Author Journey (November 22, 2021)

The Otaku Author Journey November 22 2021

This week, I did a lot of thinking. It doesn’t sound like much and indeed, if anyone was watching it wouldn’t look like much, but to those in the know, I was plotting across multiple storylines in multiple genres.

November 22, 2021

#Blogging

I did a bit of work on my posts for 2022 which is always exciting, especially when I look at my plan and can see that for one of my days, I have posts scheduled all the way to the middle of the year. My two other days for historic posts are past the first quarter too. Knowing that I have a buffer like that takes a lot of pressure off. At present, I can maintain my momentum just by watching three episodes, reviewing them, and putting my weekly update together. Compared to the amount of work I have been doing just to keep on top of things, this is a breeze.

Seasonal Anime

Sadly nothing has changed for Takt Op. Destiny, which is officially my least favourite series that I’m covering, especially as I have now finished How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Ω. It hasn’t looked good for this series since the first episode and now it’s reached the pinnacle of lazy writing where the guy that everyone knew was a villain with his sidekick called Hell, who also couldn’t look more villainous if she tried is actually the villain. Coupled with slow pacing and low stakes, I can’t wait for this season to be over with.

On the plus side, Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation and The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat continue to be excellent. I know there will be many that won’t give Musoku Tensei a chance because of something they’ve heard and it outraged them. Well, you are missing out on a fantastic story with flawed and interesting people. Then, you have The World’s Finest Assassin which is equally interesting, but also quite dark at times. I love it!

Historic Anime

Last week, I mentioned that I had a new series starting and that no one would guess what it was. Well, did anybody guess Hundred? I loved it the first time I watched it, completely unaware of the views of the community and then I watched it again while my site was in limbo for two weeks, and I loved it again. . Sure, I’m a little more critical of some aspects of it, but it is one of those feel-good shows for me and it really cheered me up when I was going through an uncertain time.

#AmWriting

I actually didn’t do any writing this week. Well, not in the sense of putting words down in a specific pattern to form chapters and stuff like that. After the first two weeks of November fell apart and NaNoWriMo got kicked to one side, I spent a lot of time thinking and planning my next move. I’ve made several plans over the years, stuck to some and others not so much. As a result, I did a little reading up on planning and goal setting.

I have a bit of project management experience with my day job, although I am much happier when I’m building and developing stuff than managing them. Anyhow, one practice for goals is called SMART which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. You’ve probably come across it if you’ve worked in an office. Well, I found some counter ideas that suggests there needs to be a difficulty factor to it. The idea is that without the difficulty things become stagnant and you don’t push yourself.

If there’s anything I need to do, it’s to push myself. I need crazy goals to function. Things like watching 365 movies in a year (I did that in 2011). So, I’ve done a lot of thinking, a lot of plotting, and a lot of coming up with crazy ideas for 2022. Are you ready for this? You might want to pull up a chair!

#Planning

I’ve decided that over the next three years, I intend to publish four trilogies. That’s right, I’ve switched from a five-year plan to a three-year plan. Oh, you mean that’s not the important detail in that sentence? Yeah, four trilogies. To make things even crazier, I’m not going to do the trilogies back to back to back. my goal will be to release one book from each series a year.

But wait, that’s not all. I know the stories that I am going to write and the genres that they will fall in. Spoiler, they’re not all in the same one. There will be a supernatural rom-com, an epic fantasy, a post-apocalyptic, and a science fiction monster series. You’re probably wondering why I would do this to myself and that’s fair. However, I know me and I know what motivates me. I need a challenge.

There are some silver linings to this plan. I will be using existing material. Some I’ve published before and others have yet to see the world. Basically, all four stories have been first drafts or short stories before now. I know the worlds, the story, the characters. Of course, there will be a lot of adaptions and expansions to make this work, but that will be part of the fun.

One series will be the ill-fated Black Death series in which I have sixty thousand words of a story already. I was wondering how I would turn this into a trilogy rather than releasing it as a single book and the answer came to me while walking Gus. I have a supporting character that appeared in the second book and became integral to the story. Now, she will be a second POV character who meets the first POV character at the beginning of book one. It’s a small change but it opens up so much more of the story.

A similar thing happened with the science-fiction monster story that was originally a novella called Asteroidea. I’m adding in another POV character and creating a story that can keep going. At least two of these series will probably end up longer than trilogies, but let’s start with three books and see how we do.

I’m going to be focused on plotting for the rest of the year as I can do that on my phone, even when my parents are here from England. That way I’ll be ready to hit the ground running in the New Year. Do you think I’m crazy or do you need to challenge yourself too? Anyhow, thanks for reading and stay safe.



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6 Comments

  1. Agree with you completely about your 3 seasonal anime. Rudy has a real honest to goodness character arc. Most such arcs in anime either feel like nothing important happened or the writer is just giving us a trope of an arc in lieu of a character changing their value system and regretting their past. You can’t have a character learn morality and empathy without them being immoral and selfish to begin with.

    • Absolutely. Imagine how boring it would have been had Rudeus been born into the new world and instantly become the perfect hero we see so often in isekai stories. I love that he is not perfect and that he makes steps in the right direction and the wrong direction. He’s believable because he’s not perfect.

  2. Well, you _did_ say you liked a challenge!

    Four books a year would be double my theoretical peak output, given my primary career. Well, assuming a novel is around 150,000 words.

    I like how you broke it down: One book a year for each of the four trilogies.

    I’m looking forward to reading what you come up with!

    • I don’t just like challenges. I need them.

      They will vary in length. My paranormal rom-com is looking like it’ll be somewhere around 80k words. The epic fantasy could be similar possibly longer and the other two will probably be a bit shorter in the 50-60k word range. That’s about 300k words which is under my best year’s output. So, it’s possible.

      I’m looking at Q1 for the rom-com each year. The others are undecided on order at the moment, but once I put them in their order that will be the yearly scheduled.

      The best thing is that they all exist in one form or another so I’m effectively working on the second draft which should make editing a little simpler.

      I’m excited to really focus on it again and it helps that I have the blog running smoothly now.

    • Yeah, it’s got a bad rap which I think is unwarranted. Maybe I’ll convert a couple of people to my side of thinking in the process…

      Anything that might help a second season emerge!

What did you think?