News Progress Post

Progress Report 2022 Week 17

Before I saw anything else, let me say this: If you’re reading this, thank you. If you’ve been reading a while now, double thank you. It means a lot, and I hope to justify your time investment by publishing the first book this summer.

In the meantime, you might be curious how things went this week. Did I hit either of the goals I set for myself this week? Let’s take a look at the infographic first!

Progress Report 2022 Week 17 By the Numbers

No movement on Evolution’s Hand Book 3: Primary Target. But that’s part of my plan!

As I discussed in my post last week, I’ve decided that I can’t mix working on a second draft with writing a first draft. Because of my schedule, I don’t have enough consecutive units of time to pull it off. So I’m heads-down on the second draft of Evolution’s Hand Book 2: Dying Breath. And I will be until it’s done!

But I made considerable progress this week. I was able to edit eighteen more chapters, despite a Real Life Family Event (RLFE) and a series of smaller Real Life Work Events (RLWEs). I consider that a win.

Progress on Last Week’s Goals

Revise the E-Mail Campaign’s Landing Page

I could only give this thought time this week. But I think I have the ideas I’ll need to revise it and relaunch the campaign. I figure if I change only the landing page and re-run my last Facebook ad, I’ll be able to tell if the landing page was actually an improvement. Even if it performs less well, that’s still data. I can try to distill lessons from it.

My wife, who’s wise in matters of social media, helped me analyze the stats from my two campaigns. You can see the rough numbers in this post. She is convinced my landing page is the problem, and I have to agree with her. My ads, especially the second ad, drove traffic to the landing page. My stats for the site confirm that. But they didn’t convert at the level I had hoped. That means I have an opportunity for improvement.

Continue Rewriting Dying Light

I rewrote eighteen chapters this week. I have four more to go before the bulk rewrite is done. After that, I want to add five or six chapters that represent the over-arching story of the first three books. When that’s done, I’ll be ready to send it around for beta reading.

I’ve learned (or remembered) two more important things, over and above relearning that I can’t write and rewrite simultaneously. Those two new lessons are:

  1. The previous book is a gold mine of details that represent potential for future plot points. Editing the book helped me pull some of those out. Book 3 will benefit greatly!
  2. It really is important to let the book sit a while before trying to edit/rewrite it. There were several passages that I remember thinking were clear. Only now, when I came upon them months after writing them, do I see they were anything but. That just reinforces my own advice and the advice of most writers I know: Wait before editing.

Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2022 Week 17

Brace yourself for deja vu!

  1. Revise the E-Mail Campaign’s Landing Page: Before the book’s launch is the perfect time to experiment!
  2. Continue Rewriting Dying Light: I’ve rewritten through chapter 64. Finish the rewrite and weave in the chapters representing the over-arching story.
  3. Send First Newsletter: Now that I have an e-mail list, I don’t want my readers to think I’ve forgotten them! I need to send out my first biweekly newsletter.

My stretch objective (I almost typed as “stress objective”!) will be to actually run the new ad campaign.

What Do You Think?

After reading all these posts about Evolution’s Hand Book 1: Executive Action, what do you hope to see in the book? Any guesses on any of the events based on the hints I dropped? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!