The Writings on the Wall #24

Time to get real

REMINDER: You can opt-out of specific content without unsubscribing. Just uncheck the sections you want disabled from your account’s settings page.

I hate to say this, but I have made zero progress. I barely wrote anything this month. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been working on my non-fiction project, writing short books about TV shows which I publish once a month. But fiction-wise…

I think I’ve reached that point where I’m too disheartened to write, and I feel trapped by my serial.

It’s not burnout—I wouldn’t call it that, at least. It has more to do with frustration at how poorly this whole Substack thing is going. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love the platform and have a more than decent number of subscribers (2011 as of right now), but my conversion to paid sucks.

Okay, full disclosure here. When I first went paid, I got three subscribers who jumped on pretty quickly. Then nothing. Once or twice, one would drop out and another would pop in, but I never went over three. And this year, all three dropped out, one after the other. That’s right, I’m now at zero paid.

So of course now I’m questioning my model. What am I doing wrong? Maybe putting a long-running serial behind a paywall wasn’t such a good idea. I don’t know. I’ve seen others do it successfully. Or maybe a serial wasn’t the right format for me? But then, what should I put behind the paywall? Short stories? Novels? Or perhaps I should just not have a paywall at all. Others have tried that as well, with some success as well. But I can’t help but wonder, those who would go paid without extra content, why wouldn’t they go paid WITH extra content? It shouldn’t matter whether there is any or not for those who don’t care about that. What am I missing?

Of course, the issues I had with “Everday”—that messed up all my plans for this year—haven’t helped. So perhaps you can see now why I might feel disheartened.

I’ve been writing all my life, so I’m not about to stop, but this is all very frustrating.

And since we’re in full disclosure mode… When I started this Substack back in June 2021, it was part of a wider plan to write full-time. I knew it would take time, so I also took up translating novels into French to pay the bills in the meantime. However, that turned out not to be as profitable as it should have been… In fact, it made things worse, as after the first few months I was only making around $50-100 a month for what was essentially a full-time job. I only managed to hold on because I was living off my savings, but it wasn’t sustainable. I kept going for a while because I hoped those books would sell, but they never really picked up. I eventually had to quit so I could focus more on my writing, hoping the extra time would help me work things out. That’s why I started writing those TV books. Non-fiction tends to sell better than fiction—and they do sell better than my novel, though not yet enough to make a difference.

All this to say, nothing has gone as planned, so I’m at that point where I’m questioning how long I can keep doing this without taking a day job again—something I’d really rather not do, but… I don’t know.

I still hope the TV books will make a difference. The mystery novel might help too, whenever I finally get to it.

Anyway. I didn’t mean to sound like I was complaining, but I did want you all to understand where I’m at and why things have been a bit weird lately.

But hey, life goes on, and things will get better eventually ;)

Coming up this month

I was hoping to post two stories in November, but I only have one ready—a new Varushka adventure, yay!

Ideally, I’d like to post a new Silius chapter before that though, but in light of what I wrote above, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull it off. So it might just be Varushka.

We’ll see.

If I post two stories, it’ll be on the 15th and the 29th. If it’s just the one, it’ll be on the 22nd.

“Write 6 Books in a Year Challenge”

Update #10

This has become a bit of a joke, hasn’t it? Heh.

The good news is that I (finally) have some ideas where the story needs to go in my current project, so hopefully I’ll start working on this again soon.

Well, I think I’ve bored you all enough for today, so that’ll be all for now ;)

Take care, and see you next month!

If you like my writing, please consider buying a copy of my novel, upgrading to a paid subscription, or making a Paypal or Ko-fi donation. As an independent author, any of these would help a lot!

Craving something else than fiction? Check out The Sample for a large selection of newsletters on a wide range of topics.

—

Copyright (c) 2023 by Alex S. Garcia.