I have had hobbies with the potential to turn a profit for at least fifteen years. In those fifteen years I have never seen a profit. This is a good thing actually. I have always been focused on my hobbies for fun, and not profit. I have never put a great deal of effort into making money off of the things I create. I do not see that effort as changing very much in the future.

This, of course, doesn't mean that I don't think of it now and again.

The more debt I have acquired, the more I have thought of this. Currently, the numbers break down like this:

• Debt: $60,000.00
• Marketing: $10,000.00
• Moving: $10,000.00
• Need $80,000.00
   
• Sell Books QTY: 60,000 at $1.40 Profit/book
• Sell CDs QTY: 20,000 at $4.00 Profit/CD
• Sell Prints QTY: 40,000 at $2.00 Profit/Print

Profits are all based on self-publishing routes. No record label or publisher here. As a result, I have to consider the ten grand investment in promotion. The debt is mostly student loans, so I have a long time to pay them off, but they are rather overwhelming. Regardless of how long I have to pay them off, they still prevent me from saving money for a home or investing in my future at all. This is depressing, which is counter productive to creativity and life in general.

I would like to take a moment and point out that I'm not here to complain about my debt, or to claim that I have more debt than others. I am actually rather fortunate in many ways. My debt does not threaten to take away my home or make any children starve. My debt is simply my own burden. In the event that debt collectors began garnishing my wages, I have a certain stubbornness and lifestyle which would simply allow me to quit my job and begin making as little money as possible. My credit report is an unbelievable nightmare, so when someone threatens to send a new debt to a collection agency, it is hardly a threat. These things allow me to approach my debt from a different angle. When I hear others speak about their debt, others that have cars, homes, and families, I simply do not know how to offer them advice. Not that my experience with debt would be of much help anyway.

Back to the numbers.

All of the quantities which I have listed are for the entire payoff amount. If I sell twenty thousand CDs, I would make eighty thousand dollars. That is what makes these numbers so exciting to me. I see thirty thousand books and ten thousand CDs as an obtainable goal. I would not expect this to happen in one years time, but I see no reason why this does not make an excellent five year goal. Granted, five years from when I publish the novel and release the CD. Which, at my current pace might take another five years.

later,
-junc

Most of my focus over the past few months has been on Novel Writing. Unfortunately, that has received much less activity than I would like it to. While my goals have been to move further ahead with Keptosh, things have kind of fallen flat most of the time. I managed to finish an outline and start the storyboard. The storyboard is where I am currently hung up. I have attempted a few different strategies for moving the novel along but most of them just end up wasting time. My inability to focus on one project at a time is a major weakness. I always feel that I have so much to do. So while I put the focus on the Novel I get distracted with the other projects and generally end up getting no where with any of it. My hope is to combat this writer's block by setting some public deadlines here in my blog. Obligations to reach certain milestones within the process which I will feel guilty about if I fail to reach them. I recently attempted this strategy with a co-worker. Telling him about a goal I had set myself in October. While I missed the overall goal I did get a large amount of work accomplished during that time. So it is obviously a decent motivational tool to share deadlines with others. At least, so long as they aren’t depending on that deadline. Writing a novel has not been an easy goal to achieve. I feel that there is a difference between a writer and a novelist. I think a lot of people have what it takes to be a great writer, but not a novelist. For me, I fear that it is the opposite. I am by no means a great, or even good, writer, but I feel that I have a decent shot at putting out an adequate novel. I attribute this to the Hero’s Journey model and many others like it. Basically, the key is to learn the elements of good story telling, not necessarily story writing. In the end you can plug certain things into the story to make it take a shape. From there, flesh out enough scenes that cover those core mythological struggles. Once you are down to the scenes, trying to understand how rhythm plays a part in both single scenes and strings of scenes is key. The result of using the toolset is the construction of a novel. I see it more as a step by step assembly process. With that view of novel writing it certainly boosts my confidence and helps me believe that I can finish my Keptosh novel. later, -junc

Over the past year I've been telling myself I would abandon the Outline-Screenplay-Novel process for Keptosh. Instead I had decided to jump straight from Outline to Novel. Well, the outline has been done for at least six months now and I haven't touched it. So, I am planning to move back to the screenplay idea. Hopefully, this will push me to just start writing some content. I was kind of getting stuck on the opening lines of the novel. Putting way too much thought into how much that meant. When it comes right down to it I am well aware that I am a horrible "writer". When it comes to grammar, spelling, and my general grasp of the English language I just kind of…fail. I do believe that I have a very strong grasp of story structure and dialogue on the other hand. So, outlining and screenplay writing just kind of flow more naturally. Recently, I purchased another DVD burner because I couldn't read any of my old backup CDs and DVDs. After my last backup I realized that using DVDs just isn't efficient when you have a 320GB hard drive. The solution has been around for some time now. I've just been a little slow in picking it up. So, I have the intention of picking up an external hard drive this month. For less than a hundred bucks you can pick up a decent sized USB 2.0 drive. Of course this means the massive chore of going through all of my old CDs and copying them over to the new drive. Well, that is it for now. I will, once again, attempt to post more. later, -junc

Okay, so it is time for a real update. A real post of some sort. But, first, more technical crap. I disabled the must register to post thing, but kept the ability to register. This will make it easier to track the size of my "community". As far as the spam thing goes, since comments go to moderation first it is not such a big deal. I also enabled akismet, the wordpress anti-spam thingy, so hopefully that will help. Anyway. I have a few projects going on at the moment. The top of the list is occupied by the Keptosh Novel. Years in development, things finally seem to be coming together. I'm trying to work with the Weekend Novelist approach. Most of the plot development was spent in Dramatica, specifically with The Writer's DreamKit. I recommend the book and software if you have trouble getting a plot into a decent outline (if outlining is your thing). The Novel template included with The Writer's DreamKit is worth the $35.00 (buy it from Amazon, not the publishers site). The Dramatica Book (which is also available in an older edition for free online) is pretty decent for working out character archtypes. All in all though the whole Dramatica thing is just a fancy version of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Maybe even a dumbed down version, I've never read his book. All of that stuff means nothing if I don't start writing though. That is what the Weekend Novelist is for though, It provides a pretty decent 52 week program for writing a novel. I recently purchased the second edition of that book and so far I'm a little disappointed. I haven't read through it all yet so I won't slam it yet. Hey, this is getting pretty long, so I will wrap things up. My other big project of the moment is trying to learn 3DS Max. Summer quarter I am taking a C++ class and a time management/study habits class. I'm pretty excited about both of those. later, -junc