The Goal: Publish the first 3 books in the Dragon Diaries Series
I wrote 3 books out of 5 of a series. They are in various states of editing hell, and books 4 and 5 are in various states of outlined, and rough draft depending on the chapter. It’s a cozy fantasy mystery series based in 1920 Cleveland, but with the twist that in 1820 magic was revealed to be real, as are mythical creatures. The books try to show how that would have altered the world while having a good adventure.
Yes that’s the same info from Q1, and Q2, and Q3. It’s been a year of chronic health flares and that are beyond my control. I have made small bits of progress, so let’s review.
The Review
Migraines flared up in Jun, Jul, and Aug. Sept has been a little better. I decided to start the Q4 reset in Sept, since I can’t actually gauge my future health week to week, nor day to day. I changed my planning system to be more flexible, if I have a bad day, or a bad week or a bad month I can just push things back.
I gave up on doing it all myself. I can’t get past my fear, or my anxiety. I didn’t take college or high school classes for creative writing, I have no experience as an author other than what I have tried to do on my own, and reading lots and lots of books (I average about 400 a year, every year for the last 10 years). So to get to a point where I’m comfortable with my efforts I started sending my books to my Mom one chapter at a time, so she can double check my work and give me some critical feed back. If it’s crap she will tell me, and she will give me suggestions on how to improve it. As of this post we have worked on 4 chapters of Todd and the Fae. I’m happy with this change and I’ve started pulling all the books out of my backups and figuring out how to send them to her.
The goals for fixing my works space, we did make progress, my desk and computer were moved, but the shelves are not built yet. The shelves and the extra seats are still in the boxes, waiting for assembly. but I did find affordable solutions and purchase them. I will need to purchase cushions for the chairs because their just basic wood Adirondack chairs. I did find some solutions but no point in buying them till I’ve built them, so that’s on hold.
I’m happy being able to see out the window from where I sit, and I will eventually have a painting of a sea turtle on the mantel above the fireplace. In the mean time, my fall flower wreath and my art supplies are happy there. The white bookshelf that used to be on the desk last year will be in front of the fireplace (house insurance won’t cover us if we use it because of the house fire in NC so no need to have access to it right now…).
I spent the last quarter trying all different planner page layouts, testing how they work, and how I feel about using them. I tracked how many things I put on my lists, and each quarter realized I really needed to reduce my initial expectations. I’m overloading my lists, and it’s not helping my brain or emotions. So for the quarter 4, I halved my lists again per month, and then per week, halved that again. Looking at the first week of Oct (or Week 5 for this quarter) I think I still over planned what I can do. The problem really boils down to time. How much time a task takes depends entirely on if my brain is working or stuck in some sort of migraine hell. Even early stages of a migraine, the molasses stage, make sit hard to complete tasks in a normal amount of time. I have no way to plan for that either as it comes and goes, and doesn’t always escalate to a full migraine of overloaded senses and pain.
I noticed that my brain panics when I don’t know when a project will end. It overthinks and focuses on the lack of a deadline, preventing me from working on it. So I redid all my projects and added a roadmap, I can change the dates, but I need to have a layout that shows the end of the projects for my brain to be happy. That one change while a lot of work, has helped drop my anxiety down a bit. I can’t quantify it, but I feel calmer, it feels more like the projects did when I worked in a corp office. Those deadlines and expectations were always very clear (Thanks Dave, you were an awesome manager. )
To see how that would work out if I went further with it, I added milestones, and “deadlines” for the milestones, by breaking down the projects into major chunks. That helped as well. I created a time line for each project to show those larger milestones and their deadlines. I then built my new planner still based on the hb90 system so I have more of an overview of where I’m at on the projects.
Then I realized it’s all manual and that’s going to be a pain, but none of the project managers I’ve worked with inherently chain change dates as projects change or hit deadlines. A few try but they are not effective, and chaining tasks is painful. So I decided to write my own, I don’t need to pay an AI company to do the task, I just need a program that handles that mono task effectively. So check back for a demo version of ‘Eat an Elephant” it’s my new solo dev, solo author, solo artist project management software. It’ll be posted on on game dev site and I may setup a wiki site for it for support. We’ll see. I’ll publish it on Steam too when it’s been tested by at least 10 different beta testers. Want to be a beta tester? Let me know.
