Posting more and writing less

Editors note: The image doesn't mean anything, I just liked it and it was free.

I submitted this blog to a few indie blog aggregators and a bunch of them didn't have any authors! If I'm going to be first, I'm going to have to put some effort into my postings! I'll still send out the newsletter version when it's relevant (i.e. about my books) but for the other stuff, I'll just keep it on the site.

I'm at a crossroads with my drafts. I have three (or four depending on what you consider a draft) whole-ass novels drafted out. They were all posted serially at https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/ and three of them posted to Royal Road, so by the standards of trad publishing they've already been "published" and most/all will not even consider them, which is a bit of a kick in the pants, but shrug emoticon. Writing and posting serially is just about the only way I've found myself able to plow through a story and finish it, plus gaining readers means I gain an audience who might want to read more of my stuff down the road.

As an example I have two drafts that are between 20k and 50k words in that I've set aside because I keep overthinking myself. When I'm on a deadline to post 2 or 3 times a week to Reddit, I can't afford to be that wishy-washy; just have to get it out, I can't disappoint the readers. When I'm drafting without posting, I'm only disappointing myself so I get bogged down in details.

I'm digressing, but that's okay for this blog (see, if I was drafting this to send to an editor, they'd probably have me cut that paragraph above, but since this is mostly for me, it stays in!)

Anyway what I mean is that what I should be doing is working on my drafts. Editing, revising, hiring folks, all the things I need to do to help make the novels "real". They'll never be traditionally published, but that doesn't mean I can't publish them myself, and given the state of the publishing industry today I would most likely wind up doing this work anyway for a trad novel rather than indie, so it's six of one, half dozen of the other.

It's entirely possible that I'll just draft novel after novel after novel and never publish them other than posting to the folks on r/HFY. (If you're reading this HFY folks, Hi!!) but I think I want to make my novels more "real." I published my first one on KDP with a GetCovers cover and not nearly enough editing but people still bought it and it still is real - I'm looking at a few copies right now. I took it down for sale, but I could put it back up. I think instead though it would be better if I revised it and posted that version as a "second edition."

This all requires time and money, two things that are currently in short supply - I'm sure you can relate - so while I'll work hard to get regular blog postings and the occasional once-shot story posted, my long form fiction is going to slow way down. Will the result be higher quality? I sure hope so!

Thanks for being a reader!