Richard Freeborn

Fiction and Non-Fiction

Month: January 2025

More on 2025

January 27, 2025 / / 0 Comments

In many ways this post is a follow on from last week which helped me put some concrete ideas around 2025 writing goals.

When I first considered my 2025 goals one of the thoughts was to publish a novella each month of the year. The challenge with that is a novella can often stretch into a full length novel. I know I want to write at least one novel this year so that made me rethink and lower my sights a little.

After a lot of thought, I decided a target of eight publications in 2025 was reasonable and they would be a combination of novels and novellas.

Last weeks discovery of those languishing short stories rather upended those thoughts. If I have enough material for four collections, or even eight, I could reach my 2025 publishing goals without writing a word.

Not exactly what I had in mind.

So after a lot of thought, I went back to the twelve publications for 2025. That’s the original eight novels or novellas plus the four collections. I also plan to run a kickstarter on one of those novels. For the collections, I have covers, sales copy, and introductions for the first two, plus content for the third. I am still planning on the collections coming out quarterly.

The goal is to finish the setup, editing, and production of the first collection this week and have the eBooks available by the end of January.

Another Big Number

January 19, 2025 /

The number I have in my head today isn’t as large as the 7,500 I talked about last week, but in its own way it’s pretty big.

Part of a writing assignment this past week was to look at the catalog or inventory of stories I’ve written, and determine how many are published, how many out for submission, and how many are sitting gathering dust on a hard drive. For my novels and novellas it was a pretty easy task – everything written is published. The short stories were a different matter.

Once I stripped out everything that’s with various magazines for consideration, and those stories already in collections, I had over sixty short stories that are languishing doing nothing. I had been vaguely aware there were quite a few, and in some cases, like Puzzle Store stories, I knew I needed another one or two to have enough for the next collection. That still left a substantial number, so I went through each story one by one. Some of those stories still defy a genre, while others fit together more naturally together – either by character or location, or theme, or just by being flat out weird.

The end result is that just from this, I have enough material for four collections. Interestingly enough, three of them are science fiction collections. I’m leaning toward publishing a collection a quarter for the rest of 2025, but that may change as I look at the remaining forty or so stories.

I’m excited about these collections and will be working on covers, introductions, and edits this coming week.

7,500 Days

January 14, 2025 /

I’m still putting the final touches to my 2025 goals. While doing that, I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal about an executive who every year sits down and carries out what he calls a pre-mortem. He imagines he’s at the end of his life and reflecting on what he is pleased about having achieved, then he walks it back and makes it happen.

One of his comments was about having maybe 7,500 days left in his life and making sure each day counts.

I did some math on that one – 7,500 days is about twenty years and six months. That made me think about where I was twenty or so years ago, and how I felt about what I’ve done since. Some of it has been good – Twenty plus years married to a wonderful person, and actually getting my writing career started. Some of it not so good – a couple of failed investments that on reflection I should have stayed well away from, and spending too long with a company where the culture is best described as toxic.

Thinking about the next 7,500 days is maybe a stretch. I’m assuming I’ll still be alive. In which case what do I want to do to make every day one I’m pleased about? I’m going to give that some thought over the next week and I have a feeling it might change some of my thoughts on 2025.

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