Ok, this one is a real request for your opinions. I’m trying to figure out what to do next with sites, blogs, writing, and generally my career for the next however many years. Some of you know me in real life, some of you know me as a sassy and occasionally savvy writer. I will never stop writing. I will not stop being me. The two have been intertwined for at least 45 years. I love concepts transforming to fixed ideas as words appear on a page. It is a process that gives me reason to live. Really. It isn’t the only reason, but it is one of the reasons I love life.
Photo credit: mconnors from morguefile.com
The Challenge
I have to make some serious adjustments to my “projects” over the next year so that I can become successful or maintain success as a writer, businesswoman, citizen, and family member. This is a juggling act with which every woman writer I know struggles from time to time, with the time being a few moments every-once-in-a-while to constantly.
I used to think I juggled balls, now I know that I was juggling flaming chainsaws for lots of my life. I decided that sticking with bowling pins, preferably the kind not soaked in gasoline, will be my modus operandi for the next couple of years.
The Situation
I raised my daughter. I practiced vibrant, noisy, and somewhat effective, peace-making for many years when leaders of my country were apparently hell bent on bankrupting us in wars that benefitted no one but corporations who had interests in the natural resources of the places we fought. I muddled through a decade of debilitating depression with little help from anyone but therapists who I could sometimes afford to consult.
I rebuilt myself. I built poetry, websites, named cohorts, and created a sense of self that is strong though scarred. I have healed. And I have started many creative projects as I healed. I will market some of them.
The Products
I have all these things I could finish, package and market:
- This site: Reasoncreek.com
- Another site: BoomHer.com
- Several years of posts from BuildPeace.blogspot.com about being a peace activist could be turned into an ebook.
- Stacks of research, notes, and writings about Gene Stratton-Porter, a multiple top ten best selling author and seminal amateur ethologist and photographer, who influenced a generation of early leaders in 20th Century environmental thought such as Rachel Carson.
- Stacks of research, notes, and writings about The Later Born Baby Boomers, the original Gen-X, who were completely different from the elder brothers and sisters with whom they were lumped as “Boomers” when, in truth, they were too young for Woodstock, too young to experience the draft or fighting in Vietnam, or too young to experience a youth in which psychotropic substances were not readily available.
- Stacks of research, writing, and outlines, tables of contents, and chapters of a memoir about being a somewhat in tact adult survivor of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy medical child abuse.
- Really nifty organizational products for writers that I could market as e-publications.
- Two half-written e-books on terribly timely topic which I cannot divulge so no one else will beat me to them.
- All the trappings for fashioning amazing steampunk jewelry and art.
- At least five speculative fiction stories I need to write.
Prioritizing
I’m leaning toward reorganizing everything from all my sites with a few prime categories or sub-domains on one domain. But I’m not sure how to best manage these. More research is needed. I just don’t feel that I can do justice to more than one online venue and continue my BIG writing. What do you think?