Weekend warrior -- mowing, exercising, and writing 5,000 words

Okay, I admit it. I published my first novel, CLAIMING MOON, on Kindle a few days ago and I’ve checked the sales reports for it about a million times. I’ve tweeted about it, posted on Facebook, let a few writer friends know, even sent out a couple of e-mail blasts to a list of folks supposedly (hopefully) interested in my writing.

In the midst of holding down my fulltime job, watching the Olympics, doing a few things around the house, and all of this “marketing,” guess how many words I’ve written on new work?

Zilch.

I was afraid this might happen. Other writers have told me it would. You, as a writer, get so caught up in the work you just published, in marketing and talking about it, in finding potential websites to do a review of your published novel, that you lose focus on what’s most important – continuing to write.

I’m going to remedy that right now.

I’m leaving work sometime between 7 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. I don’t work this weekend, so these are my plans, my to do list, what I have to accomplish between the time I leave today and when I return to work on Monday morning.

First, I have to mow the yard.

Second, I have a couple of trips to make to the gym – one tonight and another either Saturday or Sunday.

Third, whatever else it is my wife has on my list.

Fourth – write 5,000 words on my novel-in-progress.

Yep, that’s right – 5.000 words.

I got the inspiration to do this while perusing Brian Keene’s website. I came across a blog post from July in which he talks about writing 80,000 words in a weekend. A single, three-day weekend.

That’s astounding. Far beyond what I can manage at present.

I don’t have the advantages he had – I’ll not be alone, but instead surrounded by my wife, my five kids, boyfriends of the two oldest will no doubt be making a few appearances, maybe even friends of the younger ones will be running around the house.

Still, I’m going to do this.

I’ve written little over the past week. First, I was spending time formatting my novel for Kindle. Then I was spending my time fixing screw-ups in the formatting. Then I spent time telling everyone about it. All totaled, I’m guessing I actually wrote 1,000 words on my novel in progress.

For the whole week.

This is not how to make a career as a writer.

So, from the time I arrive at home tonight, somewhere between 7:30 and 8 o’clock, and the time I go to work Monday morning, I’m chasing down 5,000 words.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Show me yours, I'll show you mine

Twitter name that is. What did you think I meant?

Yes, I’m on Twitter now. I’ve resisted for quite some time. No, resisted is the wrong word. Let’s just say I have held no driving interest in pursuing Twitter until now. The first time I heard someone saying they were going to tweet me, I wasn‘t sure if I should be offended or afraid. All sorts of images came to mind, until I learned Twitter was another so-called social medium.

I took a look at it and found a lot of people telling the world what they ate for breakfast, what they decided to wear today, what kind of tooth paste they use, and how often they go to the bathroom every day. There’s enough of that on Facebook, right?

But then I discovered something. There are loads of people using Twitter as a way to keep in touch with family, with friends, and as a means to promote their work. Some come out looking like cookie-cutter tweets auto-generated by some computer, but others really come across as genuine, albeit brief, conversations. I don’t know that you can get to know anyone through Twitter, but keeping track of what they are doing, where they are visiting, what they feel is important, is definitely one step toward learning about them. And for writers (or other business people), there’s nothing like being able to keep your readers (or customers) up to date on your latest work.

And if you follow me, I can keep you updated on some pending publishing news for a couple of my novels, and let you know when some great author interviews pop up right here on ye olde blog!

So now I’m a Twitterer. Are you? My Twitter address is @johnpeterswrite. You can follow me by there by checking out my Twitter feed to the left of this blog.

There, I’ve shown you mine, will you show me yours?

P.S. Don’t forget -- you can enter into a drawing for either a copy of the Stoker-nominated Horror Library 3 anthology or the just-released Night Terrors 2, both of which feature more than two dozen chilling tales (including an offering from me in each collection) for your reading pleasure. Join my blog and leave a comment and you’re entered!