September long weekend is almost over already!?!?
In case you are reading this and you are not from Canada, the first Monday of September is a stat holiday for us. This weekend was supposed to be a very productive weekend for our household, as we don’t have any family visiting and we decided that we wouldn’t be going anywhere. Unfortunately, it hasn’t felt like an overly productive weekend. I blame the shiny new notebook from last week!
After opening that shiny new notebook, of course one of my biggest goals is to finish writing my current novel in progress so that I can decide whether I will go down the path of attempting to find a traditional publisher or self-publishing it myself. Personally, the latter sounds like a lot of work that I just don’t have time for, so I’m leaning towards the first, but I decided to really sit down and think about it last week to help define the activities I need to accomplish in order to reach my goals for 2022. Since publishing a book requires marketing and selling, I decided to watch some online training videos this weekend on the topic to see if it would help me decide a path. Well, holy heck, did I fall down a rabbit hole then! After watching some videos, idea after idea came to me about things that I could attempt doing as a business … a business that has nothing to do with my novel, no less. This caused me to start feverishly writing down notes and researching what this random business would require if I were to pursue it.
Needless to say, my long weekend took a turn that I didn’t expect. However, I am pleased to say that I think something really interesting will eventually come out of it. After my husband gave me a look of absolute fear after I told him all my ideas, it made me realize that perhaps I need to pull back a little. So I’ve since decided that I am going to focus on one thing at a time to see if this is really a path I want to run towards. Remember, I work full time, usually closer to 50 hours a week on a regular basis, plus I have three boys under the age of ten, so my “free time” is already limited. I am making absolutely nothing from my writing career at this point, so quitting my day job is definitely not an option. However, I am very excited by all the ideas that I feverishly wrote down into my new notebook on Saturday, so I hope that eventually I will be able to accomplish them all.
Now, I don’t want to say publicly exactly what all these ideas are, as I hope to slowly work on them and can’t make any promises at this point at if and when they will happen. I can say, however, that changing up the design of my website was my first step in the direction that I plan to go. I wanted to make sure that my horror writing (short stories, articles about the writing journey, and eventually information about my books) are kept separate from these “life” posts that I have been writing lately. I really enjoy talking about personal and professional development, and I hope that you like reading about them, so I will try to keep them slightly separated from my fiction to make them easier to find. I have also made it easier to find my newsletter sign-up (“Subscribe” button on the top of this page), as I hope to start giving out information about these upcoming plans that I have as they come closer to completion via my newsletter to those that may be interested.
Now, I’d love to know – does anyone else fall down these rabbit holes when they become excited and passionate about a specific topic? It happens to me frequently, but typically I would become deflated and lose steam and motivation. This time, instead of becoming overwhelmed followed by disappointed, I decided to sit down and just write everything down. Do yet another brain dump sort of thing. I didn’t worry about how organized or thought out it all was, as I figure that can come later when I’m actually ready to start creating and launching things. For now, my focus needs to be on finishing my first round of editing of my first novel so that I can have it that much closer to being ready to publish. Then, when I’m ready, I will have my notes collected in my notebook so that I can return to it when I have some more free time and am ready to set up the activities required to getting those ideas launched.
On the plus side, all that planning and brainstorming will not be in vain, as I have already decided that one of the things will be launched in early 2022. Stay tuned!
K. D. Kulpa 