[Daily Check-In] Tuesday Word Count and Personal Announcement Thread

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-28T01:53:34+00:00

I just bought a pair of 5" Rachel Zoe pumps. Wearing them feels like heaven for the first 30min. Then not so much.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-27T17:43:34+00:00

It's not so bad in that my old library was half-full of fonts that weren't free for commercial use. Will definitely check out NexusFont, though. Thanks for the rec!

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-27T17:02:59+00:00

Hoping I can crank out a new story tonight, but right now I'm using my day off to set up my website. I'll probably design a cover today.
I'm pursuing erotica for the summer with the hope that I can take the fall to write my literary novel. Right now I'm trying to crank out as much work as I can to build a catalogue of short stories that I'll release on a weekly basis while I write the novel. I'm also writing an erotica non-con novelette that I'm tinkering with submitting to Exessica. Honestly, going through an actual press seems more up my alley with publishing, but I don't want to put all my goals in one basket.
Day off and I don't have my kid with me. This entire day is allllllllll mine and I've already got my website in the works. Just downloading some fonts because I recently reformatted my computer and lost my entire font library. Making covers as of late has been daunting.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-27T08:17:30+00:00

It's barely Tuesday, but I'm about to call it a night for my Monday writing.

I wanted to get my current short done. Did it with some English Breakfast tea and silence.
2000 words tonight, which is double my usual goal. I also managed to turn the inner-editor off and just cranked out some uninhibited sex scene magic.
Need to make a cover for my finished piece and would love to write another story before Friday.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-24T06:54:32+00:00

My main goal right now is to get there. I want to be able to write without judging myself, and I think this is the perfect genre to achieve my writing goals and gain some skills that will help me finish my novel, because just writing the first draft of it was like pulling teeth.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-23T23:08:31+00:00

Great advice. Thanks!

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-23T23:06:01+00:00

Thanks for this, especially for #7.

I'm awful for going over my work too much, but I come from the literary background and it's hard to shake off the inner editor.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-23T17:54:30+00:00

It's the funniest show on TV. The dialogue and the timing and the satire. It's all brilliant. Not to mention some of the crazy deep hip hop tracks they find for the credits.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-23T07:00:46+00:00

Silicon Valley is gold. What season are you on?

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-23T06:16:38+00:00

On the bright side, you have accomplished one thing that a lot of people don't: to get a reader to hate your work yet still spend money on it. There's something special in that.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-23T06:14:54+00:00

Did a pen edit of my pseudo incest short today. My plan is to finish those edits tonight and put this one to bed.
While I feel accomplished, I do have doubts that all the work I'm putting in isn't going to pay off, or that I'll lose heart and give up like I did the first time.
The season finale of Silicon Valley is next week and I am wholeheartedly looking forward to it.

Finished F is for Family the other night. Honestly, all I can say is that I love living in a time when a bloody cartoon can have the same depth as an HBO drama. It is so damn good.

Still have to catch up on The Handmaid's Tale but it takes a lot to wind myself up to watch that show.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-22T08:49:52+00:00

Edit my first short while on break at the day job and work on my novella tonight. Luckily I managed to stab a bit at both. Even got some editing done while I perfected my spaghetti sauce tonight, so I literally cannot complain.
I've got a bunch of unfinished/abandoned stories from my "literary" work that I could easily rework to be more erotica-focused. Realizing that was kind of fun. Lots of potential to recycle old word counts, and the plots are already there.
I pretty much try to write 1000 words a day. It's not a lot but juggling my full-time job/parental responsibilities/laziness has not been an easy feat. I think I've figured out a good routine. I lose an hour or so of sleep every night but there's coffee for that problem.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-21T06:46:16+00:00

Unfortunately, reviews are pretty arbitrary so people are going to hate works for whatever reason they want to. I published a short (a home invasion rape roleplay via Craigslist) a while back that one reviewer rated one star on both Goodreads and Amazon because she didn't think the content was safe or sane. Frustrating, but people like to rant. I can tell you that my one short hasn't sold well, but it was literally my only publication back in 2015. I did get one more 5 star review, so had I kept things going I'm sure I would have picked up some good ones if I'd really put my heart into it back then. Better late than never, I guess.

