Happy Wednesday, my dudes. (Sorry, I can’t help it. I love that joke.)
August has been…unfocused. I am hyperfixating on non-writing things, which isn’t helping but I do find that I tend to do that as either an avoidance technique or because I have too many options for what I could be doing, and then I get overwhelmed.
I suspect the latter, in this case.
I finished my revision for Book 1 last month, so in theory I could do so many things for August! In fact, here’s the list of things I might do this month:
- Create a new SkillShare class
- Create and finalize all my submission materials for Book 1
- Outline and write at least four short stories
- Various marketing activities
(Oh, I got eliminated from SPFBO last week, very sad. Though one of the reviewers said he could only get through a couple of chapters, and my book doesn’t even have chapters, which makes me wonder if he read it at all. Alas. I wasn’t expecting to make it terribly far, so not a surprise, and as I’ve learned more about the contest and the types of books that tend to do well, I’ve come to realize that it wasn’t the best fit from a fantasy subgenre standpoint.)
(Also now I don’t have to stress out about that anymore.)
Now, on top of a million things I thought I might do, I also had to contend with the new school routine, which has been rough. (The smaller…squidling?…rides the bus to school, but every five weeks or so they cancel her route because of Not Enough Bus Drivers, and it turns out that two schools plus the loss of the bus makes everything so much worse.) But I think, fingers crossed, that I’ve finally figured it out. Or, at least, figured out when I could potentially work when I’m not hyperfixating on stupid things.
So, what have I actually done this month?
Well, the critique marathon went through this past weekend, so I spent a lot of time critiquing other people’s chapters as well as making edits on Book 1. The end’s reception has been mixed, and one person expressed a worry that the ending might be too abrupt. (Not sure how seriously to take that, as the one issue with the critique marathon is that people get the story piecemeal, and often skip or miss chapters. Book 1 has been through three separate marathons to get all the way through, and this particular person missed the winter marathon and hence the middle of the book.)
With the end of the book in flux, I haven’t been motivated to work on my query or synopsis, which is silly, because the query only covers the beginning of the book anyway and many people recommend writing it before you even start the book so you know what the core of the story is, and even if I tweak the ending a bit, most of the synopsis would stay the same (in fact, I have an old-ish synopsis that I suspect is more or less still useable, just need to find and tweak).
I have messed up every marketing thing I’ve attempted to do this month, which is… a lot. My own fault. Just got to grin and bear it, and do better next time.
On the SkillShare front, I did at least create the guiding documents for the class, and I watched a bit of a different class of mine that overlaps on subject matter a bit to see if I was going to repeat myself.
For the short stories, I have two outlined (one is fanfiction, and will probably never get written, because I have a weird hang up about writing fanfiction. It goes back to when I was a teenager and I decided I was going to write a Star Trek novel. I never really got anywhere because I couldn’t get anyone into character, and I gave up in frustration and decided I couldn’t write other people’s characters, which has, unfortunately, become an ingrained belief that has proven to be hard to overcome over the years.) and a couple more that are vague scribbles on idea that have yet to be gelled into an actual story.
Not a lot to show for the month, quite honestly, though I should know that the critique marathon often doesn’t leave a lot of time for other projects, and I should have known between that and needing a new routine, to try and take it easy instead of frustrating myself.
Hope springs eternal.
How has your August gone, squiders?
