July Progress Report!

July has ended! And such a July. It is time to discuss what I’ve been up to the past month! But first, some unavoidable factors affecting my pace: I lost about nine? Days? This month of work: 4 for Anthrocon, and 5 to the worst stomach virus I’ve had in ages. I was hard down for almost two days, like ‘I can’t even get out of bed’, and lost almost six pounds! Ridiculous! But then I got up and kept going. 

Writing progress

My main focus for July was Sediryl’s novel, and I was so intent on it that I made it my Camp NaNo goal (for those of you unfamiliar with it, Camp NaNo is a ‘mini’ NaNoWriMo where you set your own goals and hang out in ‘virtual cabins’ with other writers so you can keep an eye on one another’s progress). My target was 30,000 words, which I figured would put me two-thirds of the way through the book as a whole.

And then I got distracted by editing Sword, which was another of my goals for July. But ‘editing’ became ‘rewriting’. I realized a few days into my check that I was writing an extra 500-1000 words a day into my “edits,” and that didn’t let up until the last page. I ended up adding just over 68 pages of new material to the novel! So while thinking I was writing Sediryl, I was actually writing Sword. Which is fine, because Sword is a much better book because of those extra pages, and I launched it and I am super happy with it.

I also did some work on short fiction, which I didn’t expect. I’ve got an Alysha short that I plan to give away as a freebie to new newsletter subscribers, and I doubled that one in size. I wrote the first of three vignettes for the PG2 Kickstarter, about Vasiht’h discussing the events of Family with Sehvi, and started the next. 

And I launched the Kherishdar serial, though I won’t be doing a lot of new writing for that this month. (Adjustments though, lots, based on your comments. But not new writing. Part of that is intentional: I don’t want to return to the Kherishdar headspace until I’m done with Sediryl.)

In addition to that, I formatted the Sword e-book, arranged and turned around both Sword and PG2’s paperbacks, and oversaw the refresh of PG1’s print layout. And reviewed the first audio hour of PG2 (after several trials wherein the narrator and I discussed how to handle voicing Jahir and Vasiht’h), and sent off Sword to its actor for narration. SO! I got a lot done!

What I did not do is 30,000 words on Sediryl. I did, however, do a little over 21,000. Which is something, I guess. I still expect to be done with it this month, which is exciting. This book is a lot of fun. I can’t wait to share it with you all.

Transition to Full-Time

I am now almost two months into working full-time as a writer/artist, and I’m settling into it. I definitely needed several weeks to detox from my day job, which had become… we’ll just say ridiculous? Emotionally exhausting? Something. But yeah, once I bounced back from that I found a pretty good routine. Once I’ve seen to Child, I spend the morning writing, take a break for food, administrivia, and exercise, and then spend the afternoon either on a different writing project, art, or more administrivia, depending on how administrivia-heavy my week is.

I’m still relying on my weekly to-do lists, which I create by looking at my goals for the quarter (which are based on my goals for the year!). I prioritize all those tasks (“things I really HAVE to do” and “things that it would be great to do”) so I get a sense of what really matters. After that, I break down the quarterly goals into steps that will get me there by the end of three months, and then divide them out by the number of days I’ve got. So if I want to finish a 90,000-word novel by the end of the quarter, I put ‘write 7000 words’ on my weekly to-do lists. (Except I split them into 1000 word chunks, so I can cross off each separately.)

I do a couple of different styles of annual and quarterly breakdowns. My favorite by far is the Gantt chart, which I learned about in project management, which is basically a timeline. Here's an early Gantt chart I sketched for summer:

*eyes it* Okay, so I'm behind on art, but that's okay. That was one of the low-prioritization projects that got shoved to one side to make way for other stuff, in this case 'completely rewriting entire sections of Sword so you can release it this quarter.'

There's also the list style, which arranges tasks from a higher-level view than the weekly (which I photographed for you at the top of this post).

It's very important to go back and highlight all the things you've done on EVERY PAGE you've listed them. It makes you feel like you're making progress... otherwise, the sea of checklists might make you feel small and hopeless. >.>

If you split up everything you need to do this way, you get where you need to go fairly consistently. And if something happens (like my stomach virus), doing it by week gives you plenty of time to knock some things down in priority so you can make up the goals you really care about (see above, re: prioritizing).

My schedule will change once school starts, of course, mostly by becoming shorter and more full of ‘drive around for school activities,’ so I’m looking forward to seeing how that works. On the whole, though, I am far less stressed. I feel like, once I’ve had some experience at this, I might become more productive without much more effort, just because when you have an eight-hour day to work, you want to do something. Sitting around all day is boring! So I cross off my daily goals, and then find myself thinking ‘well, let’s research pin production prices’ or ‘let’s see how much it would cost to do a single Slave Queen plush for the final Princes’ Game book Kickstarter.’ And then I do! Magnificent.

So, yeah. This is working. Some people might have found it harder, because you have to be supremely self-motivated, but AS YOU KNOW BOB supreme self-motivation has never been one of my problems. Overworking, on the other hand, has been. And having to run around less is definitely encouraging me to not stress as much, or rush because I feel like I’m strapped for time.

Thank you all for this. This Patreon is one of the reasons I can swing working from home, and I’m grateful. I hope you all will be, too, when you see how much more I’ll be producing for you. <3

Other Progress

• Kickstarter: I’m running one! Well, actually, I’m almost done with one, for Princes’ Game 2, so it can get its print edition. That wraps up Friday morning, and then I’ll buy books and start shipping. I love these lightning-fast campaigns. They are very satisfying. I’ll probably run a new one in September, either for PG3, or for some other book that needs a print edition. Maybe Morgan’s trilogy? Your opinions welcome!
• Art: As you’ve seen, I’ve started setting up to paint more. In fact, in July I finished two entire paintings…! The new cover for Second and the cover for Sword. That's more painting I've done in... probably over a year. I also drew and finished the Transcend bookmark, worked on some various digital things, and smashed some fluorescent paints onto my sketchbook. I am happier when I’m doing more art, so I’m going to continue figuring out how I can fit it into my workflow. (There are challenges involved in this, so as usual I am identifying those problems and knocking them down as I find solutions.)
• Etsy: I still want to think of new ways to prop up my Etsy store, other than my occasional autographed/doodled books (which are still selling, but which are high-premium items). But this is back-tier for now. I want to get back to producing art regularly before I think about how I can sell it. (I know, this is backwards from how I usually work! But there’s a method to this particular madness, promise.)

So that’s what I’ve got for July! It was a crazy month, as you can see… and August is going to be super-busy with back-to-school disruptions! I expect those to settle down as we move into September, but for a while it’ll be bumpy. I’ll keep you updated. <3

Freebies Link:  These freebies were made available before I moved free stuff to the $5 tier, but I don’t believe in taking away stuff I’ve already given! So go grab these if you haven’t already! Freebies link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/link-to-all-14489113 

All Fan Chat Day: Monday, August 27th! Join the regulars on Discord for shenanigans! Ask me your burning questions! Give me ridiculous drawing prompts!

And that's all. As always, you all are awesome and I'm glad you're here. And your questions and comments are welcome!