So, this weekend, as you may have gleaned from my Twitter, I decided to mix things up by doing some writing on my laptop. I slipped on some ice on Friday and the living room furniture sounded more comfortable for my back than my office desk chair.
Yes, this is the same laptop that betrayed me so cruelly before, but it’s been well-behaved since then, and I’m a bleeding-heart liberal at heart. I believe in rehabilitation. I don’t see any benefit to not engaging with rogue computers.
You get the idea. 
When I’m writing on my laptop, I usually don’t bother connecting to the internet until I need to. It’s distracting and it drains power much more quickly broadcasting wirelessly than sitting there typing does. Since I was already running late on my schedule, I decided to sit down and really focus… just write. Everything I need to do, in one marathon session.
And so I didn’t figure out until after I’d done about seven hours of writing that Vista had decided it wasn’t interested in allowing any internet traffic, Vista and Ubuntu still aren’t speaking to each other, and when I finally got hold of a writable CD, I found out my CD drive doesn’t want to write, either.
Fun tiems.
So I started copying the stories by hand. If I were typing from a print-out, this would be annoying but okay as I am pretty much a goddess of data entry, but my Windows Vista also doesn’t want to talk to my roommate’s printer. Trying to type from my laptop to desktop involves doing things with my field of vision that it wasn’t meant to do. It’s possible, but… irritating and slower than it should be.
I figured out halfway through Tales of MU that it’s easier to rewrite than retype, reading a paragraph or two and then copying what happened rather than transcribing word for word. In the process, I think the story got richer as well as longer. It ended with me having a seven-thousand word chapter (my target is 2,000-3,000… my “ideal” is kind of like 3,000).
So this got me thinking… right now I’ve got nothing scheduled for the weekends, and I’ve now twice made a great start in the first half of a week and then blown my schedule to hell trying to keep up after a late day. Here I am, with the possibility of posting two MU chapters today (one as a make-up for Friday)… or saving one for tomorrow. Essentially, having written one over the weekend and one today.
I’ve still got to copy the other stories, but I have no doubt I’ll be able to similarly expand them.
The problem with the “buffer” that people have previously proposed I adopt is that it would not be self-sustaining; if I had a three day buffer, the first three times I needed it, it would be gone. If I make a point of getting a day or most of a day’s writing done spread out over the weekend each week, though, I’d be starting the week with a head start. If I stumbled once a week, it would be built in, and I’d pick it back up. It would be essentially what I’m trying to do now, except instead of always trying to play catch-up, I’d already be ahead.
So, yeah. Last Friday is a bust. I failed to deliver. I’m going to call it a “Pyhrric loss”, though, because I can learn from it.
Even with the misses on the schedule, I’m feeling pretty good about the last few weeks. I’m getting better at holding to deadlines again. It is not a good thing to have items on a list that are never delivered, but when I don’t look at the list and look at how much I have produced, it’s a good output. I just need to smooth it out, so to speak.
And from the way money’s been coming in, I think I have some satisfied readers. No, I’m not on target at the moment to hit my goal for the month, but at roughly two weeks into February I’m at roughly $500, which is roughly… well… it’s not where I want to be but it’s where I can live in the short term.
I’m going to need that to be stepped up in the near future, because I’ve got moving expenses coming up, I’ve got taxes to pay, etc. But I understand there’s a two-way street here, which is why I’m stepping up my performance.
I’d also like to bring to everybody’s attention once again the ongoing sponsorship option (note to self: update the sponsorship lists immediately after posting this). On the contributor page, there is an option for Ongoing Support. It functions like a subscription or a pledge. By signing up your Paypal, you commit to giving $5 a month. You can cancel this on your end at any time, but for as long as it’s there, you’ll have the option of having your name (nickname or otherwise) appear on a roll on the Tales of MU, Void Dogs, or Star Harbor Nights website. These lists aren’t very prominently displayed right now. My next progressive tweak of the layout is going to have a prominent link when people are looking at the main archive page, along with a more prominent listing of the story title.
If you think you can spare $5 a month and you think the entertainment value you get over the course of the month is worth that $5, it doesn’t take long to sign up. You can choose to remain anonymous if you don’t want to participate in the sponsor thing and just want to simplify the process of contributing.
I set the goal for reader contributions as being $1500 a month. All it would take is three hundred readers to sign up as sponsors to make that happen like clockwork. I don’t expect to get there this month. But then… I’ve been surprised before.
I know your name on a website isn’t necessarily a huge incentive, but it’s a start. I’m open to suggestions for further incentives. Things that have been put forward include stickers or other affordable mailables (probably have to wait until after I move) and access to insider tidbits like little snatches of world background or character history (probably via email). I’m open to discussion on that.
And if you don’t have $5 every month or you don’t think it’s worth quite that much, you can still kick a buck or two over if you feel like it. No amount is going to insult me.
And as always… if you don’t have any money and you feel terribly guilty, relax. I still appreciate your patronage. Your page views in some way contribute to my advertising value. And if you tell a friend, or a bunch of friends, or put a link up somewhere, you’re contributing even more.
Wow. I need to keep up on my blogging. That got pretty long.
If you enjoy reading, please consider a financial contribution.
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