Q&A

Happy NaNoWriMo, everyone! To celebrate the beginning of this glorious month and to circumvent the standard "I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long" blog-apology, a Q&A:

Q: Elly, why no updates in so long??

A: The autumn is quite a very busy time at my day job, which happens to be a mentally taxing one, full of much reading, writing, and editing. It's a tough thing to read, write, and edit all day, then come home and do same but in an entirely different mode. I've been zapped, and progress on the book stalled.

Q: Oh no!

A: I know, right?

But that's not all. I came to the realization that I had really deluded myself that time spent marketing--including blogging, tweeting, networking, reading about marketing . . . --was time well spent. It wasn't. It was merely a new mode of procrastination that allowed me to feel productive, but was actually keeping me from finishing the book. You can't market something that doesn't exist. When I did have time and energy to work on the book, I was self-stalling by doing things decidedly not work on the book.

Writing about writing is now low priority; writing is the priority.

Q: Totally understand that, though I do miss your wisdom and guidance. What's the status of the book now?

A: End of October, I completed a very large project at work and got a much needed vacation, which has been fully dedicated to finishing my substantive edits.

Q: So are you still on schedule?

A: My original schedule was to release the book in December, to coincide with my 30th birthday. The major delays originally threw that schedule out the window. However, I've realized that if I skip unnecessary steps like the Kickstarter campaign, trying to get advance reviews/blurbs, and picking a place to have a book release party, I can still get the book out in December.

I decided that Kickstarter may, at this point, be too crowded to be successful for me. I've chosen to bite the bullet and self-fund the publishing, while cutting upfront costs as much as possible. I've also decided that advance reviews and blurbs are an unnecessary step that would very probably put me back in the same self-doubting mental space as searching for an agent did. Regarding the party, yeah, that'd be awesome. But it can wait.

I need no more self-defeating, time-eating endeavors. Getting the book out is most important, even if it is a "soft" release.

Q: So, December?? Really?

A: Yup. It's on, baby.

And guess what else: the cover, title, and an excerpt will be released today.