I had a lot of catching up to do at the office this week, so my days were mostly much longer than normal, and didn’t leave much energy for writing. Neither did the descent into madness that the U.S. political process has become. I’m worried for our nation when our “main stream” candidates contribute to the polarization of our population rather than debate real solutions for the real problems so many of us face–crumbling infrastructure, stagnant economy, environmental disaster, structural redistribution, and political corruption. And when a candidate uses language that is triggering for both men and women, it begs the question of how we repair civility enough that we can hear the real reasons there is support for for such a toxic individual. (And: How tragic is it that lucid reporting on those reasons comes from a satire site as opposed to a news site?!)
And that’s as close to a political statement as I’ll ever make on this blog. (Though… I’m seeing some of these bits of news making their ways into my characterizations and I’m laughing at myself for edging toward the dystopian and post-apocalyptic in my writing as being realistic projections of the future. With current trends what they are, it would take one of Miracle Max’s Pills to turn them around.)
Something else I read this week speaks more to the image at the top of this post than I expected. The New York City public library system has apartments built in to the buildings for the obsolete position of caretaker. It would be amazing (as a bibliophile) to live in a space that is naturally quiet and so close to the source of so much knowledge. And for non-readers… well… they just need not apply.
😀
On the business end of my writing world, The Builders is holding on to being listed in the top-selling LGBT scifi titles, making it officially one of my best-performing releases. Not that that bar was ever very high, but it is an encouraging result, especially in the face of news from the Author Earnings team that market share for indies shrunk for the first time in two and a half years of tracking that data. It’s impossible to know whether I might have done better a year ago, or whether this improvement over my previous performance is related to my participation in the Kindle Scout program, but if this reality continues, it will make my long-term goal of a sustainable income from writing that much more challenging to achieve.
It’s a good thing I like to write, regardless. And it is interesting to live in the worlds my fantasies create.
🙂
So my imagination generated another 3,136 words among all the other activity last week–a little less than half as productive as the week prior, and some cause for concern with my deadlines. I’ll need to step it up again this week to catch up with my plan. That should be possible since I don’t have to travel, nor do I have any social obligations.
My exercise picked up slightly, so my phone says I averaged 3,234 steps per day last week. Not quite to goal, but much closer than last week.
I’ll be back next week again, and encourage any fellow writers looking for public accountability to check out the ROW80 Facebook group. (For those of you who are avoiding Facebook, we can also be found under #ROW80 on Twitter.)
I clicked on the library apartments article and loved it. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Glad to year your book is ranking well. I find it very easy to be underwhelmed by my little successes, but achievements are still achievements. I’m glad you’re acknowledging this. Looks like you had a pretty good week.