Friday, October 29, 2010

What a dilemma . . .

I feel torn.  I have several writing projects I want to work on and there's just not enough time in the day.

First and foremost, I need to be working on the 6th Booktown Mystery, and that's okay because I think this could be the best book in the series (so far).  Still, my progress has not been as fast as I would hope, although I've been writing at a fairly steady pace.  But instead of averaging 1250 words a day, I've only been averaging 1000 words a day ... and not on weekends.  That needs to change if I'm going to hand the book in on time.

I also want to be working on the rewrite of the next Jeff Resnick book.  I figure if I could devote about 20 hours to it, I could upload it to Kindle/Nook/Smashwords.  The problem?  I don't have 20 hours.  And, quite frankly, I don't have the audience to justify taking those 20 hours out of my writing schedule.

Although . . . maybe I should try to justify it.  To do that, I need to sit down and figure out what my sales are for this year on the previous two books and the two short stories.  That's kind of difficult, thanks to the spreadsheet Smashwords gives you.  The books are not listed in any kind of order, and mixed by a bunch of different vendors.  I think just figuring that out would be a day's work.

How can one justify working on a project that doesn't bring in the income one needs to stay afloat?  And yet, working on that series feeds my "artist's soul."

Anybody got a similar dilemma?