In keeping with my effort to make this site more engaging, I’m going start posting weekly status reports. This should give you an idea of what I’m doing and when you can expect something new. It should also help incentivize me to keep working on important things rather than just playing video games.
Not that video games aren’t important.
So here’s where I stand:
I’ve started writing my next novel. It doesn’t have a name yet, but I’m sure one will pop up somewhere during the writing process. I’ll start posting word counts once I get further in; it’d just be embarrassing at this point. However, I won’t be working on the new novel for the next couple of weeks. In that time, I’ll instead be focusing on putting some marketing assets in place to help me sell some books.
So what the hell is a “marketing asset” and why am I sounding like a corporate douche all of a sudden?
The second answer is because I’m writing this at work. Office drones can’t communicate in simple English, we must use a combination of buzzphrases, acronyms, and sports analogies. But I digress…
The marketing assets I’ll be working on are a mailing list and a Facebook page.
I’m not a particularly big fan of either of those things, but they are essential parts of the marketing plan I’m trying to follow this year. I’ll also need a story that I can use for marketing in conjunction with the two above-mentioned items. Rather than divert creative energies into writing a new one, I’ve selected one of my earliest unpublished action/horror stories that will now need to go through the same draft/edit/format cycle that I use for everything else. Fortunately, this story is relatively short, so I’m estimating a week for all that. Maybe. But I’ll also need to come up with a new title, and who KNOWS how long that will take.
So the TL;DR is that I have been writing, but for the next few weeks I’ll be devoting time to marketing stuff. Look for announcements about my new Facebook page and mailing list soon. Also look for some structural and cosmetic changes to this website.
Above all, don’t panic. I have a plan.
Oh, wait, that last bit was just for me. Never mind.
Hmm. New Facebook page or just updating the existing one? Either way, I’ll be there.
I’m creating a brand new one.
Sounds good man. Looking forward to it.
But hey, man. No need to get down on being an office drone. Although I know what you mean. My whole life I loved the Dilbert comics.
Then I went to my second job…. And they weren’t funny anymore.
But don’t let it get to you. Maybe it’s cliché, but there can be goodness in it. Of course I’m saying this at my third job……
I’ve had the pleasure of working with people who loved their jobs… for which their job isn’t just a means to an end, but an end in itself.
I’m not one of those people.
It isn’t a matter of attitude or outlook. It’s a matter of being burnt out, being constantly asked to do more with less, constantly being told to aim for a new (always moving) target, and not having enough time to actually enjoy life because you’re stuck in a box or in traffic for most of the day. In other words: I am incompatible with the very idea of corporate employment as it currently exists.