Year in Review, The Sequel: Stumbles

In my last post, I was focused on accomplishments. But we make our greatest strides when we fail, so I realized I failed in my Year Recap. (Son of a pigeon-monkey!)

Here are the 2014 Stumbles that will (hopefully) become educational:
-Started a Production Schedule... That’s the good part, bad part is right off the bat I ended up 6 months off mark. What did I learn? Books take longer than they look on a spreadsheet. (Those data cells are just sooooo small.)

-eBook formatting: I Had to manhandle Word Perfect to get the MOBI file just right. Which ended up being the first regret I don’t use Scrivener, or at least a word processor from this decade. What did I learn? I troubleshot my way through to a solution, but it took me far longer than something more streamlined, and it seems that someone out there is going to make some good money converting ebooks for writers. Probably not me. If time were in good supply, I’d switch over and learn all the intricacies of Scrivener, but for now I am stubborn and reluctant to lose my writing time.
-PC problems cropped up a couple times this year. I learned that I really need to prioritize some better PC maintenance... Or maybe I’ll just go write, draw, or— Hey! Let’s go de-moss the roof. (“De-moss” looks an awful lot like “demon”. I think there’s a story there, or I’ve got demons on the brain...again.) Where was I?

Stumbles weren’t all that I missed. I forgot to mention some great discoveries:
-Rocking Self Publishing Podcast - Indie focus on business and marketing with Simon Whistler
-The Creative Penn Podcast - More business and marketing focus by the talented Joanna Penn.
-Continued excellence on The Writing Excuses - If you're a writer and haven't sampled some Brandon/Dan/Howard/Mary goodness, then I just don't know what you're doing.
-My Process. With the first novel published, I had finally done the impossible and worked through the entire process. Fresh in mind, I was able to take the product of years of effort and validate my theories on writing over a smaller piece of work.

Ok, brain is firing now, look, there were more victories, too:
-Scheduled some dedicated writing time each week
-Started load balancing elsewhere. I can’t do it all, all the time. But I can allocate time and know that if I don’t play it smart, if I try to do it all, I’m going to burst into a great and glorious ball of flame.

I’m sure I’ve missed more victories, slid by a few fumbles and am totally neglecting some brilliant pieces of advice, resources and other brain food, but that will have to suffice for now. Onward I peer. The horizon beckons.

-------------------------Related Posts-------------------------
• Year in Review, Part 1 •