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Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


Over the weekend I re-read Save the Cat. Since we're seeing some new interest I thought I'd highlight this book.

It's designed for movies/screenplays but all of his story cues, plot points, and requirements match a good novel. I use his beat sheet and Weilands outline for all of my plotting. Between the two it makes for a nice template that tells you what emotions/problem style you need to have. It's so very nice to sit down and know that I have a thousand words to build a conflict that gets handled in a few thousand more.

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POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug

brotherly posted:

That brings up issues of risk and future career development (ie, if I quit and do this full time and fail, what are my job options?? I have a nice, fat gap on my resume, with only "Smut Extraordinaire" written in comic sans italic pink, but who wants to hire the Smut Lord?) but I don't know, there's risk in any career, especially in anything self employed. We bitch and moan about Amazon and yeah Amazon is poo poo but every industry has their ups and downs. Risk management is the name of the game.

Popping in to address this issue specifically: if you job seek after a year or two of trying out authorship-only work, reframe it as running your own small business, because that is what you are as a self-publishing author - a sole proprietor. There's no dishonor in failing nobly. If you can account for what you did during that time (developed marketing skills, copywriting, accounting, vendor and supplier management, blah blah blah revenue numbers), it's actually a good thing to include on your resume. As always, I recommend checking what Allison at AskAManager.org says about how to account for a gap year/small business on your job applications.

Naturally this advice is not applicable if you fail because you spent your time playing Modern Warfare and Fallout 4.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug

Yooper! I've been meaning to ask you -- are you using any promo services for your sf work or are you steamrolling the market on name recognition now? I've got a fantasy piece I'll probably push Q1 2016 and I'm looking for more targeted promo/ad services.

brotherly
Aug 20, 2014

DEHUMANIZE YOURSELF AND FACE TO BLOODSHED

RedTonic posted:

Popping in to address this issue specifically: if you job seek after a year or two of trying out authorship-only work, reframe it as running your own small business, because that is what you are as a self-publishing author - a sole proprietor. There's no dishonor in failing nobly. If you can account for what you did during that time (developed marketing skills, copywriting, accounting, vendor and supplier management, blah blah blah revenue numbers), it's actually a good thing to include on your resume. As always, I recommend checking what Allison at AskAManager.org says about how to account for a gap year/small business on your job applications.

Naturally this advice is not applicable if you fail because you spent your time playing Modern Warfare and Fallout 4.

Thanks for the advice, Redtonic.

This is the sort of gem RT drops in IRC on the reg, people.

Lord Smuttington will rise again!

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


RedTonic posted:

Yooper! I've been meaning to ask you -- are you using any promo services for your sf work or are you steamrolling the market on name recognition now? I've got a fantasy piece I'll probably push Q1 2016 and I'm looking for more targeted promo/ad services.

The only promo service that I found to be worthwhile was Bookbub. So my last two releases have been just from my mailing list and name recognition. One did really well (~350 rank), the other broke even but didn't hit as well (~1900 best rank) as I'd hoped.

There's just not the promo stuff out there for my genre like for romance. Mailing list is absolutely critical. Like laser beam with a fusion powered suit of titanium armor critical.

If it's a steamroller it is a very small one. Maybe a sidewalk roller.

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

Sundae posted:

#2 - Within five years, I expect to either inherit a pair of heavily indebted, financially irresponsible boomer in-laws or their children when they die... My wife (one of their nine total children) and I are the only people in the extended family with the means to take care of the kids once the parents kick the bucket, so we're basically bracing ourselves for the likely upcoming guardianship of at least one of them.

I'd love to just tell them to gently caress off when they 'retire' and have no income on nearly a million in mortgage and Parent PLUS debts, but the only ones that really hurts are the children, so I have to take it into consideration when planning my own career aspirations... We can't even have our own kids because we have to plan to take care of other people's kids. :suicide:
I can sympathise with that. For my part, I met my wife when her mother was dying of cancer, and we inherited the house. Downside is we inherited it jointly with her sister, and have somehow slipped into the role of parents for her.

It's like we went from newly weds to having a teenage daughter, only since i'm her brother in law, I can't tell her off when she's being annoying, or makes a mess, or noise when i'm trying to work. I don't get on with her, but my wife keeps saying she wants us to be a family.

We're now completely financially tied to her, and have also landed ourselves in a situation where we can't even think about kids because we're shouldering someone else's responsibility. So yeah, I can sympathise.

