Plans, Projects, Fiction Writing — While God Laughs
All the things we do to "get ahead" have to be aligned around what we know to be true, workable, and an extension of ourselves. Writing and publishing isn't everything...
Plans, Projects, Fiction Writing — While God Laughs
“While Man Plans, God Laughs.” Old saying.
UPDATE: This was originally written in 2018, during the first year of authoring and publishing at least one original short story fiction piece every week. That project lasted just over three years and resulted in 166 stories published, plus 79 collections - and meanwhile another 9 non-fiction books. This still has some salient points to offer about how to plan, execute, and bounce back.
Just a thought to bring you up to date on everything that’s rattling around in my mind.
I’ve often suggested here that you always play the long game in everything you do. This is true for becoming a writer — one that actually makes a living from writing and publishing.
And I’ve been at this writing business since 2007, and been enjoying financial freedom from it for over half a decade by now.
The current fiction writing is something I picked up to acid test my own non-fiction in the real world.
It was also because I’d wrapped up all the research I’d needed into self-improvement.
So this current “Great Fiction Writing Challenge” tests both how to get books written and published profitably, and also tests all I’ve boiled down in the area of self-help to make sure they work.
The trick is to do this all in a single year, where most people spend about a decade at least in fiction before they really start to get any traction. (Go ahead, look up J. K. Rowling, and all the other authors who were “overnight successes” and you’ll find they were writing for many years before they got any breakthrough. While Thoreau and Herman Melville and a lot of others were only really well-known after they died.)
This year is devoted to fiction writing, publishing, and promotion. Researching anything that doesn’t make sense and writing all this up as I go. Meanwhile, writing two short stories a week, with the aim of getting a hundred (100) stories published this year. (In fiction alone, I’m at 59 stories/books — including collections — and just over half way through the year, so we’re OK right now.)
Next year, I plan to “only” write one fictional short story each week in order to have time to compile courses that leverage all the data I have in writing, publishing, and promotion.
Because the overall scene for this site, and why it was named Living Sensical from the start, is to give you a viable system for you to use that will help you be, do, and have anything you want in life.
The elements of that system are:
Mind (knowing yourself),
Body (living healthy),
Value (giving valuable material to others in exchange for their support), and
Bliss (knowing and following your own basic purpose.)
Writing and publishing is simply part of having and running a valuable business. And a content-based information business allows you to work and live pretty much anywhere you want, which means you can have a quality lifestyle and your own financial freedom.
The decade or so I’ve spent in sorting out the huge area of self-help is all there waiting for me to build and market the courses based on the books I’ve written, compiled, and (re-)published already.
Next year will be devoted to laying out how to have a small acreage where you can live sustainably, eat healthy food, and enjoy the peace that Nature brings you openhandedly.
The year after that — I don’t know right now. I know I’ll keep up the fiction writing, but these courses will also keep building as I find other needs people have. (There is a course I need to create on managed grazing for cattle, but that’s not widely needed by a lot of people. I imagine my weeks will be cut into four parts to push forward the complete system above.
Anyway, that’s about where we are and where we’re heading.
And as usual, subscribe to my email list and ask me anything. I’m only here to help.
Currently available (free) for beta readers (could use your feedback.)