E-Books; Writing: Status, Story Flow, Editing, Chapter-a-Day

Maybe it's time to consider adding "Kindle" to my book format availability...

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/14/ebooks.ereaders/index.html

I've been considering publishing to Kindle for a while (see my LiveJournal for that post). And I've been toying with the idea of a Kindle myself because I'm all about the instant gratification... But on the other hand, there's just nothing quite like holding a book in your hands and turning the pages--literally.

We'll see!

Current writing status update:

Pages: 68
Words: 40,555
Status: In-progress. =)

I discovered last night, as I was writing basically the climax/end of my book, that I was thousands of pages short. But the way I write, I think, might be a little unusual.

For one, when I write, I tend to skip to the good parts. (I believe I've mentioned this before.) This makes my writing very short. But I also leave areas where I can go back and "fill in" scenes that have been omitted. I think that this makes me continue the story and not get so bored that I abandon it. It also, however, makes it so that I can never publish anything on the fly without going back through to fix it. Which is good, but not conducive if I ever want to publish a chapter-a-week online reading type of thing. Unless I've already written the whole thing. Gone over it with a fine tooth comb. But then I'd want to publish it in a book.

That's another thing...

I would really, really love to publish a chapter-a-week to try and intrigue some new readers. I think it's a fantastic idea. But if I do that, then I can't really publish the book. Then again, I'm not publishing the book now anyway. (This is my mental process, by the way.) So no one is reading it in the first place. But what if by some miracle someone reads it, loves it, and wants to see something else by me, but they hate the something else?

So then I think, "Well why don't I just put online some of my older things... Some of the things that are too short to be novels?"

And then I say to myself, "Because. I didn't go back through and polish them up because they're not my finest work, and that doesn't represent me as well as I'd like,"

(Do you see the viscous cycle here?)

So then I think, "Let's go ahead and polish up one of the older ones, then!"

And then I'm like, "But I don't like them as much as others."

But then I counter, "So fix it."

And then I say, "I don't really want to..."

And then comes, "So put up one you DO like."

And then I think, "But then I can't publish it."

... This is my MIND, people!

Struggling to get readers is hard, you know?

But that's really what it's all about... readers. I want people to read what I write. I'd love to make money at it so I could write full-time and support myself as comfortably as I do with my current job. But in order to that I have to sell books. In order to sell books I need readers. In order to get readers...

Well, that's where it stops. I don't know how to get readers! But publishing online for free is really starting to look good.