Author Journey (March 21, 2022)

Last week’s update had me looking at revising my schedule… Well, thanks to another real-life event, I’m looking at changing things a little more. Maybe, this time, it’ll be a plan I can stick to?!?

March 21, 2022

Hot Topic

We had been planning a vacation for Easter when we discovered that some of our travel documents had expired during the height of the pandemic. With Easter only a couple of weeks away, we were scrambling to get replacements. Well, it turns out everyone is doing the same thing and they are overrun with applications. Basically, after many sleepless nights and trawling through three different countries’ border regulations and government document procedures, we had to call it a day and postpone the vacation.

It was disappointing, but now we’ve been able to rebook at a later date for considerably less. We just need those updated travel documents to come back, which hopefully they will. Anyhow, that has occupied almost every spare moment of my life this week. It’s not been fun and I’m pretty tired. Government websites are not nearly as entertaining as the sites I usually visit. Anyhow, this has also made me rethink the updates to my revised schedule for quarter two.

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What have I been watching?

Seasonal Anime

As usual, I kept up with my seasonal shows from the Winter 2022 lineup which are now almost over! I also watched four episodes of another show that I’m planning on reviewing through quarter two, but I’ll talk more about that in the next section!

• In the Land of Leadale
• Princess Connect! Re: Dive
• Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest

I’m not sure who thought it was a good idea to add another cute child to the cast of In the Land of Leadale but it certainly wasn’t me. Look, I don’t mind the occasional cute child character but shows about them entirely aren’t my thing. This series was already a bit of a mix of things so adding this element seems like too many different things going on at once.

Princess Connect! Re: Dive is gearing up for the season finale and it was yet another outstanding episode. For anyone that was coming in expecting lots of fun aimless quests, well, this probably isn’t what you wanted, but for someone that’s been following all the little hints and clues, I can tell you it’s amazing.

Once more, I find myself thoroughly enjoying Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest and getting excited about the next episode. I still can’t recommend the series to anyone, but at least those of us that have stuck with it are getting rewarded with what promises to be a grand finish.

Historic Anime

It’s weeks like this that this section holds its own. With these shows, all have aired and more often than not, I will have seen the entire season before I start publishing posts. There are times when I haven’t such as Fire Force which I’m watching weekly with Yomu and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood which is a longer series that I’m watching in chunks. Still, all of last week’s posts were written in advance and that takes a lot of pressure off.

• Fire Force
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
• The Rising of the Shield Hero

Fire Force gave us the end of the current arc and it was over in less than a second! Sounds boring right! Wrong. Shinra really knows how to make the most out of the time he’s given.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood just gets better and better. They allowed us some time to see how Alphonse dealt with the doubts put in his head by Barry the Butcher. Grasping reality is a pretty tough concept for a person, so it must have been insanely troubling for a disembodied soul living in a suit of armour.

I finally got around to posting about season two of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Who would have thought that watching season two would make me go back to the beginning and revisit the entire series and then the first half of season two again? Not me, but I’m glad that I did.

In last week’s post about The Rising of the Shield Hero, I looked at the boneheaded tactics the heroes deployed when facing the Pope. I love a good fight as much as the next person, but they continually make absurd decisions and were frankly lucky to get through it. I still love the series, but I have to call them out about this.

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Work in Progress

Life’s a funny thing. The week before I spent most of my days envisaging a magic system with rules and parameters. Last week, I was preoccupied with passports and border control, but sadly not in the sense of my fantasy series. Even walking Gus couldn’t take my mind off things.

As such, I did nothing with my series last week. I don’t think I even had time to think about it. That may have something to do with my thoughts on changing my schedule. I need a little more time to focus on my writing. I need to get myself firmly back into the routine before I look at adding anything else to my schedule.

You’d think that I would be used to this sort of thing happening after the last two years we’ve all had to endure, but there’s also a part of me that was hoping for things to finally settle down. It looks like we’re not quite there yet though, so I need to make some changes.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing too drastic, just a shifting of priorities for a while. Once, I’ve got things going again in the fiction world, I will reassess things in the anime world. I’m always trying to optimize my processes. Anyone familiar with agile development will know what I’m talking about.

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The Plan

I said last week that I would be dropping my seasonal coverage as of Quarter two and instead shift my focus to catching up on some of the shows from the last couple of seasons. Well, that is still technically true, however, I’m not going to set myself any hard targets. I will watch them as I can and review them as I go. Basically, I’m not going to post daily for a while.

When I finish a series, I’ll start releasing the posts, but it’s going to be a far more relaxed and casual approach. I’m probably going to keep the historic anime slots I currently use going, which is Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Any extra posts I come up with will slot in on one of the other days. By freeing my time on these days, I’m hoping to get my fiction writing going again.

Posts

• Quarter One
  • Author Journey – 12/13 (+1)
  • Historic Anime – 39/39
  • Seasonal Anime – 31/36 (+3)
  • Bonus Posts – 17/18 (+1)
• Quarter Two
  • Author Journey – 0/13
  • Historic Anime – 34/39 (+2)
  • Bonus Posts – 0/13
• Quarter Three
  • Author Journey – 0/13
  • Historic Anime – 9/39 (+4)

By doing this, I’ve halved my expected number of historic anime posts for quarters two and three, and quarter two is almost done. Without the weekly pressure of keeping up with seasonal anime, I’ve almost freed up the entire quarter. Sure, I will need to work on quarter three, but there’s nothing other than Fire Force that I’ll need to turn around quickly.

Writing

• MSR (Paranormal Harem Rom-com)
  • Plotting – 49/58
  • Writing – 43/58
  • Editing – 42/58
  • Artwork – 0/9
• Valiant Lineage (Epic Dark Fantasy)
  • Plotting – 41/41
  • Writing – 0/?
  • Editing – 0/?
  • Artwork – 0/?
• Black Death (Post Apocalyptic Shoujo AI)
  • Plotting – 0/?
  • Writing – 0/?
  • Editing – 0/?
  • Artwork – 0/?
• Asteroidea (Horror Science-fiction)
  • Plotting – 0/?
  • Writing – 0/?
  • Editing – 0/?
  • Artwork – 0/?

This is where I’m hoping to see the biggest improvement going forwards. I have two weeks left of the quarter, including this week. After that, my schedule just opened up. I’ll be sad to see my current streak of daily posting come to an end, but it’s also a statistic that doesn’t really mean anything, especially not compared to me completing one of my novels and getting it published.

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Final Thoughts

Last week, I mentioned how it’s good to reassess things and improve on the process regularly. When I wrote that, I wasn’t expecting to reassess things quite so soon, but I think it’s the right thing to do. Too often we get caught up in a sunk cost fallacy where you think you need to keep going because of the effort or money you’ve already sunk into a project. Sometimes, it’s better to stop and reevaluate. There’s no point losing more time and money if it still won’t get you where you want to go. Being able to pivot is essential.

I still have my to-watch list and plan on working my way through it, no doubt adding more each season. The commitment that comes from covering seasonal shows is intense and I was only doing three a week. In the past, I’ve done ten a week. Now, if you don’t mind I have some freedom to enjoy… well, in two weeks from now. Anyhow, thanks for reading and stay safe.

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