I spent a lot of the “downtime” we had in Oregon talking to other full time writers about scheduling their days and about developing business plans. This was quite useful. Yesterday, I actually took time to put their lessons into practice, and now—for the first time ever—I have the outlines and makings of a full-out plan for what I should be accomplishing on a month-by-month and quarter-by-quarter basis, complete with writing, pre-production, book launches, learning activities, something I’m loosely calling “marketing,” and other basic business operations activities.
This is very exciting.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m sure it’s not a fully robust plan, yet. And even if it were, every plan will change. But the handles are all there, and as I move forward, I know what I need to accomplish by when if I want to achieve some of the release goals I have in mind. For example, I can now say that the goal is to launch my fantasy serials starting in June of this year. I’ll, of course, make that announcement more official and more firm in the next few weeks as I sort through the processes I’m using. But you get the idea.
It’s integrated with my daily (weekly/monthly) tracker that I mentioned earlier. Next, I’ll add in a weekly breakdown for my standard week, and I think I’ll have the whole thing kinda together.
Hey, it was something to do to avoid writing, eh?