Summer 2022: The Year So Far … and What’s To Come

Hello! 

I know it’s been a bit quiet here on the Aliventures blog in recent months. 

I wanted to take a bit of time to tell you what I’ve been up to – and what’s coming up over the next few months.

Freelancing: It’s Going REALLY Well 🙂

I’ve not been blogging here much (or writing much fiction) but I’ve been writing a lot. My freelance work has been going fantastically during 2022. I think this is my most exciting freelancing year since the thrill of first starting full-time freelancing in summer 2008!

May 2022 was my highest income month to date from freelancing … and June beat that by quite a bit, making it my highest income month ever. (Beating even December 2020, when I was writing full-time for Awesome Motive and also got a Christmas bonus!)

During 2022, almost all my freelancing has been during school hours – usually, a total of no more than 20 hours per week, and often less. 

I had a pretty ambitious income goal for this year, given that my working time is quite limited and I take a lot of time off during the kids’ school breaks, so I’m thrilled to be on track for that.

Being British and squeamish about talking about money, I don’t tend to say much on Aliventures about my income goals, what I’m making, and how. If that’s something you’d find useful, though, please let me know. I’m considering doing monthly or quarterly income reports so you can get a better picture of what freelancing looks like for me, and figure out what might work well for you, too.

The downside? While I’ve been focused on ramping things up to this point, it hasn’t left me with much time for Aliventures or for fiction writing.

Aliventures Blog, Newsletter, and Resources: Patchy!

I love writing here on Aliventures – and I really miss it when I can’t blog regularly. 

I’m probably not going to be back to a regular rhythm of weekly posts and newsletters until mid-September (after the kids’ summer holidays) – but now that I’m hitting my freelance income goals, I do want to turn a bit of my attention back to Aliventures again.

Earlier in the year, I reworked and relaunched Start Freelancing as a self-study course. 

It was great to get that course back out there again, and although I miss running it as a six-week group course, I’m really glad that it’s now available whenever people want it, not just when it suits me!

I’m planning to relaunch Freelance Confidence – but when I dug into it a few weeks ago, I realised it needs a lot more work than I’d remembered! It’ll be coming, but likely around October time. I’m so excited to get that course out there, though: I’ve got loads to share about freelancing and I really hope it’ll be helpful for anyone who’s a few months or a few years into their freelancing journey and who wants to be earning more.

Beyond that, I don’t have any plans this year for specific resources. If there’s anything you’d like me to create, though, I’d love to hear about it. Just pop a comment on this post or email me at ali@aliventures.com.

Fiction-Writing: Up and Down … But Getting Back on Track

I started 2022 with the goal of writing 500 words per day on my fiction. It lasted for two and a half months – but then I ended up stopping altogether and only writing fiction very intermittently. So if you’ve had similar writing resolutions fall by the wayside, you have my sympathies!

For me, a combination of things derailed my fiction plans:

• I switched up when I was exercising, which got in the way of my usual weekday writing slot.
• I couldn’t find a good alternative to Scrivener, a problem that I struggled with ever since getting a Chromebook – I’m just not so focused when I’m writing fiction into Google Docs.
• I had to postpone a planned writing retreat twice, when kid-related / freelance-related stuff came up.
• I had a lot of doubts about what I was writing, whether it was “right” for the market, and whether I should be writing in a different genre altogether.

However … things are definitely starting to look a lot better on the fiction-writing front. With the freelancing going so strongly, I can take the time to write fiction without worrying about it necessarily making money.

I finally got my writing retreat, from the afternoon of Sunday 10th – Monday 11th July, and wrote 8,500 words on my novel-in-progress. (I’m writing this mid-morning on Monday, in a lovely air-conditioned hotel room, on probably the hottest day of 2022 so far in the UK.)

And just as importantly … I found a writing app for Chromebook that does pretty much everything I wanted Scrivener for. It’s called Wavemaker and I’m loving it. I can split my work into chapters, use a full-screen writing mode, add notes, shuffle chapter cards around, and more. Best of all, it’s free!

Fiction Marketing: Almost None

Another goal for this year was to market my existing novels: my Lycopolis trilogy plus my stand-alone novella Not So Imaginary. 

I’m not going to say too much about those now, as I’ll be talking about them in Thursday’s newsletter. I’ve done a tiny bit towards marketing my novels and novella, but that’s very much something I want to spend more time on over the next few months.

How about you?

Whether your year’s been going exactly to plan so far, or you’ve been knocked off course on all your writing goals, I hope you have a great six months ahead. There’s still plenty of time to turn things around. 

Do drop a comment below, if you have a moment: I’d love to hear how things are going for you … and I’d also love to cheer you on if you need a bit of encouragement.