Since the first and only time I did NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month challenge that runs worldwide throughout every November), I thought: let's run with this writing thing and see how far I can take it. After all, the challenge specified a win would be a minimum of 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. Despite holding down a day job and some degree of an exercise regime and even a sprinkling of a social life, I managed to hit 52,000 words in 29 days. That gave me the spur I needed.
What I didn't realise is how much work would be involved, outside the business of actually putting fingers to keyboard in actually writing something.
The first story I sold to a publisher was a flash fiction piece called 'On Reflection', for which the payment was exposure - a chance to be published. So I took it. Got published. Got my feet wet. By the time I'd done my third piece, I'd actually sold a story. But with the output and elevated game came more work. I'm grateful that I don't really get writer's block. My muse is working harder and faster than I am - which means I get ideas faster than I can write them. But my appetite for tight story and dark product means more work for my beta readers. They write too, so I take time and invest in them so they can elevate their game - it's give and take. I need a log to keep track of all my submissions: what's accepted, rejected and what's still under submission. I need to keep an eye on submission windows so I can see when/where I would submit. Even without writing something for an upcoming anthology, I still have ideas that I want to write regardless. I need to keep an eye on my website (both the content and the functionality), keep it current, along with social media, my author presence in other sites, such as Amazon and Goodreads. So yeah, there's a lot more juggling. But I'm gonna run with it.