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
