Author Journey (April 29, 2024)
Last week, I took a bit of time to take care of some site admin… I know! Exciting stuff. Don’t worry, I did some other stuff too, although it’s hard to follow on from something so enthralling!!!
Author Journey (April 29, 2024)
Favourite Moment!
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how Jetpack had updated their stats overnight so that anyone wanting to access them needed to pay a ridiculous sum of money. There is a free option but you can’t advertise or accept donations. The thing that annoyed me the most about this is that there was no warning. All of our data was suddenly locked away. So, I spent a little time and removed all of the old affiliate links on this site (something I’d been meaning to do for a while) and signed up for the free version, which they still tried to convince me to pay $6 a month for… As you may imagine, I went with the free version. Now, I’m in the process of extracting all of my data before moving to Google Analytics entirely. So, I did something I was going to do anyway and stuck it to the man! It’s like seeing a double rainbow!
Writing!
I was doing a little bit of internet surfing when I came across a beat sheet for horror stories. Most of what I write can be considered dark, ranging from dark comedy to dark fantasy to horror. Several years ago, I wrote a short story as part of a writing project which involved eleven other authors writing a short story with a similar prompt. We published them and for a brief moment, I was ranked higher than Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the free books list. It was quite exciting. Anyhow, after seeing this beat sheet and thinking about my story, I’ve decided that it’s time to give it the full novel treatment. It’s a bit of a deviation from what I’ve been doing (or not doing) for a while now, but I think this could be the kickstart I need. It’s worth a shot, anyhow!
Anime!
I only managed to get through eight episodes last week which was less than I was planning, but that’s the way it goes at the moment. I kept up with my seasonal shows and continued to dive into Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable! After the first two episodes, I was sold on the series, but after eight, I’m loving it. I’m looking forward to writing up my season review for this one, along with another two that I haven’t had time to write yet.
Catching up on my To-Watch List
Winter 2024
Spring 2024
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
- Mushoku Tensei II: Jobless Reincarnation
- KonoSuba: God’s blessing on this wonderful world!
Manga!
I made a bit more of an effort here and managed to read five volumes. Admittedly, I read three on Monday and one of the remaining two I’m not planning on reviewing. I’ve got a bit of a way to go before I can boast about my buffer of scheduled posts, but at least I have this week’s done.
| Tasks | Goal | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| Anime Watched | 6 Episodes | 8 Episodes |
| Manga Read | 3 Books | 5 Books |
| Posts Scheduled | 10 Posts | 9 Posts |
| Words Written | 5,000 | 0 words |
| Artwork Completed | 1 Piece | 0 Sketches |
Aspirations for the week!
I’m going to map out the beats for my horror story that will turn a ten-thousand-word story into an eighty-thousand-word story. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit over the last couple of days and I’ve had a few great ideas on how to expand it and make it flow better. On top of that, I should finish Hokkaido Gals this week, which will leave me with only five seasons from Winter 2024 to finish. That will take my total for the season to fifteen, which is going to be my goal going forward. I also need to work on my scheduled post buffer, which shouldn’t be too much of a challenge if I can read three manga volumes in a day. I know that won’t happen every day, but a couple of times a week would be really helpful.
I’m still going to work on the world-building for my other series in the background. That’s going to be a much longer series so it makes sense to get everything in order before I start writing. The horror story could work as a standalone, although I do see a Dirty Pair-style series emerging where the books could be read in any order. Anyhow, thanks for reading.
I wish you the very best in officially/professionally completing your very first novel. May I too make more effort since I finally got my ending chapter for my LitRPG story’s first arc which should be completed in a few days time.
Thanks. All the best to you, too. Getting that first one done feels like a climbing a mountain. Hopefully, once we’ve achieved that it’ll get easier and easier.
Everything wants you to pay now ???? Instagram wanted to charge me $15 a month for people to see my photos. Nobody was seeing my photos in an app with 2 billion users.
And the WordPress plans are insane compared to what they were just three years ago. Ugh. Don’t get me started ????
I remember when Twitter became X and they wanted thousands for a developer license when I had one for free previously.
We’re the product on these sites and they make it so that we have to pay to be seen. Makes no sense. Ironically, I get more traffic from Google than from all the social media sites put together.
And yeah, WordPress is ridiculous with all the add-ons that you need to pay for now.
I hope the short story conversion gives you the jolt you’re looking for! It’s amazing to me that amid all of the skills and habits that have to come together to write a novel, something as simple as a comfortable beat sheet or approach to plotting can make all the difference.
I’d been unintentionally away from novel writing for about thirty years before I experimented with the 7 plot point method. It’s not that I swear by it. It’s just the method that got me going again.
Brains are weird.
For sure. I’ve looked into all sorts of methods and have found things in most that are helpful, however, that doesn’t necessarily get the words written on their own.
The hardest thing I’m struggling to reconcile is that I can set myself any task and commit to it, but writing keeps tripping me up. Hopefully, writing this novel to completion will get the ball properly rolling.