Things I've Been Working On

 

I have started to write a blog post several times over the past few weeks, or is it months now? Considering my last post was in February, I guess it has been months. It was past time to sit down and spew something out of my little grey matter and get it posted.

Yes, yes, I know, at the start of the year I was going to do a weekly post. Declared it loud and proud on this little blog of mine. I even managed it for a short time. A very short time. Oh well.

I’ll not talk about how life got in the way again and blah, blah, blah. Or how I got in my own way again and blah, blah, blah. Because if I don’t want to write about that boring drivel, I’m sure no one wants to read it either. So let’s just move on from all of that.

While I haven’t been posting on here or gotten another story ready to publish, I have been busy with things related to all of this. In no particular order, here’s what I’ve been up to.

Formatting Stories

Back when I published my first story on Amazon, I formatted and uploaded a MS Word file format because that was the accepted way of doing it. It worked, except there were issues with the table of contents that I never could get to work as it should.

One day, after I formatted a manuscript and had it all ready to upload, for whatever reason, Amazon kept rejecting it because of the file format. I’d go back to the word processor and try again. If I recall correctly, I spend the better part of the day trying to get it to go through.

This wasn’t the first time I had troubles, the story I published before that one had issues uploading.

It could have been because I don’t use MS Word, however, I even uploaded the manuscript into the free online version of Word and tried again, still it was rejected. Finally, in all my frustration, I turned to the Reedsy editor, where I converted it to an .epub file and all was right in the world.

I’ve not had an issue uploading to Amazon since using Reedsy.

This is all well and good, but I don’t like having to rely on an online service to do this. I like Reedsy, but I’d much rather have an app on my computer to do the conversion. It would make it easier for me to update manuscripts and give me more control over the conversion process.

A month ago, I took the time to find and learn some apps to do the conversion offline. I think I have it figured out at last.

Updates Coming One of These Days

Once I have the conversion thingy figured out, I want to go back through my back catalogue of stories and update the manuscripts. I'm not talking about changes to the stories, unless I find a typo. Just updating the old formatting, my bio, and lists of other published stories in the back of the book. That sort of thing. I will admit I’m a bit lazy about this. Okay, a whole lot lazy with this.

After I publish a story, I don’t go back and revisit much about it. Which is fine, but I need to update the back matter for some of my stories. For example, my Holiday Wishes Series, I need to go back to book one and put in links in the back of the book for the other two stories.

Basically, I just need to do a bit of housecleaning on the manuscripts to keep small things updated with them. Also to have the formatting more uniform across all of my stories.

This is on my to-do list, but I haven’t done it yet. Part of it is because I need to get more organized and comb through all of my USB drives where I have my published stories stored and actually find those stories to get this done. Sadly, my files on the USB drives are a disorganized mess. Getting my files organized at last is also on the list of things to-do.

Other Updates

There are other updates and tweaks I want to do with my previously published stories. I’d like to create new covers for a couple of stories and update some blurbs as well.

I took a good look at all of this the past couple of months and made notes of things I want to do. Now it’s just a matter of getting it done. Which I will, I just don’t know when.

The Writing and More Stories

So that leaves the most important part, the stories.

I have started a few stories these past few months, then abandoned them. Usually, I’d start something, run into a snag of sorts, get frustrated and wonder what was wrong with me, wallow in self pity for a bit, then quit working on what I’d started and try something else.

This is a cycle I’m always in and have a hard time breaking.

With that said, I took a step back from how I work to figure out ways to break this cycle. That is the primary goal I’m working on at the moment.

Recently I conceived a series of stories I’m excited about. The process has been slow, but I have confidence that what I have going now will get finished.

Well, that’s everything I’ve been working on since my last post. I do hope to get some of these changes and updates started soon. I just don’t know when yet.

My main goal right now is to get at least one story out next month. I figure if I keep working at this, one day I will finally get my shit together and get stories out regularly, like what I wanted to do from the beginning.😏