The upshot I guess is that the mortgage is paid, so we just have bills. We're able to live off my wife's salary, so she's been telling her family i'm trying to write and this is one of the only points in our life where we'll be able to afford this.

So I chip away at writing my first novel and publicising a small backlog of smut, finding out every month or so that the rules have changed and I've been screwing myself over somehow in the meantime. The problem is it's been over a year of trying now (at least with smut) and I just can't seem to crack it. Writing is pretty much the only thing i've ever had good feedback on, right from school, through college and at uni. But with the day to day realities, maybe it's not for me.

I dunno, I read AO's posts in particular and wonder how the gently caress do you do it? How do you write a novel a month and keep going? Is your life sorted in other respects? Do you have the support of your partner? Parents? Friends? How many hours is your job and what other responsibilities do you have on you?

This is probably all E/N rambling but I guess if there's a point to take away, it's that what works for one person may not work for others. Market observations like which genre to target, which price point to set, word counts etc are absolutes that should apply no matter who you are.

But there are other limits, like how many words you can do in a day before you burn out. How much time you have alone without disturbances. Physical & mental health restrictions, stuff like that.

Lazlow
Nov 30, 2004

angel opportunity posted:

far more advice than I hoped in a first reponse

Dude, thank you SO much for all that. I was actually reading through the thread from the beginning and honed in on your little timeline there, seeing as how it was most likely close to what I'd be doing - small but steady gains. Then last July hit and the KU stuff exploded and my heart sank. But reading on brought back some hope, and your post here was amazing. Thank you so much.

Welp, I'm off to read some romance novels do some research!

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Bobby Deluxe posted:



I dunno, I read AO's posts in particular and wonder how the gently caress do you do it? How do you write a novel a month and keep going? Is your life sorted in other respects? Do you have the support of your partner? Parents? Friends? How many hours is your job and what other responsibilities do you have on you?

This is probably all E/N rambling but I guess if there's a point to take away, it's that what works for one person may not work for others. Market observations like which genre to target, which price point to set, word counts etc are absolutes that should apply no matter who you are.

But there are other limits, like how many words you can do in a day before you burn out. How much time you have alone without disturbances. Physical & mental health restrictions, stuff like that.

I'm doing novellas right now, so only 35k words. One of my goals is to get better at storycrafting and FASTER. I know 35k is actually good for shifter PNR, which I'm doing, but I think 50k may be smarter overall. Getting in 15k more words under the same cover/advertising/etc. seems like a good step to make if the 35k-word number doesn't work out for me. Alternatively I could try to release two novellas a month and hope the more frequent releases is better than the bigger releases.

The key thing for me to start doing this was that I had to stop writing short erotica. It was hard to stop, because the bundles especially are still lucrative. I spent 2 months actively trying to still make it work, and it made me ~$3,000 over three months. In the third month I was ever so slowly willing myself to start romance, but telling myself I'd release a short on my erotica pen name every so often just to keep it rolling. Thinking about all the steps I just typed out--particularly getting ARC reviews--made me just not want to do it and demotivated me from even trying. It took me nearly three months to release the first novella--including a full month to do the single editing pass.

Once I released the first one, I told myself I MUST release the second one a month later. I think I was done with the 35k words in two weeks, including writing 8k words in one 5-hour session on a Saturday. I did the editing pass in about seven hours total: five on the day before Thanksgiving, and two on Thanksgiving (so to make clear, the thing I dragged out for a full month on the first book took me only a day and a half on the second book). I left it with enough time so the proofreader I hired had five days, and the ARC reviewers had a week to read. Basically, if you are motivated properly, you can do poo poo really fast even with a day job. During the first novella I was mourning the loss of KU 1.0 erotica income and only halfway mentally into the romance. Now I'm 100% into the romance and don't give a poo poo about the erotica loss. It's done and over for me.

Fortunately my day job is low stress and I rarely have to work after hours. I occasionally have to go to conferences out of state, but it's very rare. Otherwise, at 5pm my day job is over and mentally switched off. It pays poo poo too ($30,000/year) so my motivation to make good money writing is higher than if my day job paid well. Making an extra $3,000/month would pretty much double my income, and I think I'm really close to being able to do that if I keep at this. My wife supports me and lets me go write whenever I need to since she saw how much money I started making with erotica.

Another thing for me is that the job I currently have is rare, and the skills do not transfer well. My wife is looking at going back to school, and I'll have to follow her and lose my day job. Whether I can find another job like this where we go is very uncertain. I probably could given enough time, but there are VERY few openings for this kind of position, and in a given place there may simply just be zero openings for two years. This means that getting my romance income rolling is really critical for me. I want to be able to say confidently when we move, "I'm going to write full-time and see if we can make it work." If I am already making ~$3,000/month in my spare time when it comes time to move, it will be a pretty easy decision to make. If I'm still making like $1,200/month, it will be a risky decision.

