Daily Content and a Publishing Schedule

While reading The Millionaire Messenger (and yes, eventually I will stop mentioning that book), it occurred to me that if I really want to sell books, I need to do more than just write books, or writing articles or stories when I wanted to sell a book. Having brought up the book so much, and thought about it a lot, I got the idea to publish The Winter Folk over the period of December.

It was a no-end-in-sight plan. Not that it had no end, but that I wasn't doing it for a particular reason other than: (1) I wanted to do something nice in the run up to Christmas and (2) ParagraVerse has been awfully lonely, lately. So, I wrote it as twelve-part poem, to help make it last longer while my work schedule picked up.

As it happens, the poem created its own end.

In the writing of it, I began to think about how interesting I might find the story to write. In particular, I wanted to write the story of the Ice Queen. The world has seen Jack Frost. The world knows all about Santa Claus. But the Ice Queen... well, any time there's a queen or a witch who dresses in white and surrounds herself in ice or snow, she seems to be a villain.

Not for me, not this time.

So, that's what I'm writing now. The Ice Queen. It's a short story. I'm hoping to publish it for Kindle later this month. I'll need to design a cover, soon. And write the two flash stories I want to publish this month on ParagraVerse, too. All of this, out of a little wish to write a poem and make it last.

I hadn't even been set on writing this, until yesterday. And even then, I only thought about it. It wasn't until I actually sat down to plan a schedule that I also decided to plan the book. The schedule was for daily content online this month. I know I missed December 1st, but from then on out I've got things in mind. The Winter Folk helps by taking up half the days between now and Christmas. Thankfully, the poem also sparked a book which sparked a couple of other pieces that need to go online.

Somehow, the poem created a published schedule around itself.

It wasn't the practice I had in mind, but that's fine. At least I know in January, when I get to work on a campaign towards launching another book, I'll have an idea of how best to follow through on my ideas. Scheduling is definitely of benefit to me. It's basically the only way I'm managing this right now.

Anyway, my original plan for daily content, now fully completed, is seeing the following going online:

- 8 blog posts,
- 9 videos,
- 2 flash stories,
- 2 poems - one in 12 parts, and
- 1 ebook.

How much of this is written or prepared? Less than half. How much will be prepared in advance and pre-scheduled? More than half. And how much of it is going to be fun to put together?

I'm going to go with just about all of it.

What this all boils down to is releasing a lot of content that I find interesting, setting new challenges for myself on a regular basis, writing about what I know and, with the exception of the ebook, making it all free for anyone to look at. I think it's a fair deal, getting all of that for nothing and having no obligation to buy the story in the end. And if you enjoy yourself along the way, all the better. That is the point of this sort of stuff, after all, to provide some entertainment.

If all goes well, I'll keep up this sort of thing in 2014, and not just because I'll be releasing new books in the future. This is the essence of The Millionaire Messenger, I think, or part of it at least. The best way to reach an audience is to give people something for nothing, and tell them that there's also something they can buy if they want. The point, though, is that the "messenger" is passionate about what they're talking about.

I think in this case, that goes without saying.

(P.S. If you want to keep up with everything I post this month, Twitter is probably your best bet. You can find me @writeranonymous.)

The Way Things'll Be

As of tonight, I have no more drama rehearsals until February. The cast will be off to teaching placement in the new year, with another play to put on stage in two weeks, leaving me to tend to my time in my own ways. Thankfully, I'm quite good at doing things that take quite a bit of time!

My overall intention is to kick-start 2014 with a few different things on my website, including a series of articles, and a video series. Both will require some work, and will have their own little hiding place online for me to work with. Overall, there are ten articles to write and ten videos to make, but I can see that growing over time. The latter is a documentary of a project I'm hoping to undertake with some friends - they just don't know the gory details yet!

Essentially, though, it'll keep me busy at work creating these different things, and setting up all the different pieces needed to get it all started. I'm working from a guideline in The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Burchard, and while I don't have such high aspirations of making such an inordinate amount of money, I'm definitely feeling the creative push in the right direction, that coincides nicely with things I've wanted to do for a while and just...didn't.

So, convenient that!

Of course, the articles and the videos are just one piece of the little puzzle. I've a lot of writing to do over the coming weeks, to fit around my hours in work. That's a good thing, though. I find that when I have something to do and somewhere to go, I start to value the time I have not in work that little bit more. I'm hoping to write a chapter or two of my current work in progress before work tomorrow, and hopefully one tonight. However, my main hope was to write something for tonight. I couldn't leave my blog to try fend for itself for another week.

This is all part of my commitment to something bigger, to keeping my creative works more consistent. It's helped, actually, having Burchard's book to work from. The "expert signposts" he includes in each chapter are helping me put to words the different things I need to learn or do or focus upon, and while it does mean I end up writing dozens of pages about different things, it's resulting in the helpful creation of resources to use in the future.

So, I'm basically positioning myself as an "expert", as he would put it, as a Messenger. We'll see how I actually work it all out in the different ways he suggests, but for the time being I'm writing books to work with all of this. I'm also working out a better publishing schedule for myself. It's the one thing I can say about books like this (though I haven't seen many books like this one): even if you don't achieve the same results you see printed in the book, there are results to be gained from doing the work.

And, if you can believe it, it's fun.

I'm genuinely enjoying doing this. I feel focused, I have ideas to work with, I'm getting things done, and I essentially had written permission to do something I enjoy for a living. (Well, we'll see if I "do it for a living", when things start playing out.) But for now, this is the way things'll be, while the drama rehearsals are on hold and I suddenly find myself with two more evenings a week than before, and for a long period of time. This is the sort of change I needed a long time ago, and I don't think it's too late to get started. I don't think it's ever too late to start doing something you love.