And now...

[Read this second, read the post below first.]

It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke.

And for anyone who doesn't believe me yet...

It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke.

We all good now?

Basically, I was having one of those crappy write-emo moments where I was worried about the future, about when I stick MV on Kindle and whether or not the series will take off.

I sometimes feel like the appeal is limited, like the size of the fanbase I have now is all I'll ever have (which I know is bullshit, but paranoia, yay...).

So I did an impromptu brainstorming session with Matthew about what the most...clichedly mainstream, anti-Mirrorfallish thing we could think of, the results of which are that last post - there were other details, but that stuff was the high notes (low notes?).

I figure this is probably the time to talk about my writing goals (Joe Konrath's blog post "I made $100k in the first ten days of January" sort of made me want to crawl into a dark hole and never come out).

My five-year plan (which probably contains a lot of wishful thinking) looks like this:

Year 1 (2012) - I want to make 100 sales (paid sales, not free downloads).

Year 2 (2013 - presuming the Mayans were trolling us) - I want to make 1000 paid sales (and a ton of free downloads).

Year 3 (2014) - I'd like to make enough so that I can go down to part time hours, to have more time to write - this would probably be in the neighbourhood of $25k after tax, though I may be able to budget for less.

Year 4 (2015) - ...who's going to have time for writing after hoverboards are released? :P

Either continue to do part-time hours or try to write full-time.

Year 5 (2016) - Write full-time for a living.

I think I can achieve Year 1's goals, and maybe even Year 2's, but it's thinking bigger than that that really scares me.

The goal I think that will really give my non-existent self-confidence a boost will be when I reach 7000 sales - I remember a chestnut of wisdom given to me when I got my first rejection letter - that a book in Oz needed to have 7000 potential sales before it would be considered.

I know I'm not going legacy pub, but for some reason, it's still something that's stuck with me, it's just another wall to get through.

This year:
*I want to edit MF and get it out
*Start on the MH rewrite
*Finish Oubliette
*Write Make-Believe, the young!Stef novel

Next year, after MB, I think I'd like to do something different, and maybe have a year where I release one short story a week, as it would give us a chance to play in different areas of the MV that usually get ignored.