When your fingers are moving so fast you can’t quite keep up with them, because you cannot wait to see what’s going to happen next, that could be described as a GREAT writing day.
That was today. And holy crap, I love what I got.
I was MEAN today.
Bad things happened to a character I love — and I don’t know EXACTLY what’s happened to her yet, but I’m hoping I’ll get to find out at least some of it tomorrow.
This was not pantsing, by the way. This was part of my carefully built line-for-scene outline, because (yes, OH, YES) I did learn very well not to pants novels after the epic fail I had when I tried it last time.
Today’s line-for-scene Sentence just took me to a much, much bigger and meaner version of the scene I’d planned, with higher stakes than I’d ever considered.
When you have to drag yourself away from work because you still have other work to do, and when you already can’t wait to roll your ass out of bed at O-dark-hundred tomorrow because that’s when you get to do it again?
That’s a good day.
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I still will forever comment and long for the Moon and Sun book 3 Emerald sun. But alas. we shall never get it.
I would love to do it. If enough people demonstrate that they want it, I will do it. But they haven’t so far.
This is important…
Every book I do choose to write costs me in both irreplaceable time (hours of my life) and in what’s called OPPORTUNITY COST (link to Wikipedia). Opportunity Cost is what I will have to pay to do one project that probably will sell well versus what I would have to pay to do another project that evidence suggests will probably sell very, very poorly.
I pay for my work in hours of my life. At 62 (as I write this), I have limited time that’s getting more limited every day. (Fact is, though, this is true for everybody.)
If I know I can sell a specific number of books that I really love to one group of readers, and those books will help me keep my family fed, and if I weigh that against the very clear evidence I have that almost NOBODY is interested in this other set of books that I ALSO would love to finish, then, when my objective is to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, I’d be actively harming myself and the people I love if I chose to spend a big chunk of my irreplaceable time writing books almost no one is looking for.
Currently, I’ve heard from a tiny, tiny group of folks who loved THE RUBY KEY and THE SILVER DOOR, and who want to read THE EMERALD SUN.
From all evidence I have so far, I would not be able to even earn enough from the sale of the final book to pay me for the time it took me to write it, much less have it earn me the extra income I need to pay bills.
If you were me, and you had a job you needed to pay bills and take care of your people, would you choose to do something you love that would bankrupt you? Or would you work to create something you also love that will help you and the people you love continue to survive?