2026 Motivation Thread

[RedMage]

1. Get an author's website and promote it via email signatures and biz cards.
2. Establish yourself on social media.
3. Offer help on writing forums (you've checked this one)
4. Is your book genre SF/F/Horror/Para? Get yourself an Artist Alley table at comic-cons and sell there. Another author I know who writes fantasy (Traitor Knight series) makes a LOT of sales at Renaissance Fairs.

Experience has shown me that simply putting the book out on KDP isn't enough. Apple, meet bushel (more like a truck full).

Kerry, do you ever attend fairs? I'm in Oregon and went to my county fair a few months ago, and to the state fair yesterday. Both had some author booths. Also, what about craft fairs? My city's big Christmas craft fair also had a number of author booths when I went last year, including some SFFH.

 

[Alan L]

1. Get an author's website and promote it via email signatures and biz cards.
2. Establish yourself on social media.
3. Offer help on writing forums (you've checked this one)
4. Is your book genre SF/F/Horror/Para? Get yourself an Artist Alley table at comic-cons and sell there. Another author I know who writes fantasy (Traitor Knight series) makes a LOT of sales at Renaissance Fairs.

Experience has shown me that simply putting the book out on KDP isn't enough. Apple, meet bushel (more like a truck full).

I was thinking more tactical than strategic. Things like opportunities for newsletter and social media cross-promotions. Interesting genre-focused places where we can find relevant audiences, regional lists of book fairs and cons with reports on effectiveness and how well managed they are. Links to examples where relevant authors are doing a good job, rather than something that only applies to romance books Which BookTok and Bookstagram people are responsive to being approached by obscure indie authors...

On the strategic side, I just had an author in our local arts group ask me how to get started with a mailing list, so rather than respond individually, I wrote up an article on the subject https://alanlangford.com/2026/09/07/cold-starting-your-mailing-list/

 

[kmtolan]

Kerry, do you ever attend fairs? I'm in Oregon and went to my county fair a few months ago, and to the state fair yesterday. Both had some author booths. Also, what about craft fairs? My city's big Christmas craft fair also had a number of author booths when I went last year, including some SFFH.

I have done craft fairs with mixed results. It does help to have some crafted items ( l have copper wire dragons) to augment sales and attract attention.

 

[RedMage]

Wrote 390 words tonight at one of my two weekly write-ins. I worked on Relics, which I've barely looked at in the last three months. I expected to have to start fresh on outlining a new chapter or even drafting a new chapter without an outline for it---aaah! a blank page is so scary!! Lol. Instead, I found I'd left off the draft version in the middle of a scene which I DO have an outline for. So, I worked on that scene's draft. It went very well, and even diverged from the outline, just as it should.

Here's where the motivation part comes in: with the above said, I keep wanting to work on one of my Christmas-themed stories. Santaland or Snowbound Yule. I'm pretty sure I've shared that... Anyway, I keep thinking that I need to focus on my career goals. If I want to make it as an author, then what do I need to do? Well, last spring I came to the decision that Middle Grade is not where I should spend my time. Not as a means to begin or establish a career. So, Santaland is out. Snowbound Yule would be fun to write. It's Young Adult and set in the same world as an Adult market Victorian Era epic fantasy following government curse breakers who have to stop an international conspiracy, though that one is in the early planning phases and I haven't touched it all year. Sooo... Relics should be the book I focus on as I have 4/5 plotted out and have nearly the entire opening 1/5 written in draft.

I hope my struggles with this help anyone else who may be having similar questions as to their writing goals.

 

[Alan L]

I hope my struggles with this help anyone else who may be having similar questions as to their writing goals.

I forget the source, but this was sufficiently insightful that it now has a place just over my monitor. Someone said that if you want to establish your goals, answer this question:

What is it that you want to be known for?

The answer to that should set the direction you head in. I think it's brilliant. Simple, clear, sensible.

My problem is that I've had it up there for a few weeks now, pestering me, and I still don't have an equally clear and sensible answer!

 

[RedMage]

Well, I enjoy writing in all three markets. Adult. Young Adult. Middle Grade. The last one is new since the pandemic, and I've written in the other two since I start writing in college. MG is also different when it comes to publishing, as the readership are kids, but the people deciding to buy the books are adults--either their parents or librarians. So it's the adults you have to convince to buy the story. In Adult and YA, it's the adult and teen readers who are choosing their own reading material.

There's a lot about that which I don't know, but I've learned that much. And I decided last spring that I'd rather begin a career with the older set, and not have to deal with the parents and librarians. At least, not to begin with.

So no matter how much I enjoy the MG stories I have, I need to focus on the Adult and YA stories instead.

The MG stories will be there when I'm ready for them. I made lots of notes, so I should be able to pick them up when I do return. Should, being the key word there

 

[RedMage]

Time for a check in!