Eat an Elephant
— coming soon video of eat an elephant I recorded it gotta find it, edit it, and put it on youtube ….
The quarter 4 plans.
My main author goal for q4 is to publish a chapter of Todd and the Fae a week for the rest of the year. I spent the last week (week 4) of q4 setting up the site. It’s pay walled. If your a friend and want access just message me I’ll add you.
Todd and the Fae is book one of a 5 book series, and is a work in progress.
- We are writing the book, editing, and publishing it as a book. (Pre-Order/Membership)
- We are creating the audio book. (Pre-Order/Membership)
- We are illustrating a manga-style comic. (Pre-Order/Membership)
- We are creating a pc game. (Pre-Order/Membership)
There are different membership levels for the different versions you might be interested. Each “membership” is a pre-order for a physical or digital copy of the finished project. Philosophically I’m not okay with a monthly membership that ends up being more than I would sell the project when it’s completed, it makes no sense to me. If you are interested in the project and want to support its creation just pre-order the finished item.
The pay wall is to filter out the hackers and haters. I have no idea why the haters are hating, but whatever. I’ve been told it get’s worse when you start streaming and more people see your projects, but I’m having fun and I’m going to move forward. The hackers are just part of life, and I’m slowly cracking down on the security of my sites. It makes maintaining them a pain, but it reduces the openings for issues.
The bots and script kiddies are the worst right now, and I can see how far spread that nonsense is with the range of sites I have. I’m working on sharing the security data on bans, and blocks between all of my sites, as well as the bad bot files, so that should reduce the amount of “fake” traffic the sites and servers have to manage. By sharing I mean automating it with a database and an hourly cron so after it’s setup I won’t have to do anything. Once a site bans someone, it will share across all of my sites. Gold…
In Sept I rebuilt all my projects and planners, and I have a little more to do, but they are in pretty good shape now. There’s always more to do, but frequently as I focus on each task and break it down each more on the week it rolls to the top of the list, is when I realize there’s more to it. I’m trying to keep track of the time it takes to do things but I have time blindness, so I’ve purchased a pomodoro timer (amazon affiliate link)_ to help me realize time. I still have the big purple one, but it’s loud, and wakes everyone on the house. the new one can do a silent mode, and I can turn down the volume as well. Family is much happier with my new timer.
Well that’s it, on with the new quarter, one day at a time.
How to Write better Fiction
The Art of Creative Writing: Learn Storytelling Techniques
https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/3321-the-art-of-creative-writing-learn-storytelling-techniques
Creative Writing for Film and Theater
https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/4374-creative-writing-for-film-and-theater
Transformational Character Arcs: 6 Steps to a Plot-Driving Protagonist
https://www.skillshare.com/en/classes/transformational-character-arcs-6-steps-to-a-plot-driving-protagonist/425442908?via=project-details?via=project-details
The Author classes:
HB90 https://heartbreathings.teachable.com/p/hb90-bootcamp
Publish and Thrive https://heartbreathings.teachable.com/p/publish-and-thrive
Udemy classes
Make Your Writing Stand Out in Eight Easy Steps
Writing Novels and Query Letters: write fiction that sells
Finishing a Manuscript in 60 Days
Writing Skills: Self-Edit Your Writing Like A Pro!
How To Start A Website for Writers, Artists & Creative Types
Secret Sauce Of Great Writing (New Edition)
The Sticky Stories Formula
Persuasion Psychology: 5 Proven Tips
Persuasion Skills – Basics
How to have a positive impact on people
Starting to write
Meditation: Getting Through Beginner’s Block
Creative Writing – Writer’s Block Workbook Volume 1
Nonviolent Action & Movement Building
Mindfulness for Individuals: Mindfulness and Neuroscience
Publish your children’s book in print: A Crash Course
Scrivener | Back up to Dropbox and Jazz up Your Interface
Kindle Book Promotion: Tips To Promote Your Book Right Now
Technical Support