The book is finished. Well, just about. It needs to get approved and then it will appear as available on retailers. My part is pretty much done. It’s just about the shortest one of my Hike with Me books, and I think that’s alright. Shorter books are less expensive to print and therefore I can price them lower.
I am still considering making versions of the books that have normal sized print instead of large print so that I can see about selling them at even lower prices, but that’s a large investment in time, getting the font sized correctly and then re-arranging the images so that they are still near the text relevant to them. It will mean more pages of just pictures, which isn’t a bad thing, per se. But it is difficult to get the formatting done, because I can’t just place two pictures on the same page in the Word template – I need to create a new whole page image with the two images. Otherwise, a single line of text ends up accompanying the two pictures, and that looks silly.
But that can’t be my next project anyway, because I’ve got some guidebooks to work next. I think I can reasonably get both of those done before the end of the year, especially with the week my workplace is closed between Christmas and New Year’s. I just need to make it a priority to get them written and pictured.
If I save enough money, I want to do another online writing class, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen. Also, I need to start planning next year’s solo trip so I can close the gap on the ICT and have the bottom quarter done. There’s a lot to do, and that doesn’t even include getting in some fiction writing, which I haven’t been doing AT ALL.
I have found writing a bit difficult to get into in the past few months, and I do partly blame the political climate. My focus gets torn in all sorts of different directions and I just don’t make the energy to put into writing. Plus there were factors at work that have made my days a lot more full and occupied my brain even when I’m not actively at work.
I think getting the guidebooks out will help me get back into writing, because they will be projects that I can complete and get a sense of accomplishment from. I feel more confident about my non-fiction than I do about my fiction. Even though I’ve actually made more money from fiction so far than non-fiction (and the amounts are tiny, either way), I don’t have the same kinds of doubts about the non-fiction. I create them, they are finished, and I put them out into the world. They’ll find their audience, or not. I’ll move on to the next one.