EDIT: Also some disclaimer...I'm not really SUCCEEDING at romance now. The book did okay for a first book, but if every book performs the same as this one, it's NOT worth it and I'd have made more sticking to erotica. My motivation and drive here is all based on the idea that--in the long term--this will have a higher payout.

angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Dec 7, 2015

Loel
Jun 4, 2012

"For the Emperor."

There was a terrible noise.
There was a terrible silence.



Yooper posted:

Yo, I do milscifi and I'm not aware of any serials that are rocking it. Look at the top milscifi guys and no one is doing 10k serials. Everyone is doing 70k-100k per novel series.

Not saying you won't sell well, but you may discover more impact with a traditional length story.

It would certainly be cheaper that way, and there are some natural breaks around those areas. My readers were concerned that if I made a big slab of a book and it didn't sell, it would be more disheartening than having ~20 products. Although making 3 larger books and slabbing together for an omnibus does have appeal.

I'd need to check the actual distro rights, a reader commissioned this for me. But, thoughts as a cover?



And in stained glass

vseslav.botkin
Feb 18, 2007
Professor

First is quite nice, although might want to do a little more to bring out the face if you can, doesn't read in thumbnail. Stained glass version is bad.

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
The artwork is pretty good but the thumbnail doesn't read at all. The thumbnail is more important than the full-size image.

Here is my lovely attempt to show you a thumbnail that will read better:



Notice that you can barely make out her head in the original. I had to paint that purple color behind to try to make the silhouette noticeable, but it still barely is. I tried drawing a turquoise light source onto her shoulder cannon and thus being able to paint green highlights onto her hair, but I suck too much at drawing and couldn't get it to look good. Looking at my thumbnail, I'd probably use an even brighter color than I did on the entire top half of the background. Whoever drew this is way way way better at painting than me, but this image lacks a real draw or focus to me.

Now, try to put actual text on it that looks good. I buy my own covers in large part because it's so hard to find text to match the picture, look professional, etc. If you slap some half-rear end text onto that, it will look godawful (I know because I tried just now!) On the other end of that, good looking text could make it look miles better.

angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Dec 8, 2015

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

Bobby Deluxe posted:

I dunno, I read AO's posts in particular and wonder how the gently caress do you do it?

Have you considered that you might be too comfortable? No mortgage, wife pays all the bills, biggest problem seems to be a teenage sister-in-law. If there's no gun to your head, there's less reason for you to produce. I find myself in these kinds of ruts often nowadays when I know that three years ago I would never have slacked off like I am now.

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


LowellDND posted:

It would certainly be cheaper that way, and there are some natural breaks around those areas. My readers were concerned that if I made a big slab of a book and it didn't sell, it would be more disheartening than having ~20 products. Although making 3 larger books and slabbing together for an omnibus does have appeal.

I'd need to check the actual distro rights, a reader commissioned this for me. But, thoughts as a cover?



And in stained glass



blobs of darkness

Aaronicon
Oct 2, 2010

A BLOO BLOO ANYONE I DISAGREE WITH IS A "BAD PERSON" WHO DESERVES TO DIE PLEEEASE DONT FALL ALL OVER YOURSELF WHITEWASHING THEM A BLOO BLOO

LowellDND posted:

I'd need to check the actual distro rights, a reader commissioned this for me. But, thoughts as a cover?



And in stained glass



Yeah that's an Inquisitor from Warhammer 40k. Are you trying to sell warhams fanfic? The similarities are way too similar otherwise. I mean, you'll be trying to slip something like this past the company that sued Skips the Space Marine just for the 'Space Marine' part.

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012


The artwork is cool, but yah, thats like Esienhorns girlfriend or something.

If your book doesn't sell, or just sells a little bit, you'll be fine. But what happens when you crack the top 100 on Amazon and some attorney at Games Workshop HQ sees it? That's lawyer porn. They can fight it, and they know you have money. If the rights are questionable you potentially hamstring yourself into a really lovely place.

I know a few milscifi authors, myself included, will write a few stand alones to judge whats selling well. I alternate between books in a series, a couple of stand alones, then back to the series. If the standalones sell well, then they turn into a series. If they don't, well, then it's back to the drawing board.

