Author Journey (July 11, 2022)
What a week! My sleep schedule was so disrupted, that my phone decided I didn’t even sleep on Friday, and I don’t even know if it’s right or not! However, I have identified what’s been holding my writing back…
July 11, 2022
Hot Topic
Last week was the first full week of the summer holidays. I was excited to be able to wake up, have breakfast, and start work without having to fight the kids at every step from getting out of bed to going to school. It was supposed to be a nice calm and relaxed approach to things. The mother-in-law was here so I didn’t have to do anything… I had no idea just how wrong I was!
My days were a mess, often not even starting work until eleven due to various issues with breakfasts and getting people places. Of course, we had my sister-in-law and her two kids staying with us all week too, so that added to the general disarray of things. I got very little work done during the day and found myself staying up later than normal to catch up. They have gone home now, so it’s already feeling quieter. Going to take a while for my stress levels to return to normal though…
What have I been watching/reading?
I mentioned last week that I had started a new series for my quarter-four posts as I wanted a shorter series to be able to finish entirely. Well, I started watching that series dubbed and made it all the way to episode seven when I discovered that all the dubbed episodes hadn’t been released. That means I’m two episodes short of finishing my Tuesday posts for 2022 and I have to wait for them to be released. It’s not a terrible thing I guess, although I am doing this to get away from having to wait, and I really don’t want to wait. I have switched between dubbed and subbed in the past, but I prefer to stick with the method I started with.
Anyhow, here’s a quick look at what I posted last week.
Episode eight was the long-awaited conclusion to episode three of Peach Boy Riverside… I know, it makes no sense whatsoever. Anyhow, it was a good episode although it will continue in episode ten… I wish I was making it up.
I wasn’t sure how things would go in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood after Mustang played his hand so soon, but King Bradley was brilliant. He is a great antagonist and he’s not even the main one in the series.
Last week saw the return of my collaborative Fire Force season two posts. We’ve almost got the season finished which is nice. It’s always nice to finish a project, especially when this one’s been ongoing for some time now.
Magical Girl Apocalypse is closing in on the end game with just two more volumes after this one. I’m so glad that I took the time to really dive into this series. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before, I read a lot of strange stuff!
As for my top-secret ecchi projects, Kandagawa Jet Girls is now done. That means I have another new series coming next Friday. I also posted my episode one review of Seven Mortal Sins. It’s all changed!
Work in Progress
I tried to get things going again on Monday when I revisited my first draft of MSR. It’s two thirds of the way through so all I have to do is finish it… right? Apparently not! I started writing and managed a grand total of six hundred and forty-seven words. Not a bad start really, especially since I reread and did a little editing on the last three chapters to get myself back into it. The problem came later on my evening walk with Gus. I have pretty much been stuck at this point since November 2020, and now I know why. When I walk through all of the remaining scenes they take place during the day, but I have somehow written it so that it’s night.
Surely, that’s not that big a deal! Unfortunately, it is a big deal and I’ve experienced this sort of problem before when I was trying to edit together the three storylines in the Black Death trilogy. I can’t tell you how many passes I made on this series trying to get it to work, but every time I changed one thing, it snowballed and something else needed to be changed. I don’t want to go through that again, and it’s also counterproductive to my attempts to get my word count flowing again. The most likely way to fix this is to do a complete rewrite…
The Plan
I did get some work done on the blog with the only projects left to complete are Fire Force season two and the Sankarea manga. Neither of those is going to cause me much of an issue in regards to time away from writing. I’m still in a great position and now that I’m hoping things will calm down at home, I should be able to make the most of it.
I know I didn’t exactly produce a lot of words in terms of writing last week, but being able to identify why I was struggling is a big thing. The story wasn’t going where it needed to and I know how to fix it. That said, I am determined to get my word count up so my first order will be to write the first draft of a different story before coming back to MSR.
Posts
- Quarter One
- Author Journey – 13/13
- Historic Anime – 39/39
- Seasonal Anime – 36/36
- Ecchi Anime – 14/14
- Bonus Posts – 18/18
- Quarter Two
- Author Journey – 13/13
- Historic Anime – 39/39
- Ecchi Anime – 39/39
- Seasonal Anime – 3/3
- Bonus Posts – 1/1
- Quarter Three
- Author Journey – 2/13 (+1)
- Historic Anime – 39/39
- Fire Force S2 – 6/12
- Ecchi Anime – 39/39
- Bonus Posts – 4/4
- Quarter Four
- Author Journey – 0/13
- Historic Anime – 28/39 (+6)
- Ecchi Anime – 38/39
- Bonus Posts – 4/6
I have to wait a couple of weeks before I can finish off one series of posts so that’s not a big problem. I also have nine volumes of Sankarea to read and will look a getting through those soon. Will probably look to read one a night, but if I get sucked in, it could be a much faster pace.
Writing
- MSR (Paranormal Harem Rom-com)
- Chapters – 0
- Words – 0
- Valiant Lineage (Epic Dark Fantasy)
- Chapters – 0
- Words – 0
- Black Death (Post Apocalyptic Shoujo AI)
- Chapters – 0
- Words – 0
- Asteroidea (Horror Science-fiction)
- Chapters – 0
- Words – 0
- Out of Time (Time-travel Murder Mystery)
- Chapters – 0
- Words – 0
So, yeah. I’ve simplified this section and will be starting fresh with all of the first drafts (lol, the latest first draft). I feel like the most important thing at this stage is retraining my habits to allow me to sit down and type. I can do it for blogging with little to no resistance so that’s the goal. Also, after some consideration, the first project I’m going to tackle is Out of Time. I’ve still not found my original first draft, but that’s fine. The way I see it, only the best ideas will remain. It also has the most POVs so it will be nice to bounce around between them.
Final Thoughts
I’ve already started work on the outline for Out of Time and these are characters that have been living in my head since 2011 so I know them. It’s a quirky story but I think it’s great and really plays off my love of Douglas Adams’ books. I’m going to get the outline as far forward as possible, probably adding to it each day. I just need a bit of calm at home and with the day job. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for!
Anyhow, thanks for reading.
