alarm clock (except in cases where I have to be up well before when I would naturally awaken). The only schedule I have to work around is my part-time job, which only accounts for 25 hours a week on a busy day, so things are getting very “go with the flow of whatever” around here. I like that I’m not as concerned about time, but I still need a structure around which I use my time wisely. That’s where my RoW80 goals come in real handy, and these updates help keep me on track so I don’t waste away too many days in this new laisse-faire approach.

Let’s break down what’s coming into swing now that I’m coming into my own at the new place:

Goal One: Promotion. With the exception of one day, I’ve actually been finding venues to promote Soulless pretty consistently, some free, some paid. It’s still to early to determine which venues have been the most beneficial so far, but I do know that I’ve already made more with Soulless than I have with Bowlful of Bunnies. I’m sure the higher price tag on the former might have something to do with it, but it confirms for me that the approach has been solid. I’d like to shift a little more focus onto promoting the World Unknown Review more aggressively, too, so I’m going to start tracking Soulless‘s progress a little closer. If it’s taken a jump up from the previous day, I’ll promote WUR that day. If it’s taken a dip, I promote Soulless. If it’s about the same, I’ll go with which ever one I feel needs the next venue. A little bit of a balancing act, though I feel it’s a little crazy to be nitpicking at them this closely. However, I like that kind of approach, as long as I’m mindful of when it starts to become a little obsessive.

Edit: Literally two seconds after I posted this, I received emails from both Goodkindles and One Shot Pitch that my ads with them went live! So it’ll be interesting to see tomorrow if they did any good. You can check them out here and here!

I might even do a little promotion for BoB coming up here soon, especially since I discovered /r/wroteabook on reddit.

Goal Two: Short Stories. I’m still going to use the excuse that I still haven’t unpacked one of my notebooks that helps me keep track of what I’ve submitted where as the delay on brushing up some stories to send out, but, really, I haven’t had the mind-set. I’ll get there. Some August 31st deadlines are moving in quickly, so I might just buckle down next week and see what might work where, or if I can pull something out of thin air before those submissions close. I pushed myself to finally get “Flesh and Feathers” (those of you who have read Bowlful of Bunnies might recognize that one!) to The Maine Review‘s Rocky Coast Contest, so hopefully that gets the trend of submitting more going along.

Goal Three: Medeline. Not a chapter a day, but I’m getting at least a page a day, just as I expected. One thing that happened with this project that’s kind of exciting is that I’ve started writing some of the scenes out of order. That’s right. The habitually beginning-to-end L.S. Engler is playing around with the idea of writing scenes all higgly-piggly then trying to put them together in the end. This project is the perfect one to play around with this, though, as, really, since it’s based on a short story, I only have a few major points to hit, and the rest is essentially filler. So I can really play around with which scenes help the main story, which are useless, which can fit in where in the timeline…it should be pretty interesting, as I’ve never written like this before, and it gives me something to write while I’m at my part-time job, since my efforts to write short stories in the downtime there haven’t been very successful.

I’m also traipsing through Fallon Brown‘s manuscript, hopefully offering lots of helpful advice and encouragement, while also cheering on my fellow RoWers, who you can find here. How’s everyone else doing?

Happy writing!