#1. Co-writer

I’m swamped. Another 16 hour day last night with SUCCESS. I love, love, love what I’m doing over there, and those 16 hours fly by.

But that also means I can’t do this challenge (avg email has been 1000 words long) and learn a new genre (mystery) and write at least 3 novels in 90 days.

Time to adjust (let this be a lesson. never quit. just adjust.).

I’m interested in the idea of working with a cowriter.

I’ve been saying it for about two years now: The future of fiction is collaboration (thanks to indie speed and Amazon’s distribution).

In this set up, I’d work with someone to create the stories, do massive life altering dev edits, teach my sneaky writing ways, and pour a TON of capital and marketing skills into making the books sell.

We meet a few times a week, I record the meetings, ya’ll get to watch.

Whoever ends up as the co-writer gets money from the sales + a one-on-one writing mentorship for 90 days (plus insights into my marketing trickery) + a jumpstart on their own fiction career/potentially a long term profitable relationship.

That’s the first option.

#2. Hire Ghostwriter

Honestly, I don’t really want to do this.

Having done it in the past, I much prefer working with someone who has long term skin in the game.

But it is an option.

#3. I still do everything but change the format of this challenge. 

I was thinking of cutting emails back to once, maybe twice a week.

Not ideal because I’ve done in the past (with my health biz) and interest dropped off like crazy. The daily emails work MUCH better.

But if I’m doing it all, I probably need to cut back on emails and write more words in order to hit our goal.

Also, I’ll need to change genre.

I love mystery, and I really, really wanted this to be a case study where someone starts from scratch in a new genre, but there’s a really big piece that I keep butting up against:

Police Procedure.

I just haven’t been knee deep in mystery long enough to even fake it. The research component would be too time intensive for me. Private Eye mysteries don’t do it for me.

(When you run a business, these are the kinds of choices you have to make. Sometimes you have to give up things you want for things that work. Part of life baby. Get used to it.)

Possible options are horror or science fiction. Genres my active pen names write under (though I’ll still be starting a new pen name from scratch without using any resources from the current names).

So, those are the options.

This 90 challenge WILL happen.

It just needs a slight adjustment.

I’m only sending this email to remain 100% transparent, open and honest, and to share with you my own thought process as I approach projects.

This email in itself is a lesson in making a living as a writer.

You’ll just have to read between the lines to get it.

Let me know your vote. I’ll be doing final counts tomorrow night.

Mike “The Flexible Man” Shreeve