Hello everyone!
February was certainly a hectic month. I had a lot to tackle but more importantly I had to rewrite a fair bit of the book 3 draft to make it flow better. I felt a bit defeated but I kept writing and slowly chipped away at the length of what remained. This weekend I fell into that ambitious mindset of “oh I’m gonna get it all done this weekend!” but I started to realize I was falling into my old habit. Instead of just mindlessly writing, I thought I should try and plan out what remained so I could realistically tackle this objective.
A main fault I’ve noticed about myself is that I set unrealistic expectations for my goals based on what I used to be able to do. But post-quarantine, I’m not quite as diligent and focused as I once was and pushing myself to try and match that previous energy doesn’t help. As a result, rather than writing for hours over the weekend and burning myself out, I planned out how many chapters and roughly how many pages were left and it surprisingly helped.
To put it simply, I have about 70 more pages to write and then the draft will finally be done. Having that rough number helped give me a sense of clarity and a boost of morale knowing that my goal is very much in reach. The main benefit this gave me was the ability to plan out how many pages to write each day to hit that goal. The excitement was rather overwhelming but I had to stop myself before I fell into old habits. With that in mind, I gave myself two weeks to write 70 pages which should be more than doable to complete the first draft. After that, I’m going to try and get the second draft done by the end of April to give to my editor which means I should still be able to publish it by Christmas this year.
While that’s happening, I want to improve my marketing approach for the books I’ve written. Part of that is figuring out a proper marketing campaign and potentially review how I’ve presented my story. In that sense, while I’m working on the cover art for book 3, I may update the cover for book 1, The Legend of Nariko: The Mark of Silverfrost. But while I’m working on the marketing approach for The Legend of Nariko series, I did also want to start the groundwork for another book series in mind. There is a style of storytelling I wanted to explore and see if there’s some merit to writing stories within a setting and a specific character having different adventures in each book.
The year is on a strange path, but it feels like it’s getting better! 😊
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 