Author Journey (July 12, 2021)

There’s always going to be things that happen that you can’t control. Try not to worry about them and focus on what you can control. Get that right and the impact of the unknowns won’t be as severe. Annoying, but not critical!

July 12, 2021

As you might have guessed from the introduction, I’ve had yet another spanner to deal with this last week. But wait, wasn’t this supposed to be the first week with both kids back at summer school/daycare? Why yes, that was supposed to be the plan. Unfortunately, we only made it as far as Thursday morning before my youngest was taken out of daycare for a runny nose.

That’s right. A runny nose. Of course, that meant that he needed to get tested and we needed to pull our other son out of summer school until we’d had a negative test result. So, the weekend started on Thursday although I still had the regular work to deal with. There went my evenings!

So, the point I was making in the opening statement was that this was not something that I could plan for, otherwise, I would just plan to not do anything every week. However, I have other tasks that I want to accomplish that I can make allowances for. Of course, I’m talking about blogging. One option would be to just stop posting every now and then, but I don’t like that idea. Not posting every day is still a tough decision to live with, but I’m getting more used to it.

The main thing I have done to ensure that I don’t just completely stop every time something unseen crashes into my plans is part of the reason I switched from covering seasonal shows to looking at older ones. Being tied to the weekly release schedule adds a lot of extra pressure. My reviews are a way for me to look at a show, analyse what works and doesn’t work, and try to put some thoughts on how to use those things to make my storytelling stronger, so it’s not essential when it was released.

So, by looking at shows that have already finished, I can work through the series at my own pace. If I have time to do an extra post in the evening, I do it. I don’t have to wait for the next episode to air. I’ve recently been taking this concept to the next level. For example, I finished watching and reviewing Otherside Picnic at the beginning of June. I’ve already scheduled the first season of Heaven’s Lost Property. Doing this frees up my time and reduces pressure.

This last week, I published my season review of Fruits Basket which was the last of the seasonal shows I’m planning on covering for a while. That means that I will be looking at another older show in its place. Here are some fun facts about the series I will be covering. It is a twenty-four episode season that was highly praised at recent awards. I’ve also already finished watching and reviewing it. That’s right, I’ve scheduled posts all the way up to the end of December.

This might sound crazy, but there’s a reason behind this level of insane planning. I’ve spent a lot of time building this website. It’s somewhere that I can talk about what I want to talk about and for some crazy reason people seem to read it. I’m not about to let that fall away. This way, I have one less post to worry about for the rest of the year. I’m putting in a little time now which will give me the gift of freedom going forwards.

I know what you’re thinking. Of course, I’m crazy. But there is a method to the madness. I’ve taken a weekly task and done half a years worth in a smaller batch. I’m putting in the extra time now so that I can build up a buffer. This way, I can focus on my writing and still maintain a consistent blogging presence regardless of what life throws at me.

But wait, isn’t this just going to become another problem again in six months time? That might be the case, but I now know that I can get through a big series like that in a relatively short period of time. My rough estimate is that it takes about an hour to watch and review an episode. If I was completely insane, that would mean I could do a twenty-four episode series in a day. Don’t worry, I’m not that crazy!

What I can do though is put a week in my schedule to focus on a series. For example, I could use the first week of every month to put together a series of posts. Let’s say I chose a twelve-episode season and I schedule the posts for the next thirteen weeks (season review included). Then, I work on my fiction for the next three weeks before doing another series. This builds up the buffer and allows me to really focus on writing for a good chunk of time.

The thing with this schedule is that I know how my head works and this is the perfect fit. Previously, when I was covering live seasons, my mind would be focused on the season. That was the main project and it went on for thirteen weeks. Then, another one would start and it’s another thirteen weeks. I like to have multiple projects to bounce around between, but I do like to focus on one at a time. It worked last November when I scheduled my entire month but for two seasonal shows so that I could do NaNoWriMo.

So, I know I was planning on having some sort of word count update for this week, but that sadly didn’t happen. This coming week, things might be different, but if it isn’t, I will do a small batch of blog posts and keep pushing forward. I’m not planning on anything going completely to plan going forward so it makes sense to be able to pivot quickly. What crazy things do you do to remain productive? Thanks for reading and stay safe.

---

---