Annie Bellet

So last goal post I did the numbers.  The sheer word counts I hope to hit.  Now I’m going to break it down a little more specifically.

This year (2010) I focused on just learning and getting more work out.  Coming into this year I’d written one novel and only a few short stories that I considered possibly publishable.  2010 was the year I decided I needed to step up production and see what I could do.

2011 is the year to put the writing car in overdrive.  I want to be more consistent with my output and to finally get to some of the hundreds of ideas I’ve got bumping around. This is also the year in which I intend to explore e-publishing options while keeping things in the mail to the traditional side of things.

So here’s how that 900,000 words is going to (hopefully) break down:

I’ve been playing around with writing romance because I love to read romance and want to make sure I’m covering my genre bases.  I’ve got a Regency romance novel outlined that I’ll be writing in January for traditional publishers, which will put my novels out to publishers count at four, in four different genres.  I’m aiming for 75-85k words on that book.

For e-publishing I want to write my favorite lengths, which is shorter.  I have a few series romance ideas outlined for this.  So my goal is to write seven books in one series (or nine, depending), three books in another, and three in another.  Each of these will be about 25k words.  So thirteen novellas at 25k words should work out to about 325k total.  I’ll be writing one or two of these a month and putting them up online as soon as they are copyedited and formatted.  I’ll also being doing omnibus versions and making those available in print as well.

I’ve also got four Pyrrh books planned (am finishing the first one now, in fact) which will be about 50k words each.  Those will be available in print as well, and I’ll probably make an omnibus version (I have eight books for that series planned in total, releasing four a year).

I also want to write at least one more novel for traditional publishing (to bring my year end total up to 5 or 6 depending).  And if by the end of next year a couple of my novels that are out now don’t sell and have gotten more than 25 rejections, I think I’ll probably just write the sequels (one is a duology, one is a trilogy) and put them up for sale electronically and in print.  It’s my goal, however, to keep at least four or five novels out to traditional publishers each year so that I don’t let that side of things slide.

On the short story side of things, I’ve enlisted to write a short story a week and mail it.  So that’s 52 short stories to write next year.  But, because I don’t want to neglect the e-pub side of things, I also have ideas for four collections.  Each collection would deal with the same characters and have about ten stories in it.  I intend to write these stories solely for the collections (though I might mail them a few places first while I’m working on getting the full ten).  I’ll also put up one of the stories from each collection at .99 to be a sample for the rest.  I’m going to make print versions also for all these.  So that’s actually about 92 short stories total written next year, 52 for traditional publishing and 40 for my e-pub collections.

So, to sum up.  13 romance novellas (7 contemporary romances, 3 nerd romances, 3 paranormal romances), 4 fantasy/mystery novels, 2 novels for traditional publishing, and 92 short stories.  Which should work out to around 900,000 words next year, or 2500 words written per day if I write every day or 3500 words per day if I write only on week days.  So between 2 and 4 hours of work.  Not so bad.

As for how I’ll do money-wise, I have no idea.  I might sell nothing.  But that’s why this is a goals post, not a dreams post.  I don’t have any control over what I sell or not, only what I write and how much I work on my craft and on telling stories.  My dream is to make six figures a year at my writing.  My goal is to write stories that people can’t put down.  I can’t control the dream, but I hope that if I can someday learn enough and practice enough to get good at meeting my goal, the dream will follow.