Author Journey (March 15, 2021)

I’m in that funny stage between making a plan and beginning the plan. I don’t know what that stage would be called, but it feels a lot like wrapping things up. Annoyingly, there’s nothing I can do to speed things up either!

March 15, 2021

So, as of writing this post, I have two more rounds of episodes from the three seasonal anime shows I’ve been covering. They will be the last ones I cover for a while too, and this stage is proving to me why that’s a good idea. Basically, it’s about working to my schedule and not someone else’s. I need total control…

With the weekly release of episodes, I am forced to wait until the episode airs before I can watch and review it, which seems obvious. However, my schedule is fairly unpredictable, especially of late with the day job encroachment. So, by covering shows that have already finished, I can get as far ahead as I want. That means I can use the time I have as efficiently as possible.

Also, you may or may not have noticed, but the Friday gone was my first day of 2021 without a post… It was my first day without a post in one-hundred and ninety-six days and, I’ll be honest, it felt a little weird. The thing is I know that this is for the best and by moving down to posting four times a week, I will free up a lot of time to get back to writing fiction, which should be my main focus.

That will happen three weeks from now once Dr Stone, The Promised Neverland, and The Quintessential Quintuplets have all finished. That will leave me with just Record of Grancrest War and KonoSuba, although I will be adding one more show, which I have not yet announced… Oooo, suspense…

That will allow me to hit the ground running in April, and for an added push, I’m going to sign up to Camp NaNoWriMo which is NaNoWriMo in April. My schedule should be clear and while I don’t think I’ll need another fifty-thousand words to finish off this story, it will be nice to have a clear goal to work to.

So, until then, it’s all about getting everything ready for a smooth transition in April. I’m also going to use anime as my reward for hitting my daily word count. That’s right, no watching anime until I’ve done my writing.

The thing is I know that I can do. I’ve won NaNoWriMo on three separate occasions. When I first started taking writing seriously, I was writing fifty-thousands words a month, every month. In the first half of 2017, I wrote over three-hundred thousand words. Most of that never got published and will be a great guide to an expanded version of the story… I know, three-hundred thousand words weren’t nearly enough…

What I’m saying is that I am going to do this and find a way to keep my online platform alive. I feel that I will need both if I am to succeed, however, focusing too much on one over the other will not help me move forward. It took me a while to really get to a place where I felt like this was the thing to do, but I’m here now and am looking forward to the future.

Back to the here and now, to make things a little more complicated we got a dog. Yep, two kids and a day job wasn’t enough as it was, so now we have a puppy called Gus. As he’s still young, he likes to wake up early and needs to go outside which isn’t much fun for either of us with the weather at the moment. Luckily, I don’t like to sleep…

Anyhow, this is Gus. He’s a bundle of fun and energy, and the kids love having him around. It will be better when he’s lost his puppy teeth and isn’t trying to chew and bite everything. In this picture, he is sleeping under the spare bed, because why not! The way he’s growing, he won’t fit under there for much longer so he better make the most of it now…

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