The Happiest Man On Earth

April 28, 2011

It occurred to me that, by and large, I don't have a clue what to do.

That's largely a "don't have a clue what to do" in terms of the direction I wish to aim my current writing career.

Oh, I keep doing the things I've been doing - writing fiction, some of which gets traditionally published, some of which gets self-published; writing nonfiction; editing a technical journal; etc.

Some of it seems to be working out okay and some of it seems to be going nowhere. I've been frittering a fair amount of mental energy and time on a website for a publishing venture, all the while thinking of my 2009 experience with publishing that didn't work out.

I keep putting time and money into e-book self-publishing hoping I'll hit some sort of tipping point and sales will take off. Gee, I don't have to have a JA Konrath or Amanda Hocking type sales, but I'd like to do more than just cover my expenses (actually, I'd like to cover my expenses, too, although I seem to be doing that long term).

I wrote a nonfiction book proposal earlier this year, found an agent who liked it but wanted a specific type of person to write a foreword for it and it's taken me 4 months to find that person. Hopefully that'll be taken care of and my agent can start marketing it and hopefully we'll get some sort of book deal that has some sort of advance. I'd be very happy with that (the bigger the better at this stage of the game).

I've been applying for tons of writing gigs with very little response, which is unusual. Often this sort of thing kicks in at unexpected moments, but I'm finding this year's writing job market to be irritating, to say the least - a lot of crap-paying work, and by crap-paying work I mean stuff that would turn out to be $2 or $3 per hour pay! Yeah, that bad. And yet, they insist they want a high-level professional writer.

Fact is. I don't know what's going on or which direction to go. I'll keep doing my thing and I'll keep trying different things, and I've got money coming in, just not as much as I want (keeping in mind, of course, that 2010 doubled my income from 2009, which was my worst year). This writing biz can be a very, very strange thing and it's sure as hell unpredictable. Faith and persistence plays a huge role. I'm convinced something good will come along. I just wish it would.

How about y'all? How's 2011 treating you?