Author Journey (February 6, 2023)

Well, that was a challenging week! Before, it would have completely derailed my work, but thanks to my weekly goal-setting, I have been able to come out of it not looking too bad… Not bad at all!

Author Journey (February 6, 2023)

It’s kind of cruel that when you’re younger and have lots of time and energy, you usually don’t have much of a plan or idea of how best to use it. Then, when you’re older and know exactly what you want to do, you don’t have the time or the energy! Hey, get off my lawn! Sorry, sounding like an old geezer for a moment there! Anyhow, if you know what you want to do, there’s no point in life where it’s too early to get started. Make a plan, break it down, and do it! Having a bite-sized plan has been a game-changer.

The Weekly Recap!

So, last week didn’t go quite as I had originally planned. It started well as I crammed six episodes of anime into Monday and Tuesday. I also put some time aside on Tuesday to draw and I’m very happy with what I ended up with. There’s some work still to be done, but the general outline of the cover is done. I really didn’t think I would get so much done in one morning, but once my pencil hit the paper, it didn’t want to be off it for long. Don’t worry, I’ve included a picture of it below, but before that, let’s talk about the rest of the week.

Wednesday saw the beginning of a real-life family event that took over my week. To make matters worse, it is yet again the busy period at the day job so I had those both competing for my time. I did manage to read the two volumes of manga I had planned for on Wednesday and Thursday, squeezing those in whenever I could. So, I had completed the manga and artwork goal at that point, but there was still a lot to do and the weekends are usually busy anyhow.

On Thursday night, I revisited volumes five to eight of my old series and put together a plan for book two of the revised version. I’m loving the way this is coming together, especially as I’m seeing even more of the big picture and it’s allowing me to see the themes that pull each of the books together. It’s exciting, to see it all come together. So, that left me with Friday, Saturday and Sunday to watch six episodes of anime and schedule a bunch of posts. Spoiler alert – I did it!

Tasks	Goal	Completed
Anime Watched	12 Episodes	12 Episodes
Manga Read	2 Books	2 Books
Posts Scheduled	16 Posts	16 Posts
Chapters Written	1 Book Outline	1 Book Outline
Artwork Completed	1 Sketch	1 Sketch

I watched two a day each day, stealing whatever time I could from the night to get it done. So, after three weeks of the new routine, I finally completed all my goals for the week. It’s even more amazing considering how my week got kyboshed. I lost three full days and somehow managed to pull through. Now, I don’t think it’s that the goals are too easy. In fact, for last week, I had set the highest goals of the three weeks. If anything, I think it was having the goals in the first place that helped me to achieve them. It wasn’t easy and I’m pretty tired now, but the joy of achieving everything I set out to makes it worthwhile. Now, to take that energy into this week.

Aspirations for the Week!

This week will see the busy period at the day job continue so I’m going to adjust things to account for that. Hopefully, the real-life family event will be done for now and it’s really hard to predict when those will happen. To limit the impact of those, I will try to be a little more cautious with my goals this week. I want to continue to work at this pace, but I also think it’s important to have achievable goals and not just allow for wishful thinking.

The reason they are working at the moment is that I can achieve them. Even with the crazy week I had, I still came out on top. If the week hadn’t gone that way, maybe I would have been able to do more. I think that’s always going to be the bonus. Someday, I hope to be able to report that I exceeded my goals rather than just achieving them. Maybe, that’ll be next week? All right, let’s set some goals.

Watching Anime

There are so many shows that I want to watch and rewatch that it’s hard to fit them all in. I’ve also got a lot planned for the coming months and I don’t want to fall behind. That said, twelve episodes might be a bit of a push this week. I’m going to dial it back to nine as I think that should be my absolute minimum. If I do complete everything, this will be where I will look for some bonus wins.

Goal: 9 Episodes

Reading Manga

It’s the same thing here, I have so many series that I’m reading right now and I want to push on, but I’m still quite a way ahead of the next post so there’s no hurry. I’m going to keep things chugging along with another two-book week.

Goal: 2 Books

Posts Scheduled

That will leave me with fewer posts to complete this week, which is ideal with the day job taking a lot of my focus. I do have a season review to write up from the twelve episodes I watched last week and of course, the next Author Journey post, so that will be nine plus two plus one plus one.

Goal: 13 Posts

Chapters Written

When I first started publishing this series, I got up to volume eight, which will now be the first two books. That means I’m going to be looking at first drafts from here on. The next four are really exciting as a new character joins the main team (she’s possibly my favourite) and another leaves… I’m looking forward to revisiting these.

Goal: 1 Book Outline

Artwork Completed

I’m still amazed that I managed to get the full cover sketch done, especially in such a short period of time. Admittedly, it’s far from perfect so this week, I’m going to try some different faces and play around with the water effects. I’m hoping I can come up with an expression I love in six faces so I’ll be drawing six different Kira’s and seeing how they fit the cover. I’m also going to test some methods for colouring the picture. I’m thinking I’m going to ink it, but I’d like to see how that’s going to look before I dive in.

Goal: 6 Expressions and 1 Colour Study

Final Thoughts

Honestly, there were moments last week when I really didn’t think I was going to achieve all of it. Being able to tick them off as I did was a great feeling and reward enough on its own. That’s the feeling I’m going to continue to focus on each week. It’s worked for my blogging schedule for years now so if I can get more writing and artwork completed too, then that’s great.

I’m also in this tricky phase where I desperately want to start writing my series again, but I know that going through everything I have and planning it all out will undoubtedly make the story stronger in the long run. I’m already getting lots of great ideas for foreshadowing and how I can set things up to flow better. It’s a long process, but it’s the right thing to do. With RIP Tide’s cover coming along, I will look to begin editing that soon. Hopefully, I can release a few novellas this year as I work on the big series in the background.

I’m starting to develop some times that seem to work for the various projects, although this week has shown me that I can be incredibly fluid if needed. Do you have set times to work on various projects and if so, how do you cope with that time disappearing unexpectedly? Anyhow, thanks for reading.

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