Author Journey (November 15, 2021)

After a second week with zero words written towards my NaNoWriMo project, it’s time to step out of the race. The universe just has other plans for me this November, so it’s back to the drawing board with the plan!
November 15, 2021
#Blogging
Last week, my blogging survived as my attempts to continue my NaNoWriMo project took a tumble. This week, nothing came out unscathed. I managed to keep up with the three shows I’m covering from the current seasonal lineup, but that was about it. No future posts. I didn’t even get to just watch anything for the sake of it. I’m going to steal a term that Terrance Crow used on his update from last week – Family Real Life Event or FRLE. Basically, that’s what happened to me. The kids were home all week with varying degrees of runny noses.
Seasonal Anime
- Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation
- Takt Op. Destiny
- The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat
Unfortunately, Takt Op. Destiny continues to disappoint and yet again managed to deliver my least favourite episode. It’s not been updated on MAL, but I’ve seen an article stating that it will have twelve episodes which is a relief. I feel like it’s going to be a struggle to get through another six episodes but the prospect of it being longer was a concern. It’s such an odd show that I’m not sure who I would recommend it to and that says a lot.
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation has had a couple of emotional episodes and now Rudeus and his party have gone off in search of survivors. I get the feeling that emotional episodes are far from over. However, the dark episode of the week has to go to The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat. I should have seen it coming, but even then, it caught me off guard. This show is fascinating too and it also looks like it’s about to hit a bit of action.
Historic Anime
And it’s over! I made it through How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Ω and it’s hard to hide just how disappointed I am with this series. I loved the first season and this is yet another sequel season that I am planning on pretending like it never happened. I have Heaven’s Lost Property and Jujutsu Kaisen continuing and they will do so into the New Year, but I have a new series starting this week. If you can remember the time when my site was briefly lost and I had to wait to see if the hosts could recover anything, well, while that was going on, I decided to treat myself to one of my guilty pleasure/comfort shows. The first post will be on Sunday. No one will be able to guess what it is… No one. Hahahaha!
#AmWriting
With the kids home from school and daycare all week, it’s been almost impossible to get anything done. On top of that, it was the busy period at work so all of my free time was devoured just trying to keep up with life. It has been frustrating for sure, but it’s also given me a little time to think about how I’m going to do things going forward.
I’m a creature of routine and habits. I write almost every day. Of late, that writing time has been heavily in favour of blogging. It’s what has allowed me to build up an impressive number of posts for the future. That’s given me the time to cover seasonal shows and remain current. The three shows I’m covering from the seasonal lineup have all been my most viewed posts of the last month. It’s definitely been worth doing.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about setting up a plan for the next five years. It’s a long enough time frame that I can see some real results at the end, providing I stick to the plan. I’m currently working on the details so I have nothing to share just yet, but I am going over it every night as I walk the dog. Walking makes for good thinking time.
#Planning
My thoughts on the plan at the moment are that I will break things down to the quarterly level. It’s roughly the same length as a standard season of anime so it fits into the current cycle of things. For the historic anime, I want to keep a quarter ahead. At the moment, I am a quarter and a half ahead, so that’s a good start.
The plan would then be to focus on getting my writing done first, reward myself with anime, and then write up a blog post. It’s always good to find something that you can use as a reward for good behaviour. The more you do it, the more your mind will expect it and the easier it becomes to build the habits.
As I said earlier, I don’t have the specifics of the plan as it’s still a work in progress, but I’ve got plenty to think about and that’s good for Gus because he does like a nice long walk. I hoping to have it in place for 2022, especially as I will lose the end of December when my parents come to visit for Christmas. I don’t think they’ll be too impressed if I run off to write all the time…
Things haven’t gone quite as planned with NaNoWriMo, but then 2021 hasn’t exactly been a great year. After the dumpster fire that was 2020, I was hoping for things to settle down a little, but that has not been the case. If anything, it may have been a little more unstable.
Do you have a five-year plan and what are you doing to stick to it? Thanks for reading and stay safe.

I like the sound of a five year plan! Since I only reignited writing novels in Dec of 2020, I’m only now starting to get a sense of output, so I’ll have to wait a bit. Still, having goals, then measuring against them is a great idea!
I hope you can find a system that works for you.
And a system that withstands near constant assaults from FRLEs! Man, they’re relentless! But in a good way.
Yeah. I think it makes sense to have a point in time when I can reflect on how I did. One that will allow enough time to pass that it isn’t skewed by FRLEs. At the moment, I’ve got a rough idea for the first three years. Of course, there’s room to pivot on the smaller chunks of time but the goal will be to try to stick to it as best as possible.
I feel like I’ve been reworking my system for years now, but at least I think the blogging side of it is working and should be pretty stable for a while. That’ll allow me more freedom to find the writing system that compliments it.