Kill GFP 2.0
I don’t want to write tonight. It’s 1:24 AM and I’m tired and I’m sick of staying up past midnight to write most nights. This isn’t working. It’s not really helping me write fiction. It’s just keeping me up. I need to get a handle on this. I procrastinate and I hate myself and I resent the late nights. I wake up I’m stressed out because I’m tired and I have to get the kids ready for school and then I take this breather to read and eat breakfast… but that breather turns into an hour of reading to avoid work. So it’s ten am before I sit down at my computer to do work and then I don’t really do work. I find ways to not do work. I do stuff that’s not work. Like Garage Fiction stuff. Or I go down research rabbit holes. Or I read more. I come up with exercises like active verbs. And for the past month I’ve been so terrible with Facebook and Reddit ever since I figured out I could get around Freedom by turning off the proxies in the browser. What the fuck good is your software if I can bypass it so damn easily? Fuck. So now it’s 1:24. How many times have I stayed up late and only slept four hours in the past month? It’s fucking absurd. Now I have projects that pile up. Because I’m not writing copy. Copy is fucking boring me. I hate it. I sit there, I write a few words, then I go to Reddit and Facebook and I go down that stupid rabbit hole and I’m gone. Then lunch comes around. Or the end of school. Or piano lessons. Or skating lessons. Or I need to give the girls showers and I hate myself even more for not having spent my time productively in the morning.
THIS NEEDS TO STOP…. otherwise these 1000 words a day are a scam. Sure I’ve written more fiction words. I’ve focused more on stories. I… ok. Yeah, let’s talk about positives as well. I’ve started multiple stories. Two of which have potential. The Swallow story. The Madeleine story. They have endings. One ending is finished. The other one is plotted in mind. I feel like I’m understanding the prose and the theme and how to construct a story better. I did that with Alyssa Wong’s Hungry Daughters and Starving Mothers… and I reread Bacigalupi’s Pop Squad again. Holy cow the symbolism in that story were all so in your face, and yet I didn’t pick up on it until I read it this time… which is technically the sixth time I’ve read it? I dunno. There are more moments of me feeling like I can DO it because I’m actually writing 1000 words of fiction a day. Sometimes it’s world building yes. Sometimes it’s drawing outlines in text form yes. And sometimes I’m breaking down plot and tonight, I’m writing a journal instead of writing actual fiction… but if I’m hitting say, 90% days of actual fiction… it’s not bad.
But let’s refocus on the problem here now. I am fucking up my sleep schedule. There is no doubt about that. I am fucking it up by procrastinating. I need to start organizing this better like Cal Newport talks about Deep Work. Because if I keep going down this path, I’m going to be strung out all the time.
And shit. I still haven’t started on the Cave of Monsters work. That is so frustrating. I have all this work that could make me money and I’m not doing it because I get caught up with Garage Fiction stuff. The podcast. The podcast. The podcast… I’m really starting to not like it at all. I managed to get Olivia to do the editing. I need someone else to write the copy. or listen to it and be quality assurance. Maybe I could ask Lauren to do that in a few weeks. Make all the European ladies handle that stuff. Have an all female podcast and I can bow out. hmmm….
Dave is Eastern. John is Mountain. Anthony is Pacific. Yeah yeah… let’s plot my way out of the podcast.
What do I have on my plate and what makes sense?
- Running Garage Fiction - admin, logistics, recruiting, business, operations.
- The Podcast - an hour a week, QA, writing the copy.
- Writing and critiquing - actual fiction and feedback
- Cave of Monsters - NOT DOING ANY
- Copywriting - hating it and not being productive
- Hustling Copy - Have done so little of it, it’s not funny
- Reading a book a week - It’s moving. It’s fine.
- Recruiting ALWAYS takes more work than you anticipate. I should know this by now. I’ve done it three times for copywriters now. Why don’t I learn? It’s never worth the money. The time it takes up is just insane.
What do I want?
- I want to write stories good enough for the science fiction magazines. Which means, the kind of stuff I want to write won’t make me money.
- Do I want to write Kindle books? Not if I have to put out trash like Michael Anderles. I want to write things I’m proud of. Which again, means no money there. Not right away.
So FOCUS ON THE SHORT STORIES.
Don’t do anything else.
- Get your 10-12 stories in as you had originally wanted to.
- 1k/day - get to 10 stories. ignore all other distractions.
- Focus on being able to weave a story.
FINE.
Podcast and admin stuff needs to be secondary.
- COPYWRITING - I need to keep doing this to FUND Cave of Monsters.
- CAVE OF MONSTERS will be income replacement.
This is the only way to do it.
I can keep writing financial copy I don’t give a fuck about at the mercy of clients.
Or I can hyper focus on cave of monsters and replace my income.
I need $20/month to get off this ride.
Cave of Monsters will kill
- Copy and
- Hustling but it will add
- Product
- Blog
- Hustling
Fiction will kill nothing.
But if I can kill Garage Fiction…
hm….