Happy Caturday, Patreon Fam! I hope you’ve got some exciting things planned for the weekend. Admiral Coco Marshmallow Flerkin-Whittingstall would like to hear all about it, if you’re so inclined.
Another slow week on the writing and posting front, although that’s partially intentional rather than accidental. I sat down and worked out a posting schedule for Eclectic Projects this week, trying to get a feel for when serial projects would end and new ones might begin. It made it clear that Warhol Sleeping and The Shackleton Job are both scheduled to finish a little closer together than I’d hoped, so I’m spacing out the Shackleton releases a little more with the goal of hitting “fully operational Death Star” mode in March.
The first stream included in there refers to White Harbor War, which launches in two weeks. The pitch is basically:
“MMA fighter and starship engineer Dana Valkyrie sails around the universe on the Viking Maiden, a ship with a reputation for employing the toughest and best fighters in known space. When they dock on White Harbor for 48 hours of uninterrupted leave for the first time in months, Dana’s main plan is staying out of trouble and enjoying some hard-earned time off.
Pity the local security division, a rival freighter, and her own captain aren’t content to let her do so…”
Hardcore fans of the pulp era might recognise the archetype from Robert E. Howard’s Sailor Steve Costigan series, which I studied for my PhD. As per my plan for the year, the first four chapters will be free to read, after which it will go patron-only (although the book will probably come out three to six months after the serial is done).
I’m psyched for this one. Not least because all sixteen entries are already scheduled and ready to go live.
Meanwhile, we’ve hit the halfway mark of Warhol Sleeping and started the rush towards the end. It will wrap up at the end of March, giving way to a new serial in the spot. I’m looking at the small mass of projects that will step in, as it’ll become my February writing project once the final Warhol edits are done.
JANUARY IN REVIEW
With January in the rearview, I headed over to RescueTime to look at where I was spending the bulk of my time through the first month of the year. The results do not make me happy. I’d already clicked I’d fallen into a Threads-hole over the course of the month, but spending nearly two whole days on the site when you added all the quick visits and long threads up is a definite warning sign. Especially given I barely cracked 20 hours of writing and editing in the same timeframe.
I’ve already succeeded I pulling back on the attention I’ve been giving threads, although that didn’t automatically translate into giving more attention to drafting and other work. This shift—coupled with some conversations I’ve been having with the Spouse Mouse—have got me thinking hard about work habits and hours in the coming week.
I’ve long been a fan of having hard edges to your creative career. Since writing is a gig which never really has an end-point, and success isn’t connected to hours invested in your work, it’s really easy to get sucked into the feeling you should work all the time. Similarly, it’s always tempting to give up established work hours to do something else because you can “make it up” down the line.
My goal for the coming week is to create a metaphorical border around my time, focusing all my work between 9 AM and 1:30 PM, then 3:00 PM and 6:00 PM. The ninety-minute break in the middle of the day gives me time to eat lunch, do some chores, and pick up my spouse-mouse from their office when they wrap up for the day. Every second Thursday will have a slightly longer break in the afternoon because I’ll be running workshops in the evening, pushing me past the 6:00 PM finish time.
Putting the fence up makes the ambiguous “get stuff done” time really concrete. If I’ve only got 37.5 hours every week to get all your writing, editing, and mentoring done, it becomes much clearer what I can say yes to and what needs to go beside the wayside.
Next week already has 7.5 hours of meetings and workshops to deliver, plus associated planning and admin time. It probably makes catching up with my writer peeps at Write Club unfeasible unless I push some work into the weekend or after-hours. That’s not necessarily a bad trade-off, but I want to be a bit more conscious about choosing to trade off those hours, especially on weeks where I’ve already got something cutting into the post-work “family” time.
The other perk of thinking in term of hard times like this is the ability to project how much an hour needs to be “worth” in the long-term. Personally, I need every hour of work to bring in around $52 Australian (on average) to keep things running and cover both publishing expenses, cost-of-living, and keeping the cats alive.
Obviously, not everything does that upfront, especially the hours devoted to Patreon projects which have traditionally brought in between $100 and $300 a month, versus freelance work and mentoring which earns between $60 and $150 per hour depending on what I’m being asked to do, whether I’m being contracted through a third party like Spectrum Writing, and how ongoing the contract is.
The difference, of course, is that the stories and serials I write for Patreon are assets rather than paid-by-the-hour gigs, which means they’ll have an additional life as paperbacks and ebooks and other products which keep earning money long after the hours I’ve invested in producing them. Freelance work, in contrast, is typically a “paid once and done” gig, and frequently works out earning less than you’d expect when you factor in the unpaid hours. There are definitely a few gigs on my calendar where I’ve been undercharging from this perspective, and I’m going to have to be firmer about saying yes or no to things.
Part of the reason I’m pivoting to writing longer works as serials this year, rather than continuing with the weekly short stories alone, is so I can build up the pool of books I’ll be earning ongoing income from in the next few years.
COMING UP
Sunday – Warhol Sleeping Bonus Interstitial
A brief glimpse of what the Warhol Sleeping amalgam’s been doing in his streaming content while our hero is running around contemplating jumping ship.
Monday – The Deal (Short Story)
A stand-alone story about a cop on the case, a remote church, and sniper determined to stop her from getting what she’s after. I wrote an early version of this as an example for a workshop I ran last year, and I wanted to finish it.
Wednesday – Shackleton Job (On Haitus Until Feb 21)
As noted above, I’m pushing this one back to match the schedule I’d come up with, but i’ll be using the time to ensure it’s done and ready to roll out smoothly from that point.
Friday – Rebel Rebel (Warhol Sleeping 9)
What would it take to convince Warhola to leave Big River and join the Babylon Collective? Friends, we’re about to find out!