Author Journey (April 3, 2023)
For whatever reason, last week was really hard to get into. Motivation seemed to be absent. And then, a somewhat real-life event came from the most unlikely of sources – a gacha game! I wish I was making this up…
Author Journey (April 3, 2023)
Maybe, I was just tired, but everything felt like it required twice the effort of the previous weeks. I hadn’t even set myself ridiculous goals. I was productive, and I’ll get into that in a moment, but it took a lot of effort to not just go lie down and fall asleep once the kids were at school. Of course, I have resumed the school runs and found myself in grocery stores once more so all the extra activities could be a little harder because of my knee. I don’t know. It was a weird week.
The Weekly Recap!
After four weeks with no anime goals, I returned to the safe number of nine episodes a week. Even with the general malaise that seemed to dog me at every turn, I managed to watch ten episodes and that was because I had ten episodes left in a season I had started so it seemed silly to stop with one left. It also means I’ll get a bonus post this week when I write up the season review.
I did increase the number of manga books I had planned to read from two to four and I managed that, reading one a day from Monday to Thursday. I’ve worked out that reading them at the end of the day is slower than during the day, so that little piece of knowledge should make things easier going forward. It was a mix of volume twos and volumes ones. That’s right, I’m still adding to my active series pile.
Having watched ten episodes of anime and read four volumes of manga, I had fourteen posts scheduled before writing this one. Since I had planned on writing fourteen to begin with, this post was my extra one taking my number of scheduled posts to fifteen.
Unfortunately, the work on the outline of book six of my series didn’t come together in time. I’ve started, but there is still a little work to do to get it all the way. Next week will be a short one with the Easter break so, I’m going to focus on finishing this one today. I’d like to get to work on book seven as soon as possible.
So last week, I said that I had probably drawn enough variations of Kira to have another go at the cover sketch. Well, that’s not what my pencil thought so I draw another variation and then drew the cover pose but as a full body just to see how it would look. I like this version and will probably stick with it design-wise, although the full body is too small for the cover – a body pillow maybe… but not a book cover!
| Tasks | Goal | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| Anime Watched | 9 Episodes | 10 Episodes |
| Manga Read | 4 Books | 4 Books |
| Posts Scheduled | 14 Post | 15 Posts |
| Chapters Written | 1 Book Outline | 0 Book Outlines |
| Artwork Completed | 1 Cover Sketch | 2 Character Sketches |
Aspirations for the Week!
This week is a short week thanks to Easter so I’m going to have to keep that in mind when setting my goals. I’m starting to look at a schedule when I’m deciding these too which is good. After thirteen weeks of doing this, I’m definitely getting a better feel for what’s achievable and what’s not.
Watching Anime
Looking at the shows that I’m currently part of the way through, there is one where I have seven episodes left to watch and that seems like a good compromise for the short week. So, seven it is.
Goal: 7 Episodes
Reading Manga
I just put in a request for a series of books that are quite large. There are only six books in the series, but each one is easily a double volume, maybe even triple. Those will probably come in next week so I really want to clear the four that are already sitting on my shelf.
Goal: 4 Books
Posts Scheduled
Not much of a reduction here, especially with the season review I have to write from last week. I guess it can’t be helped. Thirteen posts it is.
Goal: 13 Post
Chapters Written
I really want to finish the outline of book six and plan on doing that today. That would mean I would have two novellas to read and then that’s all my first drafts incorporated into the new outlines. If I can achieve that before Easter, I’ll have lots to think about for the second half of book seven which is completely unwritten.
Goal: 1 Book Outline
Artwork Completed
All right. I’m happy with the latest version of Kira so now I need to lay out all the elements of the cover image. I think I’m going to try to get it as clean as possible so that I can see how it will look if I digitally colour it in. Of course, that’s not going to happen this week, but I would like to get it started. Maybe get it ready to be inked next week.
Goal: 1 Cover Sketch
Final Thoughts
So, I briefly teased the idea of a real-life event surrounding a gacha game back at the beginning of this post and I really am not kidding. I’ve been playing Princess Connect! Re: Dive since it launched globally two and a half years ago. There was an in-game clan and we had a discord server. Most of us had been there since day one. Crunchyroll had just released a massive new update and we were getting ready for the next event. Then, out of nowhere, they announced that they would be shutting the game down on April 30.
It seems like an odd thing to say, but that felt like a sucker punch. I don’t put any money into the game, but there has been plenty of time spent. The story was far from over so pulling the plug like that was quite a surprise. After a day of not believing that it was true, I decided to get onto the Japanese server. That involved setting up a Japanese iTunes account on my old phone. The global server was about two years behind the Japanese one so there was definitely much more of the game to come. Now, I’m starting from zero and muddling through all the menus. Maybe, I’ll learn to read Japanese as a by-product? That would be nice.
It was a very weird week, but I still managed to be pretty productive. There was room for improvement, but if I’m hitting four out of five goals on an off week, then that’s not a bad thing. Have you ever had a week where you don’t feel like doing anything? Do you embrace it or if not, how do you get past it? I think this series of posts helped me, but even then it wasn’t easy.
Well, I’ve got lots to do and less time than usual so I’ve got to get back to work. Thanks for reading.
I like the idea of a body pillow. It’s a good idea to keep your merchandising options open!
When I messed up my foot (again), it took about four weeks, but I noticed a reduction in energy. I think I had finally started to notice the lack of exercise. I’d had to stop exercising until my foot healed. Maybe your knee’s doing the same thing?
Seasonal allergies attack me, too.
And then there’s the general ennui of adult life!
Once I have a colour version and maybe a second version for the reverse side, I’ll look into what I would need to do to make body pillows. One of the reasons that I’m keen to make my own art for the covers is that I can use it for merchandising. Merchandise isn’t usually a standard contract part with book cover designs so even putting it on a T-shirt could be against the contract. Always have one eye on the future.
Yeah, I think you’re right. It may have stopped hurting as much but it’s still causing me issues. It’s incredibly draining, as if adult life. Where are the assist robots we were promised in the 80s?
Sucks to hear that they’re shutting down that Princess Connect! game here. Best of luck with the Japanese server haha, if you decide to sit down and learn katakana (you could learn this in 1-2 weeks easily) then you’ll be able to at least read the English words that are often incorporated into games, like “Start”, “Play”, “Menu”, “Save”, and so on. The ones that you’d even recognize when spoken in isekai anime and so on (I just reminded myself of Seiya saying “Properties” in Cautious Hero).
Yeah, it’s frustrating because it came out of the blue and the Japanese version is at least two years ahead so it’s not like there wasn’t anything already in place for them to run with.
It does have some English words in there, but not many. Luckily, the interface is mostly the same. I would like to learn to read more of the characters. Think I might start with the names and run a series of posts on it. Could be interesting.