Author Journey (February 8, 2021)

I started the week strong and cleared a lot of tasks off my to-do list. There’s always more, so don’t worry too much. It’s not like I’m about to run out of things to do anytime soon… at least, not according to my five-year plan!

February 8, 2021

I recently took the Clifton Strengths test to see what my top five strengths are. If you’ve heard of the Clifton Strengths, you can probably skip on, but for those that haven’t it’s a test that analyzes your personal strengths and then offers tips to get the most out of this information. The idea is that if you can focus on your strengths where you can see a far greater improvement than if you focused on your weaknesses. The test takes about forty-five minutes in which you answer a number of questions, usually picking between two scenarios.

They claim to have put this together by interviewing thousands of high-performing people and developed a test that gives accurate and actionable results. At first, I was a little sceptical. Was this going to be like horoscopes where they’re so vague that anyone could find something to latch on to? I’ve still got a lot of reading on the results to do, but so far, it seems to resonate with what I think. So, here are my strengths;

1. Futuristic
2. Analytical
3. Strategic
4. Achiever
5. Maximizer

I’ll give you a quick description of what this all means. I’m inspired by the future and what could be, I have the ability to think about all factors that might affect a situation, I’m quick to spot patterns and create ways to proceed, I work hard and possess a great deal of stamina, and I seek to transform something strong into something superb. Now, when I think about my writing and my blog, these all speak to what I believe I’m trying to do. There are some more details that really resonated with my fiction writing and my need to achieve something, always.

I’ve been utilising my top three strengths lately, as I attempt to put together a five-year plan. That’s right, five-years. At the moment, it’s a little shakey as I attempt to finish off my edits on the Black Death trilogy. But, once that’s done, the fun will really begin. My goal is to publish twenty books over the next five years! That’s four a year. They will all begin life as web-novels and will span four different series. It might seem crazy, but I’ve looked at the data and I think it’s achievable.

The next strength is achiever, and one of the things that achievers thrive on is finishing things. My analytical and strategic strengths might have something to do with this too, but, basically, I track everything. I know when I watched a show, I know when I wrote the post, and when it was published. Seeing the entries checked off gives me a lot of satisfaction. So, when I have a day where I haven’t been able to check anything off, I can get frustrated.

This week, I have been checking things off left, right, and centre. I finished watching Harukana Receive, KonoSuba, and Goblin Slayer. I’ve even written up the posts and scheduled them. I’m up to episode twelve of Record of Grancrest War. And, thanks to my delayed posts for the new seasonal shows, The Quintessential Quintuplets, The Promised Neverland, and Dr Stone, I have scheduled every post for this week and most of February. I’m now working into March. How’s that for futuristic?

It’s been an incredibly productive week for me, and not just on the blog. I’ve been working my way through one of the three storylines in the Black Death trilogy, using my new outline. After that, there are two more, but they require far less work as those were the two original storylines. So, I’m hoping to get all of this done before the end of February, which will allow me to push on with my web-novel goals.

One of the things that has drawn me to the web-novel format is familiarity. As a blogger, it certainly follows a similar pattern. I also like serialised fiction and this seems like a format that was built for it, unlike the novella series I started a few years back. Another thing that I think will work in my favour, is that I will finish the book before I start releasing the chapters weekly. The current one I’m working on should have sixty chapters, so it will be more than a years worth of posts.

Of course, once that one is finished and ready to release, I’ll be able to start work on the next one, and then the next one, and the next one. There should end up being quite a bit of overlap in their release schedule, which I like and it gives me lots of time to work on them. I know, it’s probably a little out there, but it makes sense to me. Anyhow, I’ve got plenty of stuff to get on with. Thanks for reading.

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