Registering a business, deducting expenses

As I contemplate purchasing some more software for my novel pursuits, I'm starting to seriously consider officially setting up a business so I can claim all these expenses. Altogether it will cost $175 to have an official home based business in my city. Ouch. But I do have to do it at some point, and it's a one-time fee, so better to pay it now than when my dollars aren't worth as much due to inflation. Also, going by the CRA's definition, my business is already technically started because I know what I'm going to do and have been making steps toward it on a regular basis, so I guess I already have a home office? Of course, still making product so no sales yet. Not sure what my city defines a "start" as, but I'll register soon regardless.

I'm kind of sad that I didn't read through the CRA stuff before I filed my taxes. Last year I purchased a lot of writing books and software to do outlining and that all would have been tax deductible. I could go back and modify my return, but that's a really big undertaking. Plus I think my big push in January is a good way to define the start of the business (seems to match the following from the CRA: "In order that there be a finding that a business has commenced, it is necessary that there be a fairly specific concept of the type of activity to be carried on and a sufficient organizational structure assembled to undertake at least the essential preliminaries."). Anything in this tax year is game now that I have my head on straight! So far I have some writing craft books, a marketing course, and hopefully software if I can convince my husband of the expense, which looks dismal at the moment, heh.

The good news is I won't have to register for any tax account, since I'm not earning more than $30k a year on this... ha! Hopefully I'll have that problem at some point. But even so, I don't sell the books directly, so not sure how this would work (the retailers would collect the tax so don't see why I would need an account). I'm sure there's some process for commissioned pieces in there, but I'll open that can of worms if I ever get there.

Coming back to the topic of business registration: It appears that Canada does not have the LLC option of our American counterparts to protect our personal belongings should anything terrible happen in this process. The only choice I can go for for liability protection is a corporation, and the thought of corporate taxes is, quite frankly, terrifying. It appears the corporation would pay tax at about 11% for a Canadian-controlled private corporation (CCPC) claiming the small business deduction, and I think I would get paid as an employee and that would be taxed for income taxes. So double taxes? Confusing. In any case, the CCPC would function as it's own "person" so I wouldn't be able to deduct my expenses off my personal taxes. I think I'll stick with sole proprietor (or partnership if my husband decides to get on board) for now, and if I become immensely successful I'll look into this further.

Week of May 4, 2015: Cannot find simple floor plan software to help me visualize my world

Stat summary for the last two weeks can be found here.

I think it's good that I'm starting to track how much time I spend on the business side of indie publishing and how much I spend on actual writing. For the week of April 27, 2015 I spent a total of 13:25 on the author career, and 9:41 of that was used on business related things (learning the business, trends, advice, etc). This is not an acceptable ratio!

I got my butt in gear the next week but came to a point in the novel where my Main character is exploring the school, and I realized I needed a clear picture of the school in my mind. I tried program after program to draw a "simple" floor plan of the school so I could orient myself. It was a major block; I couldn't keep going unless I knew where I was. Going through the motions made me realize that the space I had envisioned was physically impossible because I had huge rooms next to ones that were very small, but for the plot they had to be similar in size. It was a mess.

I spent 26:07 last week on this career, and used 15:17 for trying to come up with a good map. I'm still not there. That said, the exercise was not entirely fruitless. I added more groups inside the school, and came up with their past histories, which groups conflict on a number of different controversial topics, and how the groups work together. Lots of this will be important to the plot, and I feel I have a much better grip on who these people are. I started an excel sheet to lay out what the different groups think about various things (I'm being intentionally vague).

That said, I still do want to make a floor plan. I tried several software programs. I just want one that lets me edit the walls with a snap feature, and let's me copy floors for multi-level buildings, and maybe see the floor beneath. Just something simple to let me draw boxes and stick windows and furniture in them! Here's a quick summary of the software that fell short:

• Sweet Home 3D was nice, and let me see the floor beneath, but the interface wasn't great, and it was slow. Amazingly, they had no pan ability in the 3D view. The only way to get around it was to do a "virtual tour" and make the person 20 feet tall. The walls wouldn't line up well, but at least I could copy them. 
• Room Arranger was the best I think; it had a nice guide feature, but you had to edit the walls separately from the contents of the room (including windows and doors), and there was no easy way to copy a bunch of walls to make multiple storeys. I did the most work in this program, but in the end it took almost a whole day to plan out the first floor of a dorm and the bathrooms. o_O'
• I tried Home Designer but it wouldn't run under my Windows XP Virtual Machine. 
• EZBluePrint 3D seemed ok, but lacked a grid and the interface was just plan odd, but the snapping feature was one of the best. 
• I even watched some video tutorials on Google SketchUp, but you have to make things like windows and doors from basic shapes and that's way too time consuming.

There seemed to be quite a selection of online options, but I have to make a massive building and grounds, and don't trust that my information won't go piff. I like having things as files that I can put on Dropbox and my external hard drive.

I don't yet have an answer to this issue, except maybe drawing everything by hand. I think it would go faster that way, but my space perception is about as good as a one-eyed newborn kitten's. Software programs let you add furniture to the room so you I can say things like, "gee, when I put everything I need in that room I only ill 20% of the space... it must be the size of a football field!" To draw it by hand I'd have to lookup the normal sizes of things for scale, and I couldn't just drag a wall smaller to get it to fit. 

Next week I'll probably come in here with my head between my legs and say I drew the damn thing by hand, and spent the whole week doing it... at least it gets me thinking about the world.

Oh I just thought of something! I'll ask the folks on KBoards! Stay tuned...

