If you’ve been keeping up with my blog at all (I mean, who hasn’t, amirite?!?!?) then you’ve been keeping up with my “blog a day for a year” posts, right up until there were no more blogs-a-day. I stopped before I hit the 200 mark, so yeah, far from making the goal of doing it for a year straight.
Personally, I’m okay with that. I’ve accomplished a lot of things in life, I’m not concerned that this reflects some inability to follow through on my commitments. I would have thought that 20 or even 10 years ago, I think, but as the saying goes, I’m older and wiser now. The fact is, it was a fun project while it lasted, but it had no ulterior purpose. I write every day as a matter of course, and I have in my electronic archives years worth of blog posts going back, literally, decades. The blog-a-day thing was a fun pastime for a period of my life when I was not actively thrashing around in other writing projects.
However, I am now thrashing quite energetically in a couple of projects, and they are taking up time and energy of which I do not have a lot to spare. I still work a full-time day!job, which means I spend about 45+ hours a week (counting commute) doing that and not writing. Oh sure, sometimes I can whip out a blog post or long facebook rant while on break but that’s more throw-away time than focused writing time.
Something had to give.
And that something, as you may have guessed, was the daily blog post project.
What has that project been sacrificed for? A few things, most of them falling under the umbrella of “K.C. York, author” (that’s a coming soon site, but be sure to bookmark it or something!). First off, the long-lamented or perhaps even anticipated novel Wolves of Harmony Heights will be coming out in early March — I’ll have a real launch date set when my cover designer gets done with the art. I’m finishing the final edits on that mostly on the weekends at this point. During the week, I’m focusing on cranking out a brand new fantasy series called Dragon’s Grail! It represents a significant change of course for me as a writer, from focusing all-in on a super long, involved novel that takes a year or two to complete to writing shorter works that I can turn around quickly and hopefully make some money on.
Yes, money.
Because for me, this writing lark has never been about craft and art and timeless prose. I have always, always been focused on trying to make a living as a storyteller, period, the end. There are many ways of being “a writer” and this is the one I have chosen. However, historically, I’ve been lousy at aiming for that goal strategically. I’ve been writing stories and just kinda sorta hoping they might sell, maybe. After doing a lot of research and soul searching, I decided to go the middle path: write a story I love about characters I think are awesome, but to do it in a way that is marketable. I know I will continue on the path of ALSO writing long epic novels — Wolves of Boston and Link in the Chain are still “on deck” — but for now, Dragon’s Grail is where I am investing that precious time and energy.
I’ll keep at doing blog posts occasionally, because I really can’t help myself (it’s a curse!) but in the meantime if you don’t see anything here for a bit, remember that there is a lot going on behind the scenes!