I sat down yesterday and hashed out a general plan for 2012 in terms of serial stories. Since I’m leaning towards finishing the stories before posting them, I’ve decided to focus on getting the short stories done first and worry about the serial novels later.

Note: This plan does not include flash fiction, DVD extras, or other shorter/longer works. Everything I’m talking about here is meant to be 8-10k words and run for two months.

The Plan

Since each story will run for eight weeks, that gives me eight weeks to write the next one. If all goes well I should be able to chop down the writing time to four weeks, but I’m not expecting that to happen much before 2013.

Week 1 and 2: This is the National Novel Wiriting Month portion of the event, where I just dump my brain onto paper in the general shape of the story. For some ideas there will be a rough outline, but for the most part I’ll be pantsing things.

Week 3: Time to hack off the excess and make it story shaped.

Week 4-6: Workshopping on OWW and through my brave beta readers.

Week 7: Polishing, creating icons and artwork, one last check for editing errors.

Week 8: Formatting the posts and getting them into queue. Victory dance!

Reality Check

I’ve been working on The Wolves We Are since last June… and it’s still not done yet.

While this isn’t the glowing accomplishment I had hoped it would be when I started it, it’s also not a death knell for the idea. I’m positive that if I keep trying at some point I’m going to find a way to get these stories out of my head and onto paper in something akin to a predictable schedule.

Failing is fine, just as long as I focus on learning from my mistakes and keep failing upwards.

What’s To Come

Right now I am planning on releasing The Wolves We Are in January and February. After that I’m waffling between a science fiction story from the Carson and Ship universe or a high fantasy story from the Listener’verse. *pokes story ideas*

After I get into the swing of things, I figure I’ll let the readers decide what universes they want to see stories from. I have so many ideas floating around it shouldn’t be hard to find something to write.

If I get really lucky, I’ll have a few extra stories in queue by the end of 2012, which means I’ll have time in 2013 to finish one of the longer stories—or start posting serials more than once a week. It will be interesting to see which one wins out in the end.

To Sum Up

Look for progress reports on The Wolves We Are to start popping up next week and a call for beta readers soon after that. Since this story is already mostly written I should be able to get it done in a three week push…