January I started the new year with a burst of quality work, on both Justine and Terminal Singularity.
However in February we moved house and that was a little bit of an interruption. To say the least. I kept working on both novels, but I keep changing my mind about which one I should concentrate on. Justine is the more interesting, and personal, for me. But Terminal Singularity is fully plotted and 25 percent of the way through it’s first draft. So logically I should work on that. But I keep getting great ideas and character insights into the story of Justine.

I also implemented another new plan for success. Since I can’t make money at my Ideal Job, I have decided to continue the tradition of novelists having a wide variety of jobs by starting my own blog network to try to generate an income from advertising and affiliate sales. If you want to stop smoking read this blog.

I just looked at the date on the files that I have for my new novel Terminal Singularity. The latest date is 11th Dec. It is now the 29th. That is 18 days without working on my novel. OK, you might say, given the dates involved(i.e. Christmas) I might be excused for not writing while I have been busy preparing and then indulging in the pagan celebration of winter solstice( transposed a few days later, because Christians can’t get anything right).
But basically in over two weeks I have not found even 10 minutes to change even one comma or full stop in any part of the novel.
I can’t use the excuse that I have been busy writing blog posts, because I haven posted anything since the 6th.
I have had the time because I have chosen to play computer games, watch movies, etc when I could have been sitting at my computer writing.

If I can’t bring myself to write I can at least bring myself to administer my web site. I’ve just noticed that there is a new version of WordPress available to download. But, you know, I am not going to do it.

This is another form of writers block where one can distract oneself for ever doing “very important” other things (Taking out the trash, washing the car, walking the dog) and never find the time to actually write.
I will have to stop waiting to find the time to write and decide that some of those “very important” other things will just have to wait because I have made the time to write. And I will be writing and doing nothing else.

The best laid plans of mice and men…
Thursday, Friday and Saturday real life intervened in my plans for becoming mega rich by writing/blogging and I did not get any writing done. On Sunday when I did make time to write I worked on my novel and so I do not have any posts for this week written, or even half written.
I needed to work on my fiction, if I don’t make the time to work on my novel it will take me five years to finish it. And as novelists only get paid once they have finished their novels (nobody buys a half finished work of fiction) I don’t think that I can wait five years before being paid.
However as I consider my blog my day job as I am establishing myself as novelist I was worried that I have not posted anything to my blog for nearly a week.
I was going to write a post about that fact that I do not have anything to post, when I realised that posting for the sake of having something to post was simply a form of self-spamming. I do not need to fill up my blog with stupid posts about nothing of any interest. I do not read any blog that has nothing of interest in it and I would not expect anyone to read my blog if it was full of what can only be described as self-spam. Although now I find myself posting about not posting a post about nothing
Most of the expert sources I read about making money from blogging (ProBlogger, Blog Profits Blueprint) state that you need to post every day in order to keep your readers coming back and make your traffic grow. But I am not so sure if that is necessarily the case. (Note: I have been blogging for less than one year and do not make more than loose change each month, so the people who do make money might be right.)
However I can find no coloration within my own stats between the frequency of my blog posts and the amount of traffic my site gets.
Some successful bloggers/writers say the opposite (Tim Ferriss - point 2 Post less to be read more) And some say blogging is a complete waste of their time (Morris Rosenthal).

The fact is that most people who come to my blog come to read my free novels and stories and not my blog posts. Looking at my stats I find that individual chapters of my novels get 90-100 views a day, by best blog post gets 4 or 5 views. So most people are not reading my blog.
So for the most part I am pretty much relaxed about posting only once or twice per week. Quality is much better than quantity. There are enough spammers on the internet, I do not need to spam my own blog in a furtile attempt to attract readers.

The good news is that my decision to spend most of my time this week writing fiction paid off big time. I have done an average of 1,400 words per day. The bad(?) news is that I have started a new novel.
I have decided to write a commercial erotic romance. I have done my research and I think I know what the market wants, that is what the publishers are asking for. I know that I can write SF and Erotica and I am a bit of a soft romantic at heart, so I think I will enjoy writing SF erotic romances. Or more precisely writing the proposals for SF erotic romances, since I want to do this professionally I won’t be writing complete novels until I know that I can sell them.
I will continue to write my own “literary erotica”, but I am not sure about the commercial variability of the stories that I “naturally” write. There is too much story for the erotic market and too much sex for the mainstream market, and anyway as we all know most writers do not make a living from writing.
Also I still want to pursue the possibility of generating an income from blogging. That is why I recommend reading the Blog Profits Blueprint.
The question is do I spend my time writing fiction or blogging about writing fiction. The answer is that I will spend the weekends writing blog posts and hopefully getting at least 3 if not 4 or 5 that I can then que to post on my blog every day. And weekdays I will actually write fiction.
Well this is the plan for this week. As you may know this blog is a log of my journey to learn how to make a living writing fiction and blogging. So I will probably have to try out quite a few plans before I find a combination that works for me.
Subscribe to my RSS feed(feed by Email) and follow my progress. Then you to can learn from my mistakes and adapt what I do to generate a second (or a first) income for yourself.

Every place that I look for advice on creating a successful blog gives the same piece of advice - post every day. Every source be it the Blog Mastermind Program, or another blog such as Ten Keyboards, or even an article in a traditional magazine repeats the same advice - post every day.
It is something that I have not been doing. I am still trying to establish the discipline of writing every day. I go through periods where I do write every day, and I am always amazed at my productivity. But then I get distracted by “real life” and my discipline slips. I skip a day. I skip two days. Then I realise that I haven’t written anything for four or five days.
As a novelist I sometimes think that my blog might be yet another distraction. But I know hat writing something every day is a useful discipline, whether I am writing fiction or blog posts.
So now I am going to post every day. Hopefully I will find something useful and/or interesting to write every day. I don’t want to end spamming my own blog!