Author Journey (May 2, 2022)
This has been a week of transitioning to a new routine and also taking a break. All right, fine. Mostly taking a break. After weeks of almost working around the clock, I finally had some time to relax.
May 2, 2022
Hot Topic
Daycare has been a resounding success. My son is very happy with the new setup which has been great to see. There’s no way I would have been able to get back to normal if I knew he wasn’t happy there. It’s a load off. As such, I got home from dropping him off on Monday and went and got my haircut. It was well overdue. My hair remains pretty stable for about three weeks and then explodes into something Sideshow Bob would be proud of and it has been at least twelve weeks since I last had one.
I also took a bit of time to take care of some life admin and errands. It felt good to catch up on all the things I’d been putting off as I tried to juggle stay-at-home dad, full-time job, and blogging. I know I had hoped to get back into writing fiction last week, but it didn’t work out for me. As always, I will enter this week planning on improving on that. It’s hard getting back into the flow.
What have I been watching/reading?
I’m still waiting for my copy of Rosario+Vampire, volume nine to arrive which has stopped me from really getting started with the series. I know I have eight other volumes to get through so chances are I wouldn’t get through them all before it did show up, but I’d also hate to get to it and not be able to push on. What if volume eight ends on a massive cliffhanger? Better to wait!
On Monday, I watched the twelfth episode of a season that aired recently. I also wrote up a number of posts about the series and have those scheduled for quarter three… It might seem crazy, but I think by that point the hype may have died down enough that people will be happy to revisit the series. Also, I’m finding that watching shows as they air isn’t nearly as common as we might believe. Scheduling it for the future means that more people will have had the chance to watch it. Of course, I’m going to tease you like that and not mention the series title… You’ll just have to wait and see!
- Fire Force
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
- Magical Girl Apocalypse
Still no Fire Force, and that’s down to my schedule. It’s likely to be a couple of weeks before I start posting those reviews again as I’d like to get a little bit of a buffer to deal with any random life events that pop up.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood took an interesting turn this week introducing an entirely new area of the world which has differing views and names for things like alchemists. Looking forward to seeing how that pans out.
Last week I published my season two review of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. It’s over! That means tomorrow is the start of a new series. There is no way anyone will be able to guess what it is? Hopefully, someone else will have seen it at least!
All fifteen volumes of Magical Girl Apocalypse that I borrowed from my library have gone back. Seeing my reviews going live now makes me want to reread it again… lol. Well, I do own volume 16 so maybe I’ll try to pick up the others as and when I see them. It’s definitely a series I’d like to own. Anyhow, volume four was intense.
Work in Progress
A couple of times this week I sat down in front of my computer and considered trying to write. I found myself sitting there staring at the screen. Staring, staring, staring, but nothing would come out. It’s been a while since I really hit my groove with writing so it’s understandable that it would take some time to rediscover, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
The problem is I have lots of other things to do and time spent staring at a screen and not doing anything feels very much like wasted time. One of my things is efficiency. I generally plan out my next five actions in my head along with how long it’ll take me. I don’t do this consciously, it just seems to happen which is why I don’t like interruptions and wasting time. Maybe, I need to plan on starting with a short story or something. Anything to get myself in the right mindset.
There is one thing I have been doing to get me going. This week, I’ve been listening to an audiobook on my evening walks with Gus. The book I’m listening to is The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski. For those that don’t know, this is the series that The Witcher TV series comes from. I read this book many years ago when one of my writing friends asked if I had read it before as he felt my writing style was very similar. I hadn’t read it, but when I did, I was shocked by how insanely familiar it felt. We have a similar way of portraying action and fight scenes. Of course, I can only dream of being as successful as Sapkowski at this point, but maybe one day.
The Plan
A while back, I mentioned how I was looking to reuse some of my old posts from Ecchi Hunter since it went down towards the end of last year. One of the things that I have been thinking about with these posts is that they are generally looking at ecchi titles and have images that aren’t always safe for work. As such, I’ve been running a little experiment. Rather than publishing them as posts and forcing them into everyone’s RSS feeds, I have been publishing them as pages. They’re basically the same thing, but you have to be looking for them. I felt like this was a more honest way to handle these titles.
I was going to wait until I had more data, but it would appear that focusing on a niche like ecchi anime doesn’t need the sort of social proof that comes with comments and likes. In fact, views from WordPress Reader account for such a small fraction of the total daily views this site receives. The two main ways people find me are from search engines and direct traffic. Anyhow, that’s been some extra work, but the boost in stats is already justifying it… that and I enjoy watching ecchi anime… so, win-win!
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 – 5/13 (+1)
- Historic Anime – 39/39
- Ecchi Anime – 39/39
- Seasonal Anime – 3/3
- Bonus Posts – 1/1
- Quarter Three
- Author Journey – 0/13
- Historic Anime – 13/39
- Ecchi Anime – 23/39 (+13)
- Bonus Posts – 4/4 (+2)
- Quarter Four
- Author Journey – 0/13
- Historic Anime – 2/39
- Ecchi Anime – 0/39
So, yeah! I’ve just added a load of extra stats above and as you can see, I’m still well ahead of my schedule. Even with the extra work revealed for the ecchi anime reviews, I should have the time to write. Getting past my current block is the main obstacle and not time, now.
Writing
- MSR (Paranormal Harem Rom-com)
- Plotting – 49/58
- Writing – 43/58
- Editing – 42/58
- Artwork – 0/9
- Valiant Lineage (Epic Dark Fantasy)
- Plotting – 41/41
- Writing – 0/?
- Editing – 0/?
- Artwork – 0/?
- Black Death (Post Apocalyptic Shoujo AI)
- Plotting – 0/?
- Writing – 0/?
- Editing – 0/?
- Artwork – 0/?
- Asteroidea (Horror Science-fiction)
- Plotting – 0/?
- Writing – 0/?
- Editing – 0/?
- Artwork – 0/?
Maybe, I should track the amount of time staring at the screen and not writing, although that would be thoroughly depressing. The idea of a short story as a way to ease me in does sound like a good idea. I shall have to think about that for a moment.
Final Thoughts
This last week has been great for clearing my head and slowing down a little. I am still wired in the evenings and getting to sleep at a reasonable time still feels pretty foreign to me. It’s back to the efficiency thing. If I’m going to lie in bed and stare into the darkness, I might as well watch an episode of anime and write up a review. I’ve always got stuff to work on, so wasting time makes me anxious.
Anyhow, thanks for reading.
