But then I discovered that wasn't even one of my March goals. Bosskdammit!
My actual goals had been:
1. Type up FIVE stories from notebooks.
2. Publish THREE stories in text.
3. Publish TWO stories in audio.
4. Finish writing "Ten Thousand Coffins."
5. Finish audio of first two books in AH's "Eve & Malachi" series.
So, now for the inevitable post-mortem of March goals...
1. Type up FIVE stories from notebooks.
I typed up one for sure, "Caller I.D.," which I've threatened often to run on the Dunesteef. It had a partially completed sequel (which is already, sadly, out of date, since every sequel installment was going to cover a year, and I think that one was 2013), which I typed as well. I believe I also typed up "Roll with the Changes," which was the October Scary Story I wrote in 2016 (not at all scary, though, but ah well). Yesterday, I started typing another one, but it can't count for March.
2. Publish THREE stories in text.
Sigh. Nope. I published one for sure ("Occurrence in Hall B"), republished "Like a Good Neighbor" (since I discovered a scene missing that I had never typed up from my notebook, and had somehow shrugged off*), and put "Chalupa Dale - Next Exit" up on Amazon, since it hadn't been available there before. I also got the text file for my second audio collection ready to go, but didn't publish it (for no logical reason, except that there shouldn't be text versions of audio collections, but it's the only way Audible will let you self-publish something).
3. Publish TWO stories in audio.
Well, this one I'm pretty sure I accomplished. "New Year's Day" is up, "Varcolac" is up, and I published "Newfound Fame," but it still hasn't gone through (which tells me they had a problem with it . . . which also tells me that the extra work I did on it, with multiple voices and musical score, might have been for naught).
4. Finish writing "Ten Thousand Coffins."
Ah, a good one. Yes, that one is not only finished, but about 75% of it is typed up (rather than notebooked), meaning it will see release sooner than most. Whether it's any good or not, well . . .
5. Finish audio of first two books in AH's "Eve & Malachi" series.
Oh kids, I actually accomplished something. You can buy them as we speak. Guess I should do a post on that.
I'm not going to beat myself up over my failings, because the successes were pretty significant. For a good while there in March, I was firing on all cylinders. I got one thing done, then immediately started on another project, and amazingly, got that done. I wrote two short stories in a week span after finishing my novella, and then started on another one.
Once April arrived, though, all my forward momentum stopped. I just didn't care anymore, because I wanted to focus on publishing, and I have two large audiobook projects on my plate right now. So, I have been going to the library at least twice a week, but I've been using that time to type up stories from my notebooks, and it doesn't feel like wasted time to me.
So, for the rest of the month, perhaps I shall set these goals:
1. Publish ONE more story.
2. Type up ONE more story and ONE novella.
3. Enter the two newest stories in the contests they were written for. Which entails reading through them once more, making any revisions necessary, then--gasp!--actually submitting them, which is difficult for me. At the very least, I've got at least one interesting tale out of this.
4. Finish recording and editing "Spanksgiving: A Spanking New Novel About Spanking."
5. Finish reading "Jager Thunder" and start recording chapters of it.
6. Work on current novella, "Taste the Blood of Van Helsing."
7. Record my D&D sketch for my show.
There, not so tough. You see, Lord Vader, I can be reasonable.
Rish Outfield, Writer (Still)
*That was always a problematic story, since I started it at the end of one notebook, and then continued it in a later one, but didn't remember where those scenes were, so I ended up writing them again when I was typing it up. And then, when I found the second notebook, I had two different sections of the story covering the same time period, and had to figure out how to reconcile them (me being me, I tried to combine them into just a longer version of that narrative). But when it came time to record the audio for it, I was reading off the earlier version of the typed document, so it ended up different from the published version. AND THEN, when I was producing it in "full cast" for the Dunesteef, I set up my recorder and re-did the scenes in question so they were the longer, later version . . . only to discover when I got the lines back from Bria that she had gone off the original version anyway, so that new audio was unusable. Not to mention that I had aleady sent Big the later version to record his lines from, which didn't jibe with the Bria parts . . . sigh.
To make a long story slightly shorter, I did notice there was a scene missing when I was finishing up the Dunesteef version, and chalked it up to the two different versions, figuring the one on Audible was more complete, only to discover a week or two ago that scene in the notebook, never before typed up, and too late, frankly, to put into any but the text version (although, the version I release in my big audio collection will have the lost scene in it, so all that work isn't entirely wasted).
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