It’s the beginning of week six of writing a short story every week, increasing the word count by 500 words every week until my fingers break. (Goal: 25,000 words in a week or 5k words/day)
Word count goal for the week: 9,500 words (1,900 words/day)
Earnings have been rather lackluster, which I blame on genre. Is there an audience for pulp-style thrillers? Yes, with an asterisk in size 72 font. There is, but I believe it’s there for long-form authors who occasionally drop a quick hitter.
It may also be the weather. Is anyone trying to read thrillers when they could be outside drinking beers on a patio somewhere?
So I’m going back to 2014 when I first self-published: erotica.
Or, more appropriately, erotic thrillers. Sex and violence, not just sex. James Bond except he gets buns.
So the next 4 titles I’ll hit publish on will have a bit more intimacy in them, and we’ll see how those titles compare to my existing titles.
In other news
I have a Chrome plugin that counts words for me based on actual typing in Google Docs. Instead of using a physical timer and having to manually hit it every time I get up to use the bathroom or get a cup of coffee, my plugin automatically stops after 1 minute with no typing on the manuscript. It also counts every word I type, not just the final word count of the day, which I like.
So today, I wrote for a little under 2 hours. Actual fingers on keyboard typing. How long was I sitting there? I don’t know, maybe three of those hours.
In that time, 2,771 words were recorded as typed, of which 2,225 were kept in the manuscript.
I got accepted into the Indie Authors Ascending Discord server. It seems a lot like /r/eroticauthors, where people aren’t shy about discussing earnings. As anticipated, romance and erotica are very popular, whereas the thriller conversation hasn’t had a new response in a few days.
Gotta keep this short: it doesn’t contribute to my word count.