I have sorely neglected this writing blog but there’s a good reason—my output has never been higher nor more focused. In short I’ve been busy with the business of writing, and forgot to update my commentary in the process!
Just before Christmas I delivered my H P Lovecraft anthology to the publisher (keeping their ID under my hat at the moment, at least until the Kickstarter goes live), who have launched a horror enprint and seem to be doing very well with it. And very soon I’ll be delivering my second Sherlock Holmes anthology to the same company as produced the first, with my next writing priority being to finish my second Sherlock Holmes novel for them also. Taken together, those three projects are about a quarter of a million words.
A few days ago I worked up a ‘to-do; list of future writing projects. Two of the three projects above headed that list, then other projects ran on—and on—and on. I projected writing over the years 2025 to 2027 inclusive, and came up with something like eighteen book projects, being both novels and anthologies. This is a tremendous amount to contemplate in a three year period, but it’s not all to be built from scratch.
Three new Sherlock Holmes anthologies are already half or more filled. One is an SF collection requiring only two stories to finish it. One is a novel needing only a couple of chapters and an epilogue. Another is a novel to be derived from an existing movie script, another a finished novel to begin the rounds after a final polish pass... That cuts it down to something like about three projects to work up from scratch in any one year, and that’s doable.
My fervent hope is that a professional agency will be in the mix before too long, and some of these projects can enter the professional stream. Of course, that doesn’t mean the top-end semi-pro endeavour will falter in the slightest, and it will be my great pleasure to continue to send a considerable output to market via that stream.
This all comes down to an output of something like a quarter of a million words per year, not counting incidental short story submissions and placements. But I would have to say that the burgeoning of the book side of things has already toned back the short story aspect. It’s far more productive and far less frustrating to work up a book for a publisher who is eager and waiting for it, than to continue to swim upstream on the rejection roundabout, wondering if you’ll ever see a professional payday.
I’ll post my annual roundup of stats on January 7th, marking nine years since I launched this writing endeavour, and there’ll be some telling numbers on the way things have shaped up lately.
Cheers, and thanks for reading,
Mike Adamson
