Being an Indy author is tricky. You must learn to market your own novels. You need to find others to help with proofreading and editing, and you need a circle of friends to encourage you to keep writing when sales are low.

More than anything else, however, you need to write books. Many books.

If you listen to Amazon KDP presentations and classes given by successful Indy authors, you quickly learn that their fiction writing tends to share two characteristics: quantity and rapidity. They usually have multiple books for sale and they are capable of writing a novel or novella fairly quickly, sometimes in only a few months.

During the middle of pandemic last year, I decided to see if John and I could write a novel in six months. In order to do that, I wrote at least 500 words a day…every day…seven days a week. Between the time we started last fall and the time we finished the book this spring, I only missed one day of writing (due to a death in the family). I even wrote on holidays. During that time, John and I discussed the ongoing story constantly, often using the white board in our game room to plot the upcoming chapters.

It worked. We finished the first draft of the novel in six months. We were able to proofread it, revise and edit it, and publish it less than one year after we first started writing.

That all sounds great. (I hope the final product is great as well, but that is up to all you readers to decide.) There was just one downside. The constant writing became very difficult after a while. Writing every single day meant I never got a day off. On days when I had other activities, I sometimes would not finish my 500 words until 9:00 at night.

I did it somehow (because I am stubborn that way), but it was not easy. More importantly, it was not sustainable. Keeping up that pace would burn me out of fiction writing eventually.

Since that time, I’ve been trying to think of a compromise – a way to produce books at a rapid pace, but not suffer burn out.

For the latest novel, I am trying a modified version of the at-least-500-words-a-day plan. First, with John’s help, I outlined the novel beforehand, so we would not have to discuss it constantly. Second, I am limiting my at-least-500-words-a-day to four days of each week (Monday through Thursday). Then I get a three-day weekend off. Obviously, I can also write on those days off, if I feel inspired to do so, but I no longer have the pressure to produce.

So far, the plan has worked well. I am currently on Chapter 3 of our new novel, and I am able to enjoy the writing process with minimal stress. It will take longer to write this book than the previous one, but we still should be able to finish within a year.

I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, if any of you wonderful readers out there happen to finish either of our current novels, I would love to hear your thoughts. Obviously, Amazon and Goodreads reviews are greatly appreciated, but if you prefer something more informal, my email address is listed on this website.

Talk to you next Friday!

Susan 8/6/2021

p.s. I suppose I should include the link to our latest book. It’s part of that marketing-your-own-books thing I mentioned earlier. You should be able to find it at: Amazon.com: Prophecy’s Malignant Son: A high fantasy novel eBook: Ruff, Susan and John: Books

If that link does not work, please leave a comment and let me know. Thank you!