Hi ya everybody. Hope everyone is doing well. Let’s get right into it.
I found out I am getting my first royalty payment from Kindle at the end of the month. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has purchased The Reservoir and/or read it on Kindle unlimited. I get a little thrill when I check the reports and my totals have gone up. You’ve helped to make a wish come true for me. I am truly grateful.
New Steps
I am working on finalizing my next release, Desert Home, which has a tentative date of August 1st.
<Bangs head on desk and instantly regrets it.>
Okay . So…I was doing what I thought was the final read through of Desert Home, but I had a realization about growth for the main character. Basically, he’s does a 180 all in one day. His outlook and attitude changes, and he realizes something that has been staring him in the face for a very long time. All in one day. A day which, by the way, passes by in one paragraph… Cue face palm. What?!? One paragraph. Five sentences! I have dubbed this the magic paragraph. When I wrote this, I basically skipped over half the story development. Hence the banging my head on the desk.
In my defense, the first draft of this story was written around ten years ago. Since then, I have learned a lot and grown tremendously as a writer and a human being. Enough so that even though I’ve probably read this story fifty times, I finally realized that this is a problem. The beginning is good. The end is good, but the middle is essentially missing. This needs to be fixed. So, if I want to stick to this August deadline, July is going to be a very busy month.
Just so happens that Camp NaNoWriMo is starting July 1st. For those who don’t know, Camp NaNoWriMo is essentially a more laid-back version of the National Novel Writing Month challenge, which takes place in November every year. For more information check out their website here. I participated last year surpassing the 50,000 word goal by a whopping 11,624 words. I was incredibly proud of myself. I’ve never participated in Camp before, but I think I’ll take this opportunity to do so for some extra motivation to get the story up to where it should be. During Camp NaNoWriMo, you set your own goal. Whether it be writing or editing, word count, chapters, or pages, it’s up to you. I’m setting my goal for 15,000 words. I am only counting words written for this project specifically. Wish me luck.
In other news…
I’ve decided that my story The Professor’s Apprentice, which I had planned on releasing after Desert Home, should be expanded to a three part series. I know, I know. But… Tucker (the MC) deserves his story told properly. To that end, I have changed my timeline a bit. Rather than delaying the next release, I changed it to Forge and Vine, a high fantasy same sex romance. I love this story, but as I was editing, as per usual, I felt it was lacking something… so I started getting it up to snuff. Then the whole thing with Desert Home happened, and now I’m setting it down and picking that up…
Can you tell I’m a bit all over the place right now? The Reservoir was an easy choice for my first release, because I got honorable mention for it in a prestigious writing contest. For those who read it, you’ll understand why I chose Desert Home for my second release. After that, the choice of what should come next isn’t so clear, but it might just depend on finding a draft that does not actually have a whole crap ton of work necessary to get it ready. We’ll see when I get there. For now, I’m focusing on Desert Home.
Of course, the novel is always lurking in the back ground. I love that project as well. I pull it out to work on it periodically, but it is on the back burner right now until I get some of the mostly completed projects off my queue and out into the world.
The Breakdown
Not a lot to talk about. I’ve been watching a lot of bullet journaling videos on YouTube trying to get some ideas on how to change mine. It isn’t functioning the way I need it to, so it’s time to revamp it. If it doesn’t help me, then I need to figure out how to change it to be more functional, because that is literally the whole point of having a bullet journal.
I am also working my way through Atomic Habits by James Clear again. This book breaks down how habits are built and why they are so difficult to change. James gives some strategies to help create some good habits or replace the bad ones. For anyone who is struggling to make some changes, this book is a must read.
Living Life
Overall, things are okay right now. Though inflation is kicking my budget in the butt. I am officially an adult. I got ridiculously excited because I found hamburger on sale and also had a digital coupon, so I got it for $2.99/lb which is the cheapest I’ve gotten it in a long time. And bonus, I got a bunch of fuel points and was able to save 40 cents a gallon on gas this fill up…does anyone else get super excited over this stuff?
I haven’t been doing as well on my tasks lately as I hoped, but I feel like everyone overestimates how much they will get done. Not how much they can get done, but how much they will actually get done. I know I can’t be the only one who goes into planning and conveniently forgets that I have a major procrastination/distraction issue. I always think this week/month I will magically be more productive. This is a completely unconscious thing, and inevitably, I end up not getting everything done (or even most of the things done) that I wanted to get done. Guilt always follows. I try not to beat myself up about it too bad, but I also can’t let myself off the hook completely. If I do, then I’m afraid I just won’t care and nothing will change.
That’s it from me for this week.
As always, thanks for checking out the site, and I hope everyone is doing well. If you feel so inclined, check out my social media.
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