Author Journey (January 31, 2022)
Hang on a minute! What happened to January? I’ve had a productive and tiring month, but almost none of that productivity has gone towards my current writing project. Finding a balance continues to elude me!
January 31, 2022
Hot Topic
For a moment there, I was about to open this post by talking about procrastination, but then I realised that wasn’t necessarily my problem. Well, that’s not entirely true. I am prone to procrastination as much as anyone else, however, when I procrastinate it’s normally to work on something other than the thing I desperately want to work on. I really want to finish my novel, but it’s hard to get it going again. The strangest thing is I’m not entirely sure why.
So, last week our nanny started with us and with the eldest back at in-person school, she only had to look after my youngest son. Of course, there was a little bit of a transition period and I think that will continue this week, although it is getting better and better. On Thursday and Friday, I had a whole hour to focus on work uninterrupted. It was for the day job, but if these little victories keep stacking up, who knows how much time I’ll get back.
What have I been watching?
Seasonal Anime
Once again, I managed to only watch the latest episodes for the three seasonal shows that I’m covering. That’s fine, but three episodes of anime in a week is not nearly enough to occupy my mind. There are so many shows from this season and last that I want to look at, but I’ve had to prioritise my time as I try to sleep for more than four and a half hours a night.
So, I’m still really enjoying Princess Connect! Re: Dive and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. It has some great characters that make it possible to enjoy anything that they do. In the Land of Leadale continued to meander along without really doing much. It’s fine so far, but I would like it to have some sort of clear goal. Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest keeps exceeding my expectations. It was another average episode with some all right moments. It’s funny watching something while expecting almost nothing in return. I’m not sure I would necessarily want to do something like this again, but you never know.
Historic Anime
I released the second post of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and it’s interesting looking back at how I felt as these come out, especially as I’ve seen up to episode twenty-four already. Throughout the season so far, I’ve put together a lot of theories and it’s going to be fun seeing whether I was right or wrong. It’s definitely an impressive creation, although I’d imagine every series would love to have the freedom of knowing they were getting that many episodes, to begin with.
I’ve continued Season two of Fire Force which I’m watching and reviewing with Yomu and I think we’re both enjoying it so far. It’s not perfect, but then what is? If you had asked me to rank my favourite isekai anime before I started watching season two of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, I’m pretty confident it would have been around the middle. Since watching season two and subsequently rewatching season one, it’s jumped to be one of my favourites.
There’s now just one episode left of Hundred! I’m glad that I took the time to revisit one of my favourite guilty pleasures and I think I’ve been pretty reasonable with my views on the show. I love it, there’s no doubting that, but it has some issues. My goal was to show that it’s all right to love a show with issues, even if you know they are there. That said, it has had some very clever moments and being able to highlight those has been incredibly satisfying.
Work in Progress
I had hoped to get some words down on Project MSR, but it hasn’t worked out. It’s frustrating, but it’ll come. I was all ready to hit the ground running back at the beginning of January, but schools going virtual and the decision to pull our youngest son out of daycare hit me hard. You’d think that we should be used to it after almost two years of the pandemic, but it doesn’t seem to get any easier.
I saw a tweet in which someone said that we didn’t really how messed up we all are because of the pandemic. I could relate to that idea, however, there was a response that said that we knew and were just trying to get on with things anyhow, and that hit the message home. Before the pandemic, I was able to write fifteen to twenty thousand words a week. Every week without fail. I wasn’t blogging as much then, but I’d be happy with even half of that right now.
As I was working with smaller blocks of time, I ended up focusing on some admin stuff for the Otaku Author. It may seem crazy, but I regularly go back and tidy up older posts, fix formatting, and look for ways to improve things. That’s what I meant by not necessarily procrastinating. Sure, it didn’t need to be done at that moment, but I would need to be done at some point.
The other factor was that by the end of the day, I was so tired from transitioning to the nanny and trying to keep on top of work, that the idea of pulling out my story was too much. I have continued to use my time walking Gus to focus on thinking through the problems in the story. I’ve been developing some of the backstories, looking to develop motivations and weaknesses. It’s felt very productive, but I have nothing to show for it yet.
The Plan
As with the week before, I kept things moving forward. I haven’t started working on anything for quarter two yet, but I have been considering introducing a manga series. This is one I started reading a while back, but I’ve been able to borrow all of the volumes from my library, except the last one. I’m not sure when I’ll look to start that or whether it will take a regular slot or create one of its own. For now, I’m just going to work on it in the background.
Quarter One
- Posts
- Author Journey – 5/13 (+1)
- Historic Anime – 39/39
- Seasonal Anime – 10/36 (+3)
- Bonus Posts – 13/17 (+1)
This will be the fifth week of quarter one of 2022 and so far, things are moving along at a steady pace. I definitely need to get the writing moving again, especially as I feel like I’ve had more false starts than a hundred-metre Olympic final (before they just started disqualifying runners after the first false start).
- Writing
- Plotting – 49/58
- Writing – 43/58
- Editing – 42/58
- Artwork – 0/9
So, yeah. No change here again and this week, I’m going to try working on a number of smaller goals. I tend to write in chapters, but I’m going to just aim for two hundred words a session and hope that takes the pressure off.
Final Thoughts
I had a little more sleep last week, even managing six hours one night. The goal is for my youngest to get even more comfortable with the nanny so that I can have more uninterrupted time to get my day job done during the day. That will give me back my evenings and mean that I can go to bed earlier. I probably won’t anyhow, but the intention is there. In other news, I finally have my Wacom tablet sat next to my laptop and I intend to familiarise myself with that.
Do you run multiple projects concurrently and if so how do you maintain a healthy balance? Anyhow, thanks for reading and stay safe.
