Author Journey (February 13, 2023)
Knowing the time pressures I was facing last week, I adjusted my weekly goals accordingly. However, I haven’t quite perfected the art of planning for the unexpected. Maybe this week will behave better!
Author Journey (February 13, 2023)
It was another of those weeks where I was borrowing and stealing time from anywhere I could afford to, and I generally don’t have a lot of wiggle room, especially as my personal projects often don’t take priority over family and the day job. One day, I’m hoping it will displace the day job, kicking it into a giant pit while yelling “This is Sparta!”, but alas that day has not come and it’s probably a way off. Still, I can dream!
The Weekly Recap!
Last week started as the previous week had ended with real-life family events in full flow and the day job taking up the rest of my time. That lasted for two days. After that, family life returned to normal. The day job continued to be demanding, but I had planned for that, adjusting my goals. Even so, I pretty much lost two days of productivity. What did that mean for my goals? Well, let’s get into it.
On Monday, I managed to write a post. It was a season review for the series I watched the previous week. That was it. Tuesday went a little better as I squeezed in two manga books between running code and preparing reports. That’s one thing I’ve been able to adjust since working from home. There’s a fair amount of time when my computer is busy working away and I can’t do anything else. At home, I can pick up a book and start reading. That was one goal completed.
From Wednesday to Friday, I managed to squeeze all nine anime episodes in. There are two shows I am planning on reviewing once they have finished airing, but when I checked on this last week, one show had four episodes and the other five. I needed to watch nine to complete the goal. If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is. The only problem now is that I have to wait for the others to air which will be about eight weeks!
| Tasks | Goal | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| Anime Watched | 9 Episodes | 9 Episodes |
| Manga Read | 2 Books | 2 Books |
| Posts Scheduled | 13 Posts | 13 Posts |
| Chapters Written | 1 Book Outline | 1 Book Outline |
| Artwork Completed | 6 Sketches | 6 Sketches |
I also managed to complete four of my facial sketches of Kira for the RIP Tide cover. That just left the weekend to plot the third book of my series and do two more sketches. Saturday night, I sat down with the original drafts of volumes nine to twelve and the original beat sheets. I skimmed them all and then pulled them all together into the outline for book three of the revamped series. I’m spotting a lot of improvements and several things that I think happened too early or maybe aren’t needed. It was a lot of fun rereading something I wrote six years ago. Then, on Sunday, I finished off the last two sketches for Kira. I think I’m leaning towards 5 or 6. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Aspirations for the Week!
This week is going to really test my goal-setting abilities. The busy period at work has spilt into another week and gets ever closer to just becoming one long busy period. Hopefully, it will get sorted out early on as I have yet another pressing issue. We have a public holiday coming up and the kids’ school is adding a teacher training day. As a result, I’m going to be extra busy with family stuff over the long weekend.
Realistically, that means I have four days minus whatever the day job carves away. I think I’m going to have to lower some of my expectations for the week. It’s a shame as I am starting to build some momentum, but at least I can set realistic expectations and hopefully keep my perfect run going. This is going to be tricky.
Watching Anime
I do have a series on my to-watch list that is made up of twelve-minute episodes. That would be like watching six regular episodes, although I still need the time to review twelve. Do you know what? I’m going to go for it. No guts, no glory!
Goal: 12 Episodes
Reading Manga
I’m going to stick with two books again. There’s going to be some time when I’m working that I’ll be watching code run so that shouldn’t impact too much else. I also want to keep that streak going.
Goal: 2 Books
Posts Scheduled
I don’t have any season reviews hanging over my head from a previous week and while I am planning on completing the twelve-episode season, I’m not going to commit to writing the season review this week. Just getting through all the episode reviews will be an achievement enough. 12 anime episodes + 2 manga books + 1 Author Journey.
Goal: 15 Posts
Chapters Written
Luckily, I have all of my documents for this on the cloud so I will be able to read them at any time, even on the long weekend. Like everything else, I want to keep this one moving forward I really want to write this series, so the sooner I can complete my preparations the better.
Goal: 1 Book Outline
Artwork Completed
I think this one will be the hardest one to make any real progress on, especially with everything else I’m planning. That said, I’ve been enjoying drawing again and want to at least do something. I’d like to do a full character sketch of Kira, possibly surfing or some other activity. I’m not expecting it to be polished. Just something rough to keep me working.
Goal: 1 Character Sketch
Final Thoughts
So, I completed all my goals for the second week running. I have to say, I’m already a massive fan of the weekly goal-setting practice as it keeps me honest. Sure, I could just plan on watching twelve episodes every week, but there would be a good number of weeks that I wouldn’t complete it and even though I knew I wouldn’t, it still knocks my momentum.
I’m just going to make a note here of something I’d like to do in the future. Something that’s not on any of my plans, short or long-term. It’s more of a dream I had growing up. I used to read a lot of comics even before I got into manga. I loved stuff like Garfield, the Far Side, and the usual superhero stuff. I’ve read a few webcomics of late and it’s made me want to do one of my own. Now, don’t worry, I’m not adding more to my schedule just yet, but I want to start thinking about it.
Is there anything you wanted to do as a child but have since forgotten about? Maybe, now is the time to do it. Or at the very least, think about it. Anyhow, thanks for reading.
“Still, I can dream!”
You’d think, as old and cynical as I am, that I would have given up on that. But nope! That dream just flat-out refuses to die.
Sketches 3 and 5 spoke more to me than the others. Though 3 feels like a lighter version of 5. Which a) isn’t bad and b) is an indirect way of saying I’m not sure what emotion you’re trying to convey, so it’s hard for me to be decisive.
“There’s going to be some time when I’m working that I’ll be watching code run so that shouldn’t impact too much else. ”
Having a book nearby sure can relieve the boredom, can’t it? Some jobs you really don’t want to shove into the background at run. It’s not as bad nowadays, but I remember in the early days of Windows that multi-tasking only mostly worked. Adding anything else to the mix could easily crash the whole system.
” I loved stuff like Garfield, the Far Side, and the usual superhero stuff.”
To my left, on one of my bookcases, is my assortment of Garfield and The Far Side collections. I also have some Foxtrot and Dilbert collections. I still pick them up to get a chuckle every once and a while.
I gave my comic collection (X-Men, Avengers, etc.) to my daughter. But I miss reading them sometimes!
The market for webtoons is pretty strong right now. But it’s a whole new discipline, isn’t it? Still, it’s a cool idea!
Something I’ve wanted to do as a child, but have forgotten about? Well, astronaut is off the table. The closest thing I can think of is that even when I was 10 or 12, i wanted to write. And I still hope to someday be good at it!
Yeah, that dream is never going to go away. I like to think that means something if we can give on being astronauts, cowboys, and knights, but the idea of being a professional storyteller sticks around.
Our network in the day job is pretty old and not setup in an ideal fashion. I regularly have to copy stuff to my internal hard drive just to get it to run in a reasonable amount of time. Trying to do multiple things would activate the laptops self-destruct sequence…
I’ve no idea what happened to my old Garfield and The Far Side books. I didn’t see them when I went home for Christmas. I did find all my old comicbooks though and will be slowly shipping them to Canada.
Yeah, I think there’s so much I could do with a webtoon too. It would work as a comic and as a video by turning it into a slideshow. It’s definitely something I’m interested in doing when the time arises.
I’m sure every writer hopes that one day they’ll be good enough.