Update: Publishing Timeline and my Mental Health

Hello!

I wanted to take the time to give an update on what’s going on with me and how things with The Legend of Nariko: The Goddess Prophecy are going as well as how things have been progressing. These past couple of months have been more taxing than I initially expected to be honest. I hadn’t thought I would be as affected by the current events as I have been. It’s been a rough time trying to stay focused and disciplined.

The good news, however, is that my second book should be completed by this week and published next week. Scanning for consistency errors between books 1 and 2 has proven to be far more tedious and taxing than I had initially thought. With so many things happening in book 1, especially the small little details, its hard to catch everything but I want to make sure it is consistent across every single book.

Truth be told, the work on the book has helped to keep me busy and focused. I got a sense of value and self worth working towards my goal of finishing this series and it took an unfortunate amount of time for me to get back to consistently working on what matters to me. It was hard at first as it was so much easier to not do anything. For a time, I was trapped in that mentality and, to be honest, I don’t think I’m fully out of it quite yet.

One of the most helpful realizations was that it was ok for me to not hit my goals for the day. I would set targets for the day I would try to meet. It would be goals like editing 100 pages, finish the artwork I was working on, or reading 200 pages. At first, I didn’t hit these goals and it made me feel really down on myself. However, after looking up some motivation and self-help videos, I came to the conclusion that it’s ok not to hit those goals. The important thing I needed to focus on was the fact that I tried and kept trying. Slow incremental progress was better than no progress at all and now I feel like I’ve slowly built myself back up to my old productive self again. I’m not quite there yet but maybe someday I will be.

Thank you all for your patience. 😊

– Raphael