In your case you've got a monster. I'd do whatever you can to make sure the first book/novella/series is awesome, compelling, emotional, and makes me want to read more. If it sells well a decent cover will be a minor cost with huge benefits.

Always assume you'll make $10k a month on one book, and invest in it as such (cover, editor, etc.). If you don't, you definitely won't hit $10k a month.

LowellDND posted:

It would certainly be cheaper that way, and there are some natural breaks around those areas. My readers were concerned that if I made a big slab of a book and it didn't sell, it would be more disheartening than having ~20 products. Although making 3 larger books and slabbing together for an omnibus does have appeal.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
Yeah, a quick GIS says this is explicitly a WH40K tech priest: http://thedurrrrian.deviantart.com/art/Tech-Priest-Inquisitor-540467902 -- You wouldn't be able to get away with this for long if the book it covered was remotely successful. Fan art as a cover? Not even once.

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

EngineerSean posted:

Have you considered that you might be too comfortable?
Oh trust me, i'm not comfortable. The sister in law is 25, she just acts like a teenager. I can't get poo poo done when she's in because of all the noise, and she's constantly in because she works like two evenings a week. It's fried my nerves and my productivity.

Recently I've started going to the library for a few hours and writing there, but there are a few things going on right now that mean I haven't been able to. Like today, I needed to list a bunch of poo poo on eBay to catch last minute present grandmas, and promo a bunch of smut I can't do at the library.

e: I think with not working for so long, i've let my life slip into a rut. Having the bills let me settle in and get comfortable, but it stopped being fun a while back. Consequently I don't have a lot of personal strength, but what little I have is either going into trying to get better mentally, or it's being sapped by her.

Like I said, i've been working at the library and getting a pretty successful 3k done most days, so it's turning around slowly.

To bring this back to a more general post, what's everyone else's productivity dos and don'ts?

Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Dec 8, 2015

Fuego Fish
Dec 5, 2004

By tooth and claw!

EngineerSean posted:

Have you considered that you might be too comfortable? No mortgage, wife pays all the bills, biggest problem seems to be a teenage sister-in-law. If there's no gun to your head, there's less reason for you to produce. I find myself in these kinds of ruts often nowadays when I know that three years ago I would never have slacked off like I am now.

Comparatively, I'm incredibly uncomfortable and I find the "gun to your head" thing only hurts my productivity.

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

Fuego Fish posted:

Comparatively, I'm incredibly uncomfortable and I find the "gun to your head" thing only hurts my productivity.
In my case i'm generally stressed and depressed, so additional pressure generally makes me cave.

I genuinely wish I was someone who fought under pressure instead of collapsing, because i've a feeling i'd get a shitload more done.

Fuego Fish
Dec 5, 2004

By tooth and claw!

Bobby Deluxe posted:

In my case i'm generally stressed and depressed, so additional pressure generally makes me cave.

I genuinely wish I was someone who fought under pressure instead of collapsing, because i've a feeling i'd get a shitload more done.

I've also got the Sad Brains™ and, yeah, it's basically the same sort of thing for me. Especially since, as part of the government's "get hosed" program for dealing with the poor, nobody qualifies for any sort of disability benefit these days, so I'm basically relying entirely on my publishing to earn any money.

Unsurprisingly this doesn't make me feel real good about selling so little.

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
This is kind of straying outside Self-Pub, but you want to create a "positive motivation feedback loop" for yourself.

My post where I said my first book took me ~3 months and my second took a few weeks was kind of a compare and contrast between negative motivation loop and positive motivation loop.

In the negative motivation cycle, you do stuff like get home from work and tell yourself you're too tired to write anything. In the back of your mind you are thinking "and I'm like 30k words and a bunch of marketing legwork from finishing anyway...what's another 1k words added to the giant pile?"

For me, finishing a project is the biggest motivation boost I can give myself. I knew in the back of my mind that once I just bit the bullet and finished the loving thing, that the next one would be 5x easier, and it really was. Even while I knew this in the back of my mind though, I wasn't acting on it. I slogged through and took forever, and all along the way I fretted over stuff like "what if I send all these ARCs out, and they all come back as two and three-star reviews?"

As soon as I finished that loving thing though, I felt awesome, and I IMMEDIATELY started writing the next one. It didn't sell as well as I wanted--I actually had hoped for $2,000 in its first month, but got just under half of that. It didn't seem to matter though, because I was already halfway done with my second book by the time I realized it wasn't going to sell like I'd hoped. Since I was in a positive feedback loop from working fast on book two, I just told myself stuff like, "It peaked at a decent rank for a first book on a new pen name, and there were a LOT of ratings, almost all 4 and 5 stars." or "drat, my mailing list is pretty big after just one book, this will help the next book out a lot!"

