Wednesday, April 20, 2011

WIP’s, WIP’s and more WIP’s

So, as I mentioned, the other day, I created a spreadsheet to keep track of not only my submissions, but also my WIP’s. And it turns out, I got more WIP’s than I realized I did. And I added another one last night. (For those that don’t know, WIP stands for Work In Progress. It’s Twitter shorthand for any project you are currently working on.)

Now, the good news is that in addition to the progress of each WIP, I also have a due date, so that I can make sure to get stuff done in the right order. It really helps me stay focused and not project hop. But I want to spend a moment to talk about the project I just added.

I was contacted through Facebook that some old friends of mine, also writers, are getting together to work on a potential anthology using a setting created by one of them. The idea originally was to do a straight up Sword and Sorcery, al la Conan, with lots of action and in a very low magic setting. That has since changed somewhat, but that’s what happens when you collaborate. I am working on the rough ideas for a story for this setting, and it’s kind of exciting to be working with these two guys.

Now, the question comes to mind, what are the plans for this project? One friend suggested publishing it as an eBook. I’m still a litter nervous about doing that. I don’t have the money to lay out for a proper eBook launch, including editors, cover design, formatting, etc. On the other hand, I’m not really against the idea of doing it this way, as it’s unlikely that a group of unknown authors can get an anthology just featuring us can get published in New York. So, it’s something that I have to think about, because the truth is, I want to know how we’re going to go about this before I invest a lot of time working on a story.

This is not to say I won’t be writing a story for this project if it’s only for ourselves and never sees the light of day. I’m having fun right now, and that’s the important thing. Just that if we do go with a full book, we need to talk about how that will look before we start writing. At least, in my opinion. So, I will have that discussion with them soon.

This brings up something else that’s been on my mind lately. With the creation of the spreadsheet, I saw that one of my WIP’s missed it’s deadline, and so there’s no chance of it getting included in the project I was writing it for. So, now I’m left with a project that’s one third of the way through its first draft, wondering if I should even bother finishing.

On the one hand, it just bugs me to leave a story unfinished, even if it won’t get used. On the other hand, it kind of feels like it’s not worth it. Why should I finish a story that the project it was done for is closed? On the OTHER other hand, I could just finish and file it away. You never know, there might be a use for it later.

So, that’s where my mind is right now regarding my projects. I’ll probably figure out all this stuff by next week, but I’m also sure that this is a topic that will come up often.

Until then, keep on remembering the future!

2 comments:

  1. Ok, so here's my take. On our project, there's not much cost in doing an eBook. The most costly might be the cover design. but, between Ken and I, we can probably manage that ourselves. I have a writer friend who has published a couple of books for Kindle, and he incurred little to no cost, as far as I know. Marketing would be word of mouth, social networking, etc. No one has any delusions of getting rich off of it. But you never know where it could lead.

    And as to your past due WIP, if you like it, finish it. Just because the project you were aiming for is closed, doesn't mean you can't find another market for it. I did that myself with a story. I missed a deadline, but finished the story anyways, and just submitted it to a publication last week.

    If it's a good story, there will always be someone willing to buy it. :)

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  2. I've researched the Kindle and discovered that it's really user-friendly, and there's no "start-up" fee. All we would have to do is decide how we're going about intellectual property, meaning, are we creating a partnership or are we releasing the stories separately. I'd rather release them together to give the book more meat, more collaboration. But that's just me. Artwise? Well, that's not too difficult to work on. But you're right. We need to decide on those things. Tom says write, write, write. So that's what I'm doing. The rest will fall into place. You'd be surprised how that happens.

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