May is Here to Stay

It's May and the checkered flags are everywhere--no, seriously. It's Indiana. They are EVERYWHERE. So I guess that means I need to bring something to the finish line by the end of the month.

A new/old project is the perfect thing. I'm going to dig through the archives and find the most promising unfinished work and get it all polished up like a gleaming trophy. More about what I chose and just how far that finish line will be next week.

For me and quite a lot of others out there, I think that April was a huge success. Whether you were participating in National Poetry Month (my contribution can be found on my Patreon page) or whether you were successful in promotion with the Twitter Writing Community's newly minted #IndieApril campaign, I think we can agree we all did something to better a writer's life last month.

Speaking of the found poetry I posted last month, I have an idea to turn it into something more than just boring words on paper. I haven't worked it all out yet, but once I do, I'll let everyone know what it's going to morph into. 

In other writing news, I'm finding it harder to build a list of potential journals to submit to. It's not that there aren't plenty out there, it's just that they are all starting to charge reading fees, regardless of whether they are a paying publication. I always add to my list at the end of the month, and when I tackled this task last week, there was nothing to add. Zero. Everything had a $3 reading fee, which must be what it takes to cover the cost of Submittable on the publication end. I'm not worried--I have plenty still on my list, but if this is going to change, writers need to stop paying reading fees for exposure. Exposure doesn't pay the bills. If you pay in exposure, that's fine, but don't charge for it.

What are your writing goals for the month? What do you plan on reading?

Celebrations and Steady Work

Camp NaNo is going well. I'm not hitting my 60 minutes per day target, but it's looking like I won't have to, at least not for the first draft. I'm 112 minutes into working on the pilot script, and I'm 17 pages in. It's a sitcom so I'm aiming between 30-40 pages total, giving the first draft room for cutting if necessary. Of course if I could sell it to a streaming service, I could stay on the higher end of that page count. Pipe dream, but a fun one.

This is also National Poetry Month. I'm posting a found poetry piece on Twitter each Monday and one every day on Patreon, which is my way of celebrating this year. There's also a new thing that has popped up on Twitter -- #IndieApril. It is a push to not only celebrate indie authors, but to also encourage purchasing their work. I don't know how well that's working out for everyone.

When I saw an early post, I decided to reply. Most of the posts tell other users to add their links in a reply, then the original post creator will pick a couple of titles to buy. Over just a day or two, these posts have morphed a bit. Some don't promise a purchase, but do promise a retweet or like. Others are doing more to promote their own book under the guise of promoting others. I only participated in the first tweet I saw with this hashtag, then one other. The first one yielded little--not even as many impressions as it would had it been a tweet of my own. The second one was a success, but it was specifically for a retweet/like combo only.

That's all I'm doing. I can't go around chasing all of these tweets, and if they pop up hours after the original post, there's little chance my reply will be seen anyway. The other issue is that the people seeing these posts are overwhelmingly other authors. I like supporting indie authors, but I also know the tight budgets of most indie authors -- there aren't going to be a lot of copies sold, even with hundreds of retweets and thousands of impressions. The promises already made may never be fulfilled. I'm just being realistic with it. It's a great idea, just not a practical execution. Someone needs to get started on a full-scale website for #IndieApril2020.