{"id":2668,"date":"2020-10-24T21:51:34","date_gmt":"2020-10-25T01:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=2668"},"modified":"2020-10-25T23:07:47","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T03:07:47","slug":"current-status-and-future-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/current-status-and-future-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Current Status and Future Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
My eldest daughter taunting her dad during a game of Jenga,…which she eventually just kicks over. What we do in quarantine.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Greetings all! I\u2019m back from another one of my periodic long absences with some good news: I finally finished the first draft of my latest mystery novel, Identity!<\/em> Now I need to do a couple rounds of edits, slap together a query letter and synopsis, and then send it out to a few<\/em> agents (per my own advice<\/a>) and see if I get any bites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m\ngoing to do things a little differently this time around. Identity<\/em> is my seventh full-length novel, and frankly this time I\u2019m\nnot in a rush to publish. I\u2019m closing in on a major life change\u2014I\u2019ll be\nretiring from the military in Summer 2021\u2014and want to devote more time to\npreparing for that. Specifically, I want to prepare for a second career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut\nI thought writing was your second career?\u201d you might be thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s\nthe thing. I gotta be brutally honest with you: after writing and publishing\nsix books, I have yet to make any significant money from my efforts. In fact,\ntaking into account the money I\u2019ve spent on editing and marketing, I\u2019ve\nactually lost money overall. This doesn\u2019t mean it hasn\u2019t been worth it. In the\nend, I\u2019ve always written what I wanted to write, and my primary reason for\nwriting is because I enjoy it. But it has not panned out as a viable income\nsource, which is par for the course for the vast majority of authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\nnow that my financial future is somewhat uncertain, I need to be more practical\nwith my time. Writing and publishing a book takes a lot of time and effort,\nwhich at this point for me has resulted in little to no payoff except the personal\nsatisfaction of doing so. In the beginning, that was enough. But after seven\nbooks\u2026not so much. That could always change; most authors who eventually find\nfinancial success are several books into their careers. But for me, this means\nI\u2019m making some changes to my future goals and path going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is what I\u2019m going to do: like I said earlier, I\u2019m going to first try the traditional publishing route for Identity.<\/em> The reason I\u2019m trying the trad-pub route at all is because my novel, as a classic murder mystery with a twist, is a popular genre that in theory should do well on bookshelves. I also want the support and at least a modest advance that a trad-publisher can offer. No, I\u2019m not hurting for money; it\u2019s the principle of the thing. At this point in my career, I\u2019m not willing to publish for no money anymore. I\u2019d rather not publish at all and wait for a better opportunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If\nthe trad-pub route doesn\u2019t pan out, rather than rush to self-publish, I\u2019m going\nto shelve the book and take a break from novel-writing for a bit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nsay \u201cnovel-writing\u201d because I\u2019m going to transition to screenwriting as part of\nmy goal to get into film school in Fall 2021!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026Okay,\nI know I said I wanted to be \u201cmore practical\u201d with my time, and breaking into\nthe film industry isn\u2019t exactly a practical goal. But it\u2019s something different\nand exciting I want to try, along with some other long-shot goals (maybe get\ninto politics\u2026). Basically I want to try new things, and my upcoming life\ntransition presents the opportunity for me to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll eventually publish Identity, <\/em>but if I have to self-publish, then I\u2019m going to write two sequels first. Then I\u2019ll publish all three within a few months of each other. I\u2019ll take my time writing the sequels, because what\u2019s the rush? (\u2026Not George R.R. Martin time tho, damn) So that\u2019s what\u2019s going on with me! I might make the first couple chapters of Identity<\/em> available online\u2026we\u2019ll see. In the meantime, I’ll keep posting writing advice–mostly critiques of movies or TV shows, probably. And stay tuned for some homemade short films, and insights into the process of filmmaking and screenwriting I\u2019ll post for your benefit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings all! I\u2019m back from another one of my periodic long absences with some good news: I finally finished the first draft of my latest mystery novel, Identity! Now I need to do a couple rounds of edits, slap together a query letter and synopsis, and then send it out to a few agents (per … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Current Status and Future Plans”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[503,504],"tags":[693,692,5,694,695],"class_list":["post-2668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-stuff","category-other-thoughts","tag-filmmaking","tag-identity","tag-publishing","tag-screenwriting","tag-second-career"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-H2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2673,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668\/revisions\/2673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}