Overcoming Writer's Regret

My long term plan

To have any real expectation of success I need a long term plan and I have one. I may change it, or adjust it. But as of right now it is in place and activated.

  1. I will continue to read and listen to my books on writing. Some of them will get many additional listens. Some will get further and more explicit study. I will buy the kindle version and/or paperback version of some of my writing instruction books, read them, take notes and create examples of the things I learn to insure that I actually understand and can implement the new skills. As long as I continue to find resources that can help me improve my writing I will keep working at it. I have wasted so many years on a writing fantasy that my reality-based process of learning to write well deserves all the time I can give it.
  2. I will write blog articles and novels at the same time. The rough draft of my novels will go weeks and months without editing and my blog articles will get edited every week or so. If I can make that happen, my editing skills should stay intact and keep improving as I grind out rough draft words for my novels.
  3. I will publish to my blog up to four times a month. If I can continue writing at the pace from the past three weeks I should be able to do at least one per month; two seems likely, four seems a stretch, but possible. The writing pace I have set for myself is not unattainable; I’m doing it already. I am well aware that if life becomes stressful the creative side of my brain might shut down for a while as it has done many times in the past. Should that happen, I will recover in my own time and continue on.
  4. My journey into longer projects will begin with an expanded collection of short stories from my “When I Was Donnie” blog series on taomanna.com. Based on the first twenty-one years of my life, I will enhance this collection with fictional elements to augment faded memories, to protect the privacy of others and to make it a more interesting read. I will stay true to my life story as much as I can and will not let the fictional parts stray from the spirit or theme that ran through the life I lived during those years. I will write and edit this project in chapters, a chapter being roughly equal in length to the blog articles I have published in the past. Parts of the story already published to my old blog will be rewritten. Rewriting the first published article is almost finished and is a greatly expanded version that will have its 6000+ words split into several separate chapters. I will post each chapter to this blog as a new article. Once my “When I Was Donnie” project is complete and posted to my blog, I will secure whatever funding I can, find an editor, use his guidance to make a final draft, learn how to publish my first book for Kindle and print on demand, and determine if an Audible version is feasible. Assuming adequate financing, I will publish in every format that makes sense to me. This first long project will likely take over a year to complete. Next, I will move to my most important step: writing novels.
  5. Work on my first novel in a series of related novels, all of which have been developing in my head for years, will follow shortly behind completion of my book of short stories. Each week I will spend three days writing the rough draft for my novel and two days creating, editing and posting blog articles. All editing of my first novel will be done only after the first draft is complete. Baring no long interruptions, I should have enough words for a novel within two years from beginning the rough draft. 
  6. Through all this time I will continue my study of writing. My goal is to fully understand and be able to implement all the new skills that I deem useful before I begin the editing process on the first novel. Editing the novel will take a long time, perhaps longer than writing the rough draft. And it will be difficult. It will test my intellect, my patience, my will power, my mental stamina, my ability to know when it is time to stop adding phrases to the end of my sentences. I will publish my first novel through the self-publishing process I've already learned; after that ... fame and fortune (or some more reasonable facsimile).

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