I've known a couple of people that have been going to RWA meetings for more than a couple of years and have A) written maybe a total of a few chapters of their WIP and B) have no plans to finish their WIP. Ever.

You'll finish, Susan. You're doing the work and putting in the effort, when you can. There might be times when a couple of chapters pour out of as if you're possessed, and also times when three pages take forever to get through, but you will finish.

Susan, I have some thoughts on the "book per year" problem.

The answer is this: as long as you have no advance, and you are working on spec Na Ga Na Ha Pen. You can't produce a book a year, work full time and take of a kid. You can't even do it after your first sale, cause that will be of a book you have already written. You can produce good professional books in those circumstances, but NOT a book a year. The first time you get an advance on an unwritten book, thus are paid for some of your labor in advance, you can step up your writing schedule to the point you produce a book a year. Because when you get to that point, even if you can't eliminate your day job, you can cut your hours. But that is what it will take. When you can spend half the time you currently spend on your day job (commute included) then you can get up to a book a year. And that will happen the day someone pays for your work in advance.

Gar, I think that's a really big, if well-intended, oversimplification.

Some people can work full-time and write two books a year. I had authors like that. Some people can get paid enormous advances, quit their jobs, and still wind up taking years to finish a book. It's a highly personal thing, really. And money is only part of the equation.

Every writer has a pace that suits them, whether they're writing full-time or not. Most of the time, there's no getting around it, either. So much goes into it -- whether you write a clean first draft and plot ahead of time, whether your first draft winds up being a problem-solving process that you wind up throwing out when you hit on the real plot, whether you self-edit as you go or wait to revise until the end.

It also takes a while to figure out what to expect from yourself, and how long you can reasonably expect to take writing a book of a certain length and type.

Yeah, I don't think the problem here is that I'm incapable of producing a sufficient page count to write a book in a year. While the WIP is currently only 265 pages long, I've actually written at least 400 pages, probably more. I just keep having to backtrack and rewrite, and that's what's driving me crazy. With my previous manuscripts, I occasionally had to rewrite the beginning several times before it really clicked, but then I'd hit a groove around Chapter Four/page 60 where I could just power through to the end. I still haven't hit the cruise point on the WIP yet, and I'm on Ch. 15!

I think I'm being too hard on myself, but not in expecting a certain level of output or believing I'm capable of a book per year. My real problem is that I've made a radical change in genre, but I haven't given myself enough time to learn the new skills I need. The WIP is a better fit for my voice and I don't feel like I'm writing under a curb rein anymore, but I'm not used to juggling so many plot threads simultaneously, and I'm even finding it a challenge to have the subtle development of a male friendship as my main character arc instead of an overt m/f sexual/romantic relationship. So I keep blundering into dead ends and having to retrace my steps, and it's frustrating. I think it'll get better with experience, but meanwhile it's slowing me down.

Point taken.

So I keep blundering into dead ends and having to retrace my steps, and it's frustrating. I think it'll get better with experience, but meanwhile it's slowing me down.

But ... are you having fun with it? Because it should be just as much about enjoying the process as the finished product, really.

But ... are you having fun with it? Because it should be just as much about enjoying the process as the finished product, really.

Yes. My life exhausts me, of course, but this story is just damn cool, and I'm having so much fun with my protagonists. Well, two of the three, the ones who are grown men. The other is a nine-year-old girl, and writing a child protagonist in an adult book is more technical challenge than anything else at this point.

I think that's what it's like, absent Homicide rule 5, "It's good to be good. It's better to be lucky."

Somebody I know is offering to pay me for disability-related commentary on his website...he can't pay much now, but is, like everyone with a website, hoping for a big launch someday. How much should I ask him for for a. now b. the future.

I'd give him a price for the future, and in terms of payment now, ask him how much he is short. Your price for the future should be an hourly rate, higher than he can possibly pay now. Someone here can tell you what a fair price is. But in terms of negotiating strategy "how much are you short?" is a really good way to elicit his maximum price.