A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #171 side hustle

I have ideas! (tm)

Dear Internet,

This week has been a fucking shit show.

I had to call it a day on Tuesday since I woke up at 3 a.m. and could not get back to sleep. I started and finished two books and I’m 11% into the third before I re-charged my iPad. I spent the day thinking of naps (did not take) and organizing and adding metadata to video content on our now fixed home server. (Yay Pride & Prejudice (2005)! Yay Becoming Jane! Yay Bridget Jones’ Diary!) That was literally all I could mentally do.

Another not great thing is that over the course of the week we got 4-5” of snow and while my Midwest friends may chuckle that it’s a mere dusting, Kentuckians cannot handle inclement weather, so we are not going anywhere. If we can’t walk to it, it’s not happening. Next week it is supposed to be in the 50sF and rainy. I’m so looking forward to that. /s

I finally got to sleep 2 a.m. Wednesday morning so I was awake for 23 hours. I had to call it a day on Wednesday as well since I didn’t wake up until 12:30 p.m.. Thursday was better but not by much. I was able to sleep through the night and woke up on Friday at 6:00 a.m.. Not ideal but better at least I got through the night.

On Thursday I got not great news that while yes, it was terrible, also made me very angry. I spent the better part of 6 – 8 hours of unpaid time working on a project with short notice only to have that project rejected. Like I said, terrible. I was tempted to quip up the requestor owed me cold hard cash. Instead, I took it as a lesson and I’m moving forward.

There have been a lot of big changes happening around these parts and I hate to be a tease, but nothing I can get into right at this second. I was handed a brilliant idea to run with and that is now occupying my thoughts. There is some strength to this idea that truth be told is not new but this time I’m going to make it an honest go. I have an appointment with a mentor next Saturday to talk my idea through to see what I can do to make it viable. Please give me tots and pears.

#

Tenses are going to fuck with you right now because I’m writing this on Friday and sending on Sunday about an event that is happening this Saturday and Sunday and will almost be over before when you get this.

Damn, that is a jumble of words.

This weekend I’m pumped because I’m attending Romance Writers of America virtual conference on self-publishing.  Here are some of the events:

·      Intro to self-publishing

·      Marketing beyond social media

·      Collaborations

·      IP and copyrights

·      Public relations

It’s eight hours on Saturday and four or five hours on Sunday. The conference starts at 10 a.m. EST. I was able to wake up 6 a.m. on Friday morning (I slept about seven hours straight so not that bad of a night considering) so waking up in time for the conference should be a no brainer Saturday morning and I should be able to function for the day without nodding off.

(Plus, I bought coffee from a local roaster on Friday so that should help greatly.)

A reason why I’m taking this conference is a side hustle I’ve talked about, in the past in some issue or another, is writing serials/smut and selling them on Amazon.

I’m on r/writing and r/selfpublish on Reddit. A lot of posts come through how people are creating content regardless of niche, manipulating Amazon’s algorithm and earning cold hard cash. They don’t talk about how much they are making but they do talk about residuals and continued inflow of money.

I want in on that pie.

I’m reading a romance author right now whose books are meh. I’m on my fifth book of hers this week and it’s fucking compelling. The sex is pretty generic (penis into vagina, grab a boob, twist a nipple, etc), the story lines meet the criteria I laid out a couple weeks ago (sexy times begin at roughly 50% of the novel and conflict around 70-75%), the book is written in first person of the main character, and the cast of characters intermingle across the series.

Why am I reading this if the books are meh?

I don’t know!

But I feel I can do better.

But what strikes me, and has kept at me since I began this power stack of reading this year (11 books read so far and it’s not even the end of January!), is the sheer variations of plots across all these books. I am struggling with plots myself which makes having a side hustle a tad difficult but I’m looking for inspiration (hopefully this weekend will give me some) so if you have any ideas, send your juju my way.

(Another women’s fiction/romance author, whose books I really do like and are always checked out at the library, centers her primary female character as STEM nerds (scientists, physicists, etc) who struggle with relationships (and their careers). I thought about doing that with librarians (because yes, there is quite of few variations of the profession, so the world is endless) because hey, write what you know.)

Harlequin is always on the lookout for new authors so that is also a goal as well.

So, I write my books/serials and then what? I need to market and have a presence on social media. I am shit at selling myself. I do zero to promote AMUN other than post to my writer’s facebook page and on Bluesky. I spent time on Friday researching avenues for marketing only to make it easier on myself because again, shit at selling myself, and I was so overwhelmed I took note of the sites to come back later and closed the tabs. It took me a few hours to just get the base of a website up for the new project which was exhausting. If I truly and honestly make writing books and serials a thing, I have to revamp a website or two and spend time on admin work. Plus taxes! Who wants to constantly think about taxes!

Mr Lisa said the other day I always like the process of getting to point a rather than just doing point a and he’s not wrong. That is what needs to change.

Yep, send me those plot ideas!

(Some of you may be wondering about generative AI and creating content in the world. I’ll have thoughts about that on this week’s issue of Lisa Writes Stuff.)

Wonderful Thing

Organ donor

Nine million years ago, give or take, when I was living in Michigan, signing up to be an organ donor was pretty easy: you signed up when you got your driver’s license or state ID. I can’t remember if you were given a sticker to affix to the ID or if there was a designation itself on the ID itself but essentially, if I died, the state of Michigan knew to harvest my decrepit organs.

John Oliver did a piece recently on the complexity of donating organs. For example, there is not really a unified database of lists to be put on. You must work the system. Also, in interviews with existing patients, some said they couldn’t afford to travel if the donation center reaches out if they have a match for you.

Basically, the system is fucked and you could be seriously fucked waiting for a donation.

But you can change that.

If you’re feeling generous about your body after death, sign up for the national organ donor list at registerme.org. The FAQ answers a lot of questions, including open casket burials are possible after organ donation. The nice thing is this is national and I don’t need to register in the state I live in as well it can be accessed by anyone in the US. If someone can use my heart, lungs, or liver upon my death, then I feel like I’ve left a good legacy of my life.

bodily yours,

lisa x