I was rather frustrated with my writing last weekend. I spent 5 days writing one scene in Relics, finally finishing it with a word count greater than 2k words. And I'm trying to adopt a more concise and focused in my writing. My normal/old style is...not meandering, per say, though that happens. More that it's expansive. Letting this thing go on for twice as long as really necessary. Anyhow, I realized what happened in the middle of this past week, several days after finishing the darn scene. So, okay, it's a learning process. I guess old habits really do die hard.

With that scene done, I spent much of this past week on the first story in my Zaggy & the Mistress short story series. A critique partner sent me a Halloween short story to crit so she could submit it to a contest that closed to subs yesterday. Well, that's exactly what Zaggy is, so I took out this polished story and washed and scrubbed and waxed it again and again. I thought it was as good as I could get it at over 2,900 words. Then I cut 300 words, bringing it down to right around 2,650 and submitted it to the contest too. I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be one of the 13 stories chosen but, even if it's not, this was an incredibly valuable experience. I cut all the filler words, examined each instance of my crutch words and cut a bunch of them, too, and found passages that could really be inferred from context. I'm sorry for not sharing the news of the contest with all of you! I honestly didn't think about it until writing this. Next time...

How's everyone else doing?

 

[Alan L]

How's everyone else doing?

I had a week (actually close to two weeks) where my productivity matched my expectations. The importance of that statement isn't clear until I mention that it's been years since that last happened. [vulgar word] years! I almost had a glass of champagne to celebrate.

In the writing/promotion department I got another podcast edited and posted (on scams targeting authors), finished a short story for my newsletter subscribers, sent out a newsletter, and posted a story excerpt on my site for non-subscribers.

I first drafted the short story last month and it was a real departure for me, written in first person and incorporating interstellar travel. Then serendipity had me picking up the Muderbot series by Martha Wells, which is also written in the first person. That gave me some hints on how to improve my story. I like it when the universe does things like that!

Oh. And. My wife read the story and said she liked it! That's weighted as ten five-star reviews in my mind.

I'm now reading Harlan Coben's Plot Twist, which is a mix of memoir and advice on creativity. So far the creativity part is pretty specific to his kind of fiction, but I'm still in the early part of the book. The writing is, as one might expect, quite entertaining.

We record the next podcast tomorrow morning, so I hope to close the week with some more work on my novel today.

Now if I'm not gloating enough already (forgive me, I really am this over-the-top excited), I added rate limiting to my web application firewall and it has successfully thwarted at least five request floods while helping me identify half a dozen rogue web scrapers (this thing might finally be feature-complete), and I am very close to completing design of one of the most diabolically complex parts I've had to tackle in my 3D printing business.

 

[RedMage]

I'm going to my Thursday night write-in at a local coffee shop/cafe--not the place I write at on the weekends, that place is a breakfast/lunch place only. And I have a new friend coming tonight! Someone I met on the critique site who turns out to live across the river. I'm excited to meet them!

As for writing, I am rewriting that problem scene in Relics. It was the first thing I'd written on the book all summer and it came out... just not good. The writing itself was fine, but too long. It was a slog. And this book is supposed to be the exact opposite. Snappy. Fast. Bing! Bang! Boom! And my outline for the next chapter will result in another, even worse slog. So, I need to find my footing again.

And the rewrite is going okay. In three writing sessions, I'm up to a 900 word scene--the first attempt (the rough draft) was 2700 words, and this is Scene 3 of 3 in the chapter, as long as each of the previous chapters (this is only Chapter 6, so there weren't that many, but still!). I like what's on the page and I like the pace. Things had to be cut which I wish could have stayed, but I can move them to a later location, maybe even the next chapter as that clearly needs to be replotted. All that said, I'd like to wrap up the current, problem scene to come in no longer than 1,500 words. Fingers crossed I'll be able to manage that!

 

[kmtolan]

Things looking better for my WIP. I solidified the latter half of the plot by literally walking backwards from 'The End' which is not something I've done before. Having already worked half of the novel, it was simply a matter of linking what I wanted in an ending with how it would mate up to what I've written. Now I'm rolling forward on draft 1.4 cleaning up things to align with how I expect the ending to be. Still learning new tricks. At least I'm in good company with the rewrites (g).

 

[Alan L]

I'm in a bit of a rabbit hole, struggling with how to communicate transitions in time. I switch timelines a few times in the story (current time, six months previous, current time, four months previous, then current time). The story is "near future" but deliberately not at a specific time, so I can't do headings like "August 2050" then "February 2050" etc. Internally I have everything relative to t0 so I've been using a notation like t0-6months, t0+6days, and so on but I detest how that looks when I use it as a heading for timeline shifts. I've searched for examples and so far only found the generalized advice I already know (and some interesting but otherwise useless essays on truly unconventional typography in some literary work).

 

[RedMage]

@kmtolan - that's great! Well done. I've done that a time or two myself. How are you enjoying the process? Or, do you hate it?

@Alan L - what about a Now, 6 Months Ago, 4 Months Ago sort of scheme where the "Now" is the event itself?

