C.D. Reimer

A new year is always a good time to set new priorities after reviewing last year. I’ve decided to focus on what I’ve become since I made a decision in late 2006 take writing serious: writer, blogger and publisher.

WRITER

Fiction was easier to write. I wrote 30+ short stories published in over a dozen anthologies and three unpublished novels—a sprawling 700-page first novel, one-third of a second novel, and the outline for a third novel—that went nowhere. Despite my initial publishing success, I spent more time on publishing ebooks in the last few years. I have dozens of short stories in various drafts that I’m waiting to finish (someday).

Non-fiction was never easier to write. (As Stephen King once said, “The problem with non-fiction is that you just can’t make [crap] up.”) The few essays I did write and published as ebooks were long, hard slog that emphasized the creative pain rather than the creative pleasure of writing.

Since ebook publishing is my biggest source of writing income, I can’t deny the sales numbers. Non-fiction ebooks sells better than fiction ebooks. While I may clear out the back log of short stories, the priority is on non-fiction. Blogging in general, essays in particular.

BLOGGER

Being a successful blogger has always been an elusive goal for me. If traffic and advertising numbers are any indication, I’m a dismal failure. I could blame the underlying technical issues that made routine blogging and updating the author website a major chore. (Those issues will get fix in the next three months.) It’s really about buckling down to get the job done.

A Silicon Valley Writer (ASVW) – This writing blog that you’re reading went on a bi-weekly publication schedule several years ago. Some months I was consistent, other months I was more—or sometimes less—consistent. This past summer I stopped posting at all and the rest of 2014 only had four more posts. I’m going back to a weekly schedule by posting on Sunday evenings.

Kicking The Bit Bucket (KTBB) – Since I started this new personal blog about Silicon Valley, California and whatever else in 2013, I’ve been more consistent to the weekly schedule. That fell apart in 2014. I skipped weeks at a time and wrote the missing posts later. Not the best way to build a steady audience. That will change with postings on Monday evenings.

Once Upon An Albatross… (OUAA) – My old personal blog about Silicon Valley, California and whatever else from 1997 to 2012 has become a favorite haven for North Korean hackers, spammers and other undesirables. I need to finish cleaning up the content for ebook publication. As for the website itself, I may convert it into a static website to discourage the riffraff.

PUBLISHER

I’m entering my fifth year as an ebook publisher with nearly 60 SHORT ebook titles (i.e., short stories, essays and poetry). I need to look backwards before I can move forward. I’m updating the cover art, revising the content, and writing new descriptions to boost sales of existing ebooks. Meanwhile, I’m prepping the source materials for ebook publication this summer.

With 2014 coming to a close in a few days, I’m looking forward to putting this year behind me. Not that 2014 was a difficult year. That honor goes to both 2008 (being eaten alive by bedbugs) and 2012 (my father dying from cancer). With being unemployed for the first half of the year, and starting a new non-writing tech job that demanded much of my time for the second half, 2014 was an unproductive year for writing short stories and publishing ebooks.

Writing daily haiku on Tumblr started off great as a New Year’s goal for the first six months. Plenty of time to write multiple three-line poems while unemployed. That became touch-and-go when I started the new job in Palo Alto, as my initial daily commute required four buses and two hours each way. That changed to three buses and one hour each way when I started taking the express bus. I did get 16 haiku published in various publications. Like everything else this year, daily haiku fell off to the wayside.

My vintage Black MacBook (2006) dying after eight years of faithful service took the wind out of my sails. I wasn’t in a position to get a new Mac anytime soon. Repairing the MacBook was out of the question, as it had an obsolete 32-bit CPU and software updates required a 64-bit CPU. Although I continued my job search on the Windows PC, ebook publishing came to a halt without Adobe Photoshop for creating ebook covers and the Bento database for managing ebook details on the PC. While Windows alternatives do exist, I prefer a Mac to get work done. I’ll get a replacement Mac in 2015.

Writing in general was a mixed bag. After publishing 30+ short stories in 16 anthologies in the last five years, this year was a total bust with ~6,000 words for new short stories and no first serial anthology sales. (Several reprint short stories saw publication in an omnibus collection and an audio podcast.) Between this writing blog and my personal blog, Kicking The Bit Bucket, I wrote ~30,000 words. As I’m frequently reminded by my ebook sales, my non-fiction sells better than my fiction. I’m thinking long and hard about my future direction as a writer.

What 2014 taught me was that I need to set interlocking priorities in my personal, professional and writing lives. After being unemployed for three of the last six years, filing for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2011, and 20 years away from retirement with nothing in the bank, I need to get serious about my non-writing tech career. Unless I get extraordinary luck (so far I haven’t), being a full-time writer won’t happen until after I retire. Maybe then I’ll have more time for writing, blogging and publishing.

When I became serious about writing in 2006, my goal was to become a full-time writer in five years. I would write a novel each year to give me a one-in-five chance of finding an agent and getting a publisher. Meanwhile, my non-writing tech jobs continued to pay the bills. That was the plan for the first few years until the Great Recession came along in 2009. After being out of work for three of the last six years, filing for bankruptcy and having just enough money to survive, I’m giving up on becoming a full-time writer to become a weekend writer.

After 60+ job interviews over the last eight months of being unemployed, I landed a new non-writing tech job. This particular job has great future potential and may last longer than the last three jobs that ended after nine months. Since this job requires that I get up at 4:30AM to take a two-hour bus trip to get to work on time, I have very little time before, during and after work to write. Buses, unlike the light rail and commuter trains, tend to jerk and bump around in traffic. Since I ride one of the busiest bus routes in Silicon Valley, it’s impossible to write on a clipboard without scrawling the pen across the page and stabbing someone in the leg.