I had a repeating paragraph early on in book 1, and most of the bad reviews I got mentioned that repeating paragraph specifically. Instead of getting depressed about it and stopping writing, I just resolved to spend $50 on an editor for the second book, and thought, "Cool, with the editor, this book will have very few errors and won't get docked on reviews for errors like that."

Book two is coming out in a few days, and I'm well underway with book three. I'm positively motivated, hoping for the best, but even if it under-peforms again, I've really addressed my story structuring issues and laid out a much better structure for book 3, so if book 2 doesn't do much better than book 1, I'm going to just say, "Okay, you really need to get better at telling a story, make book 3 really good!"

Reading some other books in your genre and seeing that they are not better writers than you can help motivate you. Knowing just how successful (as in how much loving money you can make) a person can be at this can help motivate you too, but ultimately you want to just get rolling and tell yourself that you will succeed. What actual barriers are there to prevent your books from hitting top 100? Fix them one by one until you are top 100.

I personally MUST leave the house to write. If I stay home, my wife will micro-nag me about stuff (even something like saying ,"This weekend we need to go to Sam's and buy shampoo") will stress me out and break me out of writing trance. My dog will whine for me to open the door, and it's way easier to just stop writing on a whim when you're already at home. I usually just go to Panera with an iPad and bluetooth keyboard, then I get the coffee because you can unlimited refill it with coffee, tea, coke, whatever. I usually only do 2-3k words in one session, but when I "go to write" I know I'm going to knock those words out. If I get the urge to stop writing, I have to make a conscious decision to pack up all my stuff and go home, and if I haven't written enough, I'll feel like a quitter if I make that decision too early. If I "go to write" about fourteen times, I'm done with a novella. With bigger motivation running, I can do stuff like knock out 4-8k words in one mega session, usually if I notice I'm at 20k words or something, and knowing that doing 8k words in one day will bring me within two normal "go to write" sessions from completion.

Doing stuff like taking a week off or sleeping in way too long will negatively motivate you, and it makes it that much harder to just get to work. Say that you tell yourself Friday night that you are going to get up at 9am and go write at 10, and that you want to get 6,000 words done before you leave.

You wake up, shower, and eat, and then just before you step out the door to go write, you decide to sit down and "check twitter" (or some other dumb/useless poo poo). You then sit down and an hour has passed, then your wife wakes up and tell you that she wants to go to Walmart to buy some dumb poo poo. If you had gone to write an hour ago, you could have just avoided the whole thing and been 2-3,000 words deep already, but now you are wondering if you have to go to Walmart first. You go to Walmart to not make your wife mad at you, and you get home and are tired, so you say "I'll write tonight then, at 8pm." When 8pm rolls around, you're too tired and resolve to do it all tomorrow. Since you've delayed it and wasted your energy for a whole day stressing about not doing anything, you're WAY less likely do get it done on Sunday. You've just entered a negative feedback loop!

angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Dec 8, 2015

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
I use habitica.com as a motivational tool. I can't remember if I've mentioned it here before. It lets you gamify lists of ad hoc and periodic tasks and dresses it up in a cute RPG skin. I combine it with some other techniques to keep me on target; I find it works pretty great for me. You can join guilds, pick up challenges, do quests, create parties, or just have minimal involvement and use it as a fun to-do list.

The other things I use include pomodoro (mentioned in the fiction advice thread quite a bit) and Jennifer Dziura's (of Get Bullish) principle of doing only things which are very productive or very pleasurable -- and where possible, reducing pain points by making unpleasant but necessary tasks more endurable. Why not soak my feet in a hot bath with some mint tea thrown in while I work on these revisions for the umpteenth goddamn time? Morale management is also important.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
Habitica looks awesome. :)

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Oh trust me, i'm not comfortable.

I guess I meant more like "If I don't write, I won't be able to pay rent in two months" rather than "everything is going great in my life".

Fuego Fish posted:

Comparatively, I'm incredibly uncomfortable and I find the "gun to your head" thing only hurts my productivity.

I definitely don't doubt that it can make or break people though.

angel opportunity posted:

If I stay home, my wife will micro-nag me about stuff (even something like saying ,"This weekend we need to go to Sam's and buy shampoo") will stress me out and break me out of writing trance.