Headset for Dragon Naturally Speaking 12.5

I've been dictating for the past few weeks, and while I like it, I'm still getting used to it. One thing I know for certain is that I'll need to upgrade from the headset supplied with the software. It's killing my ears! I went on the Dragon website and looked at all the headsets rated at 6 Dragons (the top compatibility rating) and decided on the Andrea NC-250V Circumaural Stereo PC Headset. Buying it is on my to-do list. Right after new glasses :)

Modeling my world

I met the point in my book were my main character is exploring the "New World," which in this case is a school complex. I realized I couldn't write about what he was seeing unless I had a good understanding of the space myself. I started off drawing the school grounds free hand, but my skills and proportion are extremely lacking. Then I tried redrawing everything on graph paper, but I kept making mistakes, a racing lines over and over, and then having to start over from the beginning.

I thought there must be a way to do this electronically, but I didn't want to waste a lot of time learning specialty floor plan software. It turns out that there is a free software program available that is very intuitive to use. It's called Sweet Home 3D and it runs in Java, which means it will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I've installed it and I have to say, it's impressive. It even lets you do a 3D mock-up and walk through the room. All this in less than ten minutes. Needless to say, I'm laying out the whole school so that I always have consistency in what my characters are seeing.

Beta readers

I use this blog as a notebook for my writing journey, so this is just a short post to remind myself to go to Frostbite Publishing for beta readers. Reasonable prices, and KBoards approved.

More on seasons / episodes

After reading more about ebook pricing, I'm thinking my initial plan my need to be revised.

Writing / Editing	Release Date	Book	Length	Price
May 4 - 31, 2015	Oct 4, 2015	Season 1: Episode 1	~25k	FREE
Jun 1 - 28, 2015	Oct 4, 2015	Season 1: Episode 2	~25k	$2.99
Jun 29 - Aug 5, 2015	Nov 1, 2015	Season 1: Episode 3	~25k	$2.99
Aug - Oct 11, 2015	Nov 29, 2015	Season 1: Episode 4	~25k	$2.99
Oct 12, 2015	Dec 26, 2015	Season 1: Omnibus	~100k	$5.99 (save 33%)
Oct 13 - Dec 15, 2015	Feb 7, 2016	Season 2: Episode 1	~25k	$2.99
Dec 15/'15 - Feb 16, 2016	Mar 20, 2016	Season 2: Episode 2	~25k	$2.99
Feb 17 - Mar 13, 2016	Apr 17, 2016	Season 2: Episode 3	~25k	$2.99
Mar 14 - Apr 6, 2016	May 15, 2016	Season 2: Episode 4	~25k	$2.99
Apr 6 - May 1, 2016	Jun 12, 2016	Season 2: Omnibus	~100k	$6.99 (save 42%)

While books are on pre-order I'll list them at a reduced price of $1.99 per episode, or 4.99/5.99 per season.

I've also come up with a new writing schedule. I reduced my hours at work to 3 days a week, but my Tuesdays and Thursdays seem to get swallowed up by my to-do list backlog, and I get less than 2-3 hours of writing in. I thought if I had a more strict schedule on those days I could treat it like a job. I wouldn't be late for work or not put in the time, so why should I not put the time into this career? The schedule below allows for 8 hours of sleep per night (I need 8.5 to feel normal according to my sleep experiment, but this will probably do).

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday (1.5 hr/day; 6 hr/week)

8:15 pm – 9:45 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

9:45 pm – 9:50 pm Get ready for bed

9:50 pm – 10:30 pm Leisure

Tuesday, Thursday (7.5 hr/day; 15 hr/week)

8:30 am – 10:00 am Novel (1.5 hr)

10:00 am – 10:30 am Break

10:30 am – 12:00 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

12:00 pm – 12:45 pm Lunch

12:45 pm – 2:15 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

2:15 pm – 2:45 pm Break

2:45 pm – 4:15 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm Life stuff / Logistics

8:15 pm – 9:45 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

9:45 pm – 9:50 pm Get ready for bed

9:50 pm – 10:30 pm Leisure

Saturday (4 hr/day and week)

10:00 am – 12:30 pm Novel (2.5 hr)

8:15 pm – 9:45 pm Novel (1.5 hr)

9:45 pm – 9:50 pm Get ready for bed

9:50 pm – 10:30 pm Leisure

In total I'll get in 25 hours a week this way. I have 10 weeks left on this schedule, then one week of vacation while kids are in summer camp (writing binge like T/R schedule; 37.5 hrs), then 2 weeks vacation of nothing, and then I'm back to working 5 days a week, so I'll only get in 1.5 hours every night (10.5 hours per week). Note that all of these times are actual writing/editing times. In my "leisure" and during my 20 min coffee / 30 min lunch breaks at work I'll read business related things such as blogs like The Passive Voice and forums such as KBoards, and will try to squeeze marketing in those times as well.

According to my spreadsheet I average a measly 390 WPH writing, and edit at 2500 WPH. I'm hoping to finish editing Episode 1 this week, so starting Monday I'll have 75k remaining. Each episode will take me 64 hours to write and 10 to edit, so about 75 hours total. By the time I add covers and promo planning, about 85 hours, or 3.5 weeks (lets round to 4 weeks because I have to learn book layouts and how to upload, etc). I'll use my summer camp week to arrange promos, covers, beta readers, etc. I want to have the whole thing done before work picks up again and also before the first release, because I like to go back and add hints to make sure they're all a cohesive document. I won't be able to do that with season 2, but hopefully things pick up enough that I can work less at the day job all year, not just for a few months.