If I'm going to write, I need to be organized.

Spent the day trying to track down my old writings.

I had a couple of stories I started a couple of years ago that I got about 10K words into.  I liked them; one was a mystery set in Vegas and one was a post-apocalyptic set in a used bookstore.

Unbelieveably, I'm missing entire chapters in both efforts.  Between the hard drives and the hard copies, I was certain there would be no problem -- but the chapters I have are on both and the chapters I don't have are on neither.  Worse, both are missing the first chapters -- which set the tone for the entire stories.  In other words, they're dead.

Unbelievable.  I can't believe I've been so sloppy and careless!

So I've decided to quit messing with the old stuff.  Rewriting the first 20% of Bloodstone was a constructive exercise, but I think I'd be better off applying what I've learned to new writing. 

But going forward I need to be much more careful and organized.  At least have hard drive copies and cloud copies and maybe -- with finished efforts -- even hard copies of everything.

Records of who and what and where I communicate.

I've signed a contract for the artwork for NEARLY HUMAN, and contracted for someone to start a cover for FREEDY FILKINS.

Also, I need to start keeping track of expenses -- if I'm going to be serious about my writing, then I should be able to start claiming expenses to the IRS.


Finally, I've decided not to make any major changes to my store right now.  I've got enough time left on my lease to consider all the options, and I'm sort of distracted right now by my writing.

Writing is really a full time job.