Author Journey (February 28, 2022)

After weeks of going nowhere, I have finally defeated my writer’s block. Want to know how? Well, let’s just say I decided to embrace chaos. You can’t block me if you don’t know which way I’m going!

February 28, 2022

Hot Topic

So, the weekend before last, I went away with the family. It was a chance to refresh and relax. We even took Gus with us so I got to keep up my streak of walking with him every single day. Of course, this time we were walking in the snow on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. It was on one of these late-night walks, that it finally hit me. I found a way to get around writer’s block. I’ll get into the details later, but it’s safe to say this was my most productive writing week in over a year.

The other exciting news was that I published my 1,000th post on Monday – Attack on Titan (Manga) – A Tragic Lesson in Futility. It was my thoughts on Attack on Titan having just finished the manga. I achieved this feat in just over two years which was quite surprising. That’s more than 750,000 words, which is equivalent to seven epic fantasy novels.

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What have I been watching?

Seasonal Anime

Surprisingly, I also had a bumper week for watching anime too. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but everything seemed to click into gear. Maybe I should have more weekends away? Anyhow, I watched fourteen episodes. Three were my seasonal watches and the rest were for future projects. I’ve felt really productive this week and it’s a good feeling.

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

In the Land of Leadale had a hot springs episode. There’ve been a lot of surprises with this show and this was the one that caught me the most off guard. It was brilliant and bizarre all at the same time. I really can’t work out what this series thinks it is. Princess Connect! Re: Dive was amazing this week and not in the same way that some of the previous episodes have been. There wasn’t the action that lifted those. This one was hilarious and also incredibly sad. Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest probably delivered one of its best episodes, however, it was hampered by the lack of time given to the other students in Hajime’s class in prior episodes. It should have been amazing but lacked the connections to make the emotional moments really stick.

Historic Anime

I ended up bumping this week’s originally planned post for Fire Force until next week so that I could write my post about Attack on Titan. Apologies if you were desperately waiting to find out what we thought, but it will be business as usual later today. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood took the boys home and they brought Major Armstrong with them which was a genius idea. He’s one of my favourite characters at this point. It was time for my first season review of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and I enjoyed reflecting on the series as a whole. Maybe, it’s cheating going back and reviewing it already knowing what comes next, but I felt it was worth it.

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

I released my second post in my look back at The Rising of the Shield Hero. I really enjoyed revisiting this series and getting to write my thoughts down. The format worked well for both Shield Hero and Slime. So far, I haven’t found another series to review like this, but I’m sure one will come along. It’s nice to really be able to get my thoughts out in a coherent manner and talk about the story on a larger level than just episodically.

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Work in Progress

This last week, I managed to write every day. I also managed to get more than 1,000 words per day. I don’t think I’ve written this much in a week since November 2020. The pandemic has really messed with my head on this front and while I’ve had no problem keeping the blog moving smoothly, writing fiction has been hard. So, how did I do it?

I mentioned at the start of the post how I embraced chaos. On one of my walks with Gus, it occurred to me that maybe I’m trying to be too rigid in my plan. When I’m writing posts for this site, I can bounce around between series. Then, when I get pulled in, I can blast through the remainder of the episodes in no time at all, but I have to feel it.

Since I have four planned projects ready to go, I decided I would stop fighting the universe and let it guide me instead. Oftentimes, while walking Gus, I will drift off in my head and start running through scenes for my stories. I seem to have little control over which one becomes the dominant one so I decided to just go with it. So, this last week, I was focused on the rewrite of Valiant Lineage. Admittedly, it is the zero draft which is more like enhanced plotting. I wrote two to three paragraphs for forty-one chapters which is the whole of book one.

That’s right, in the last seven days, I outlined an entire novel. Of course, these can and probably will change, but having this to guide me through the writing process will be invaluable. It also helps me work out the plot, find holes, and prepare to foreshadow. Considering that this will be a novel, that started life as a short story that became a novella, it’s impressive that the outline for the novel is longer than the entire first short story. This week, I intend to continue to follow the path of least resistance. As long as I keep moving forward, I’m not going to fight it.

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The Plan

So, it was a really good week. On top of the writing and watching a lot of anime, I actually added an extra project to quarter two. There’s a series that came out in Summer 2021 that I had been planning on watching. I started and then became intrigued enough to want to write about it. As a result, I have added an extra series to quarter two…

Posts

• Quarter One
  • Author Journey – 9/13 (+1)
  • Historic Anime – 39/39
  • Seasonal Anime – 22/36 (+3)
  • Bonus Posts – 16/18 (+1)
• Quarter Two
  • Author Journey – 0/13
  • Historic Anime – 25/52 (+3)
  • Seasonal Anime – 0/36

I get the feeling that this could become a regular feature, and to be honest, I’m fine with that. There are so many shows that I want to watch/rewatch and talk about. If I have the time to add in an entire bonus season I will. The best thing about those is that I can hold on until I’ve finished the whole thing before scheduling any of them.

Writing

• MSR (Paranormal Harem Rom-com)
  • Plotting – 49/58
  • Writing – 43/58
  • Editing – 42/58
  • Artwork – 0/9
• Valiant Lineage (Epic Dark Fantasy)
  • Plotting – 42/? (+42)
  • 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/?

Originally, I had planned on focusing on one project per quarter, but now I’m going to work on all of them simultaneously, bouncing back and forth as the stories grab me. Overall, I think it might take longer to produce one book, but I’ve already been more productive in one week using this approach so I’m going to keep on it and see where it takes me. I think the freedom to go with the flow will be the most empowering aspect of this plan.

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Final Thoughts

Bizarrely, I seem to have found stability in chaos. I had to try something though as the old plan was definitely holding me back. This also gives me a little bit of freedom to do other things should the inspiration strike. Also, if it helps me get back into the flow, then I will be able to drop into one project and write a chapter here and there. I can get through 1,000 words in an hour currently so I at least know I haven’t completely lost it. I want to try to get myself back up to 5,000 words a day.

It turns out that the vacation really did help! Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemy. Anyhow, thanks for reading and stay safe.

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