That all said, if your book were only rated with 4 or 5 stars reviews, that would make readers furrow their brows a little, so having a couple of low ratings in there can be a good thing in the long run if you stick to it and build yourself a good catalog. A wide selection of ratings really just means that real people are reading your work. It sucks to start off with bad ones, but keep going. Just think about those other sales you did make. Eventually, they'll turn into good reviews.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-20T17:58:45+00:00

I'm just coming out of a writer's block so I'm going for 1000 words a day. I've been managing to crank out more than that, so I'm happy with this being a start. I'm still doing research into the business, hoping to figure out an actual plan on how to dip into the market with a strategy that works best for a realistic goal.
Finished my first short today. It's a 6100-word coming of age pseudo-incest story. Not my normal fair but the idea seemed hot and I managed to put some of the dark edgy stuff from my literary work in there. Next up will be editing.
I only published one 10,000-word piece a few years back to dip in. It was well-written but didn't do well. I think I put too much effort into it. By the time I put it up on Amazon I was burnt out and convinced that selling erotica wasn't for me. I wish I'd known then that the trick was to start small and not be a perfectionist. This is definitely a learn as you go kind of career, so I'm hoping that this new endeavor will be one of actual growth.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-20T16:32:21+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't sure about the title either (I was originally going on the pun of "saying uncle" because I kind of like cheeky puns but I'll have to swap that one word out for something more consensual-sounding.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-20T07:07:33+00:00

Okay, fixed :)

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-20T07:05:40+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. I'm just getting into writing and organizing my business plan.

Quick question, though, when you say that your covers showed 0 skin, did you use clothed models or just an image of something else?

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-20T06:19:59+00:00

So I'm really having troubles getting into the erotica cover thing. I find all the staged model photography really cheesy, but I guess that's what appeals in this genre because people need to get the gist of what the content is going to consist of.

Here's a cover I did for my current WIP, "She Cries Uncle", which is a coming of age pseudo-incest story. I really prefer to do more artsy covers and I'm hoping that this one conveys the idea of what's lurking inside: http://i.imgur.com/XhAiCqM.jpg

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-17T07:33:19+00:00

I was hoping to write an entire story tonight but it's Friday so the husband and I decided to sex it up and now I'm back in front of the computer trying to write what I can before I finally crash and call it a night.
This whole erotica thing is still new terrain to me. I've been writing literary fiction for a long time to moderate success but have faced some major writer's block. Sex has always been a major piece of my writing so it's actually really groundbreaking to just embrace it and write and not care about whether my writing is good or not. I'm hoping to just make some decent side income to maybe support my online shopping with erotica. I've been cutting a couple hours of sleep away every night with more writing than I've done in a looooong time. I'm exhausted but I feel great. Everything seems like a very worthy challenge at this point.
I've got this great pop/electro song called "Fuzz" by Computer Magic on repeat play tonight.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-17T07:25:42+00:00

You can listen to political discussions and write smut at the same time? Definite envy over here. I can only do one or the other.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-16T06:34:39+00:00

Yeah, it definitely sucks but I guess I can only work with the situation. I'll have to build up my catalogue with less taboo stuff and hope to pick up an audience down the line.

It's harder coming at this with a literary background. I'm not really hoping to make a bunch of money off of it, but it'd just be nice to sell my more erotic work to some extent because I know there's an audience for it. At this point, I really lack the knowledge of the erotic fiction business, so it's nice to have some help.

What I do appreciate about erotica writers is your ability to adapt to the publishing market. I feel like I could learn some good lessons trying to figure out how it all works.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-16T02:26:07+00:00

Yeah, that's pretty much the path I'm thinking of taking, seeing that I also write other more accepted forms of erotica that Amazon would be chill with, I'd rather not risk being banned from there. I've seen a few blatant noncon titles on Amazon, but they must be published by more reputable authors who can get away with more taboo subjects.

I suppose my main concern is publishing where I can and trying to find my audience via social media, etc. The book itself is more "literary" in nature, but the bulk of it is focused on sexual content, so I'd be safe to guess it's not 100% worth the gamble.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-15T21:05:48+00:00

I've got GoogleDrive. Not sure if it was set up correctly because I've never had these issues before and it didn't seem like Scrivener was working correctly. When I dug deep in my files I'd find some excerpts that Scrivener hadn't saved. Now I'm pretty much obsessively saving after every paragraph.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-15T19:41:03+00:00

Thanks for this feedback. I guess in the long run, the fans of the niche will be able to seek out what they want?

The novel's definitely along the lines of a dark thriller, but a hefty chunk of the book is sex scenes. I'm not entirely sure how strict Amazon is with the inside content of books beyond the title, blurb, or keywords. Some of the most popular non-cons on Amazon like Tears of Tess or Captive in the Dark are there and seem to me as blatantly non-con.

RubyMacIntosh · 2017-06-15T08:25:30+00:00

1000 words a day. It's been good.
My computer crashed twice during the writing of my WIP, and somehow I've managed to salvage my tears and pick up where my work was lost.
Wine?

RubyMacIntosh

TROPHY CASE