 

[Alan L]

@Alan L - what about a Now, 6 Months Ago, 4 Months Ago sort of scheme where the "Now" is the event itself?

It's still a little awkward when returning from four months ago because it's like "Now plus six days" I guess I could go with "Day 0" and then return from the previous time with "Day 6" That at least would work as chapter titles.

At any rate, something to be decided once I have the dang thing edited.

 

[RedMage]

I think "Now" could be more than a single day. It's the "Big Event" and its immediate aftermath. And, if your story's present/now period begins just before the Big Event, then that's still in the present/now. That doesn't have to be a single day. Same for the other time periods.

What would help me as a reader would be brief statements at beginning of each of those changes in time period. Chapter title includes the period of "Now" or "6 Months Ago", then the chapter text begins immediately--or in the opening paragraphs--with some statement about time passing during this "6 Months Ago" period. Say, in the last "6 Months Ago" chapter, the MC went to an evening event. A birthday party. This next chapter in that time period notes "The [day/two days] after Mei's birthday party..."

What I'd caution against would be having the "6 Months Ago" period extend (continue?) so long that it transitions into the "4 Months Ago" period. Keep the overall timeline for that period short enough that all its events could be said, relatively speaking, to occur about 6 months before the "Now" period.

I work in medical research ethics. Much of my day-to-day involves editing 20+ page consent forms. Some of those include tables that note when an office visit or test will occur. The drug company puts in phrases like "12 Month Office Visit, +/- 1 week". I always delete that +/- bit because, duh! The visit isn't going to happen exactly X months to the day after the patient starts taking the drug. What the drug company means is they want the visit to occur as close to 12 months into treatment as possible. And that's a very common thing that all adults everywhere understand as we encounter it in every aspect of our lives.

So, I suggest doing the same in your book. But, yeah. Something for the editing phase.

 

[Alan L]

It's working out to:

• Day Zero
• Six Months Ago
• Day Four
• Four Months Ago
• Day Negative Five (LOL, working title)
• Day Eleven

From there we're in linear time. I can probably adjust day -5 to "One Week Ago" without breaking anything, but the nerd in me still wants:

• t zero
• t - 6 Months
• t + 4 Days
• t - 4 Months
• t - 5 Days
• t + 11 Days

I mean this is SF... a little math should be acceptable. I may just let my nerd have at it.

 

[kmtolan]

@kmtolan - that's great! Well done. I've done that a time or two myself. How are you enjoying the process? Or, do you hate i

Let you know I get back from a Hawaiian cruise

 

[RedMage]

Let you know I get back from a Hawaiian cruise

I see that you are so pleased with how the process has worked out for you that you've given yourself a vacation. And a tropical vacation at that! I don't know if that means it's wonderful or so horrible that you're actually, physically running away.

Regardless, enjoy Hawaii!

 

[RedMage]

Work was busy the past three days. And, before that, I was stuck on the next chapter in Relics and procrastinating hard. I'm still procrastinating, but I've at least opened my outline/pre-written version and begun reading over it to identify what's essential in the new version I need to plan.

Did I say before that I entered a short story in Spillwords' Halloween contest? Well, I did, getting it in on the last day of the submission period. No word yet, but I'll know soon, so fingers crossed! Actually, I originally wrote the story for a Halloween contest here at SFFWorld. It's changed a bit since then, but if you want to read the early versions, check out the 2023 microfic version Strange Summoning or the longer, but still shorter than the current version, spring 2024 flash fiction version The Summoning. Just some good Halloween fun about a little girl summoning a big scary demon at Halloween.

I've also made progress on Snowbound Yule--a Victorian Era fantasy following teens who stay at their boarding school where they learn magic over the Yule/Christmas holiday and the dangers they face during that time. And I've had ideas for two other stories.

The contemporary fantasy Lake Proper novella I wrote this summer is the third story in its internal chronology, but I have yet to write either of the two prequel ideas I have. The middle story is a strong concept, but barely formed. The earliest has a lot more ideas to it, but seems to be two very different stories between the first and second halves. Well, I thought this week that while I like and want the stuff in the slow, cozy fantasy first half, maybe I really need to focus on the second half of the story idea and work in the first half stuff as background rather than showing it in its entirety. I like that thought which means, ofc, that now I have to put some effort into exploring and developing it.

The last idea I've had this week was about another, unrelated high/epic fantasy novella I partially wrote in 2022/2023 before getting stuck on some point of philosophical/religious debate in the story--it follows a paladin who's at odds with certain members of her church. Anyhow, I had the idea that while I liked the paladin's adventures in that particular story, I might need to write an earlier tale with her going about her normal, paladin life before getting into something like in that story.

I see your surprise at how all my work seems to be part of a series--even The Summoning (now a short story) is the first is a series of short stories about the characters, and Snowbound Yule is a standalone entry that's part of a planned series following some of its characters in life after school LOL. However, the very first stories I ever wrote were epic fantasy series. Two of them. Then a contemporary fantasy series. So, now that you know that, are you still surprised?