Writing Report January 23, 2021

Haven’t done one of these in a while for a variety of reasons:  

• Politics

• Holidays

• More politics

• Garden renovation

• Even more politics

But I have been fairly busy writing, and so far I’m more productive in 2021 that I was at this date in 2020.

On January 1 I started my Big Project, one I’ve been researching and noodling notes on for well over a decade.

I planned to take a different path in my writing over the last few years but while I’m good at making plans and following through, I also recalibrate along the way, checking if my goals are still desirable, seeing if my work pattern is paying off.

Truth be told, I’m getting old (we all are…if we’re lucky).  Work I planned to do a decade ago would be seen one way then, a different way now.

Part of that is changing social mores, part is the growth and evolution of my own personal ethics and philosophy, and part of that is certain works by a guy in his fifties would be regarded differently by someone in their sixties bearing down hard on their seventies.

So I’m not putting off big projects I planned to do after getting my footing in self-publishing with some smaller ones.  No time for that now; those smaller projects (two of them actually completed) can be sunset years projects.

Instead I’m going to focus on a handful of books I really want to do, with the intent of finding an agent who can get them into conventional publishing channels.

I think self-publishing is great and if I was 20-30 years younger would do it, but now I’d rather focus on the creative part of my craft, not the nuts and bolts of actually together and packaging a book.

Hey, more power to you if you’re into that.

Right now I’m about ¼ to 1/3 of the way through the first draft of my Big Project, and with any luck will be able to get it in circulation among agents by summer.

© Buzz Dixon