Fantasies, Aspirations, and Goals

The average self-publisher sells about 250 copies of their work.

Hearing this statistic floored me. I have no doubt that it's accurate. It's just that -- that's not a lot of copies. I thought I was being conservative when I set a goal of 400 copies if I self-published.

I thought I was being realistic when I ruled out thousands upon thousands of copies and the New York Times bestselling list. It turns out that my scaled back fantasies -- even the 400 copies if I self-published -- are too unrealistic. Without realistic grounding, our aspirations are set by our fantasies, and our aspirations in turn set our goals.  

It's time for me to figure out how to pare back my goals, fueled by fantasy. My fantasy was that I would have an agent and would find a publisher of size (say, one of the Big 5) and go on a book tour where someone else made the arrangements for me and I didn't have to buy my own copies to sign and sell. 

In a way, this is freeing. This makes me realize that having 20 readers of my blog is perhaps normal, and that the agents who reject me need to so they don't starve, given the odds of someone picking up a book and reading it.

It also means that I will never get external validation of my work if I gauge success by my fantasies. How many readers is "enough" if the average self-published book gets 250 reads?  What does a rejection mean if the object is not quality but saleability?

My goals will stay the same:

• Get picked up by an agent or publisher, avoiding vanity presses and publishing mills

• If the above doesn't work, research and develop an effective self-publishing strategy, avoiding self-publishing scams

What changes are the standards for success. I'm still working on scaling down my expectations. This will be difficult.

Sunday morning at Mozingo and my lack of inspiration

Sunday morning at Mozingo Lake. I'm sitting on the couch swathed in blankets in front of the fire, recovering from my decision to turn the heater down for the night. The main room temperature was 57 degrees this morning; the bedroom, without its own heat, probably hit the low fifties. So I'm now pampered on the couch while Richard makes hot chocolate.

I've decided to do one more editing pass of Whose Hearts are Mountains, suspecting that I concentrated too much on the "was is where have had has" and not enough on other aspects that need smoothing out. And I have one more novel that needs editing after that.

I'm postponing writing another novel, and I know it.

Like I said, I have an idea for a new novel that I've been sitting on for a while. The name of the novel is (tentatively) God's Seeds; I've talked about it in these pages. It might help me to do what I usually do when I write -- pay attention to the relationships between characters. The themes come first, the plot I create in the outline, but in my books, the relationships between characters create the dialog and the unfolding of the story. The main relationship in this novel is between Baird Wilkens, a half-human Nephilim and Leah Inhofer, a young adult with a startling gift. The story is in the Archetype universe, taking place a year or so after the Apocalypse. (Note to readers -- the Apocalypse doesn't turn out like you think. Look up the origin of the word)

It's just hard to write right now because of my failure to get something accepted. I've already fulfilled my goal of writing a novel several times over, so another novel isn't a tantalizing new goal. I haven't gotten published or even found an agent yet, and so that goal seems daunting enough that I'm becoming avoidant.

What do I need right now? A clear path -- an idea of what to do next. Give up? (I don't feel like I'd have closure if I did this.) Self-publish? (I'm still scared of landing into obscurity, and it wouldn't feel like closure.) Keep plugging away? (Insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the same results). Pray? (I've been doing this. No answer, my friends. No answer.)

At this moment, I guess it doesn't matter, because I'm parked in front of a warm fire in a pine-paneled cabin, Outside lies a snowy landscape and iced-over lake. All is fine.

Update on Big Audacious Goals

First 2000 words today -- done.

Second 2000 words -- OMG, I'm never going to make it! (*scrolls through map*) Where is she going to cross the Canadian border at, International Falls or Fort Frances? When is she going to start noticing the changes in US culture since the collapse? Why the HELL is she going straight into the Jungle? My brain HURTS!

I guess it's going ok.

Quick post -- Big Audacious Goals

Every now and then, it's good to have a Big Audacious Goal, but only if you have a Big Audacious Plan to go with it. Goals without plans are called ... wishes. And I'd rather fail at a goal and learn from the failure than wish about it for the rest of my life.

Goals should be SMART, according to the planning experts. That stands for Specific, Manageable, Action-oriented, Reasonable, and Time-bound.  Writing plans can be as elaborate as an outline that includes every chapter of every scene, or as simple as "I will spend two hours in the morning typing whatever comes out." Either works, because in their own ways, they're Specific, Manageable, Action-Oriented, Reasonable, and Time-Based.

Big Audacious Goals have those parameters as well, but also stretch our definition of Reasonable. NaNoWriMo, for example, sets a Big Audacious Goal of 50,000 words in a month. That's reasonable at 1,667 words a day, or approximately 2-3 hours a day, but it's more than a new participant has likely ever written in a day, which makes it a BAG. 

My Big Audacious Goal for this weekend will be to write 4000-word days today and tomorrow. The amount is very specific, and I'll know when I reach it. It's manageable on a weekend for someone like me who hasn't gotten anything else planned and whose husband will be putting on a big pot of 13-bean-soup on the stove. The goal is action-oriented -- write and write and write. Although that's a lot of words, I have written 3000 words/day for the last three despite having to go to work, so it's a reasonable stretch goal. And it's time-based -- 4000 words today, 4000 words tomorrow.

I might not make it. It won't be the end of the world if I do. But I'm motivated by the way this 30-year-old idea is turning out, and an 8000-word weekend will get me 1/3 of the way toward the goal in 5 days! 

Wish me luck!