I’m using my commute time to study for the CompTIA Security+ certification, which is highly relevant to my current job as a desktop security remediation specialist. This certification and the other certifications I plan to take in the next year will position me for my next job. As I parlay ten years of desktop and help desk experience into a new career in information security, my income and employment prospects should grow steadily in the coming years.

With my 45th birthday just around the corner, various retirement calculators inform me that I need to save at least $10,000 USD per year for the next 20 years before I can retire. This is somewhat doable with my current income since I live a modest lifestyle. Unless I put money into a 401(k) at work, I will only be able to save $5,000 USD per year in a Roth IRA. The nice thing about being a weekend writer is that I don’t need the income from writing to support myself. I can open a Solo 401(k) and put 100% of my writing income (maximum contribution for 2014 is $52,000 USD) towards my retirement.

I’m going to banish that conflicting feeling of not being a full-time writer while working a full-time non-writing tech job. I’ll squeeze in whatever administrative task needs to get done between coming home from work and going to bed early during the week to free up my weekends for actual writing. When I retire from my non-writing tech career in 2034, I’ll become a full-time writer.

Despite blogging for a number of years, I’ve never planned ahead with the topics for my blog posts. If a topic presents itself at the last minute, I’ll write about that. If I didn’t have anything to write about, I’ll just muddle my way through. That worked. Unfortunately, the rest of my writing life was the same way. Like writing a daily haiku, one of my initiatives for 2014 is to stay ahead of the curve rather than fall behind the eight ball.

I created a spreadsheet with three tabs: writing blog, personal blog and ebook publication schedule. Each tab has all the dates for the blog posts and ebooks that I plan to publish this year. Looking at the official holidays for 2014, I added the dates that fall before, on or after a particular publication date.

The writing blog has a bi-weekly publication schedule with a single post on Sundays. The first post is 1/5/2014 and the last post is 12/28/2014. The relevant holiday is Ground Hog Day (2/2). I also added the general dates for Read An eBook Week (March), Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale (July), and National Write A Novel Month (November).

The personal blog has a weekly publication schedule with one to three posts on Fridays. The first post is 1/3/2014 and the last post is 12/26/2014. The relevant holidays are the Chinese New Year’s (1/31), Valentine’s Day (2/14), Independence Day (7/4), Halloween (10/31), and Black Friday (11/28). I also added a few personal dates that may or may not result in a blog post, say, the tenth anniversary of my mother committing suicide by breast cancer.

I’m publishing 25 SHORT ebooks (i.e., short stories and essays) on a bi-weekly schedule from January through November and one ebook in December. Since the publication dates fall on a Saturday, I’ll have an opportunity to promote my ebook with a blog post or two.

The spreadsheet will allow me to look ahead across the various dates to see if can write some posts in advance, stay on schedule, and keep track of what gets published.

After I finished packing my suitcase for a week-long trip to Las Vegas, I noticed that I had enough room left over for my portable typewriter and a ream of paper. My roommate gave me a funny look when I mentioned that. If the TSA didn’t flag me as a terrorist, having a typewriter in checked luggage would. I ended up taking a notebook, my iPad and Bluetooth keyboard in my carry-on bag.

The funny thing is that I stopped using a typewriter for writing several years ago. With the mobile office back in action this year, I’m using a clipboard to write rough drafts on notepads in black ink at lunch, enter those pages into the computer at night, and edit the printouts in red ink the next day. The idea of pecking away a typewriter and using whiteout ink seems antiquated.

The moment I walked into the hotel room and saw the desk sitting sideways to the floor-to-ceiling window, I wished I have brought my portable typewriter with me. Sitting at the desk, I would have blank pages to my left, the typewriter in the middle, and finished pages to my right. The next morning I woke up before dawn to see the sun rising over Sunrise Mountain as a beautiful yellow orb through the silt of the curtains before a beam of sunlight stabbed my eyeballs with a fiery pitchfork. I had a gorgeous view of the eastern mountains outside of Las Vegas in the afternoon. That was so perfect for writing.

My roommate took out his iPad on the first night, connected to cellular to found the speed rate lousy and the wifi connection was no better. He had a bazillion Facebook friends who were attending the Star Trek convention that he needed to stay in touch with and keep up with all the updates. (He met only two of his Facebook friends in person.) Since he registered his iPad to the hotel room, and I didn’t want to pay $13 USD per day to register my wifi-only iPad as a second device, I went without Internet access and left my iPad in the carry-on bag.

For the first time in my life, I was on a real vacation.

The desk was also perfect for writing in the notebook. I wrote about getting through airport security without incident, flying on an airplane for the first time, attending four days of Star Trek panels, signings and parties, the various restaurants and hotels we visited, going out to Hoover dam and seeing a David Copperfield show. I even started a new short story about my albino demoness who protects the prostitutes on the Las Vegas strip, using the Voodoo Rooftop night club as a backdrop. A very busy week filled one-third of the notebook.

Someday I’ll get on an airplane with my manual typewriter, lock myself in a hotel room for a month and write the rough draft of the Great American novel. I would have breakfast, read the newspaper and gamble in the mornings (the best time to avoid the crowds, semi-naked cocktail waitresses and second-hand cigarette smoke). Have lunch in my hotel room, re-read the previous day’s work, and bang away at the typewriter for the rest of the day. After having dinner I would attend an evening show or conk out early.