I work from home and my wife just doesn't get this at all, it's insane. I've had to declare my office a no-wife zone and that just pisses her off more.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug

EngineerSean posted:

I work from home and my wife just doesn't get this at all, it's insane. I've had to declare my office a no-wife zone and that just pisses her off more.

I've tried to do the same with my other half. :bang:

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
D2D just emailed me saying they not support 24 Symbols, which looks like a KU competitor. Does anyone know what their payment model is, I couldn't find it from their website...

ravenkult
Feb 3, 2011


angel opportunity posted:

D2D just emailed me saying they not support 24 Symbols, which looks like a KU competitor. Does anyone know what their payment model is, I couldn't find it from their website...

My vague understanding is that if someone reads 10% of your book, you get 40% to 50% of your list price.

brotherly
Aug 20, 2014

DEHUMANIZE YOURSELF AND FACE TO BLOODSHED

angel opportunity posted:

just before you step out the door to go write, you decide to sit down and "check twitter" (or some other dumb/useless poo poo)

Literally doing that right now.

I think AO's post is full of really good advice, most of which boils down to: you have to do the work. Butt in the chair, banging out words, day in and day out. At least when you're trying to make money writing romance/erotica. Probably if you're trying to make money writing other genres, too. Amazon basically requires that you work fast and throw poo poo out there with their 30-day window/cliff.

Sometimes I don't feel like writing and sometimes it's really not fun. But it definitely gets easier once you build those good habits.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

angel opportunity posted:

a really long-rear end post

Just FYI this was great stuff and I've bookmarked it for future reference

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

EngineerSean posted:

I guess I meant more like "If I don't write, I won't be able to pay rent in two months" rather than "everything is going great in my life".
In that respect, my relative financial comfort has definitely let me get complacent, if not comfortable. Now that i'm in this situation it's hard to build up the impetus to drag myself out. If I was to sum it up, i'd say i'm treading water. Losing momentum and trying to build it back up has definitely been this last year's bugbear.

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
Are you playing any timesink games like MOBA or MMO? If so, quit playing them!

Bobby Deluxe
May 9, 2004

No, that's one thing i've tried to be strict with myself about. No console or entertainment until i've done a minimum of 1k. I used to play WoW, I know how easy it is to get sucked in and I need another distraction like I need a hole in my head.

There was an interesting vSauce video on YouTube about how games can be a way of giving yourself a 'win' artificially to boost your motivation, but then there's the counter that you can get hooked on that win if it's lacking elsewhere.

Plus I can't help thinking of that dude who wandered in here asking for advice and then got defensive about playing League of Legends all day.

e: full disclosure - I play Destiny, but only in the evenings or once I've already hit a good wordcount.

EngineerSean
Feb 9, 2004

by zen death robot

angel opportunity posted:

Are you playing any timesink games like MOBA or MMO? If so, quit playing them!

Well no mmo's but



:suicide:

Yooper
Apr 30, 2012




I used to see a list of games I play. Now I add the hours, multiply by 1,000, and divide by 80,000.

Yah, that's 5 novels right there. Hell, CK2 is worth 2 novels.

Roar
Jul 7, 2007

I got 30 points!

I GOT 30 POINTS!
That all being said, there's nothing wrong with using games as a hobby. Everyone needs an outlet outside of writing to blow off some steam. Everything in moderation.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

EngineerSean posted:

Well no mmo's but



:suicide:

I won't judge... not while I have "SMITE" installed. :suicide:

My sabbatical is over, though; time for me to stop killing scantily-clad goddesses and get back to writing about them instead. :v:

Jalumibnkrayal
Apr 16, 2008

Ramrod XTreme

EngineerSean posted:

Well no mmo's but



:suicide:

Are you just tying every living creature to balloons?

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
Ravenkult made me a cover for paranormal romance and it is really loving good. I'm jacking off and looking at it while I type this post with one hand

vseslav.botkin
Feb 18, 2007
Professor

angel opportunity posted:

Ravenkult made me a cover for paranormal romance and it is really loving good. I'm jacking off and looking at it while I type this post with one hand

Pics or it didn't happen.

EDIT: of the cover! OF THE COVER!

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angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
I don't want to post my pen name into the thread, but I promise the cover is good. I had just bought a cover from Aria (Resplendent Media), and it was like...satisfactory...but I wasn't gushing about it and I certainly didn't want to jack off to it, so Ravenkult stepped up to the plate and made one for the book I'm currently writing. Now I'm really happy with it and will probably hire him in the future for the rest of my covers!

If anyone really wants to see, you can PM me and I'll show you (the cover, not my jacking off)

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