Hello everyone!
I realize this update is two weeks late and I apologize for that. I’ve been rather busy this last month working on the revisions and suggestions my editor has sent me as well as various art projects. There’s a lot I hope to accomplish and I’m realizing that I need to be a lot more serious and intentional when it comes to managing my own time. Intent and purpose has become something more I’ve come to consider when how to spend my time and energy and I want to use it to properly focus on achieving my goals.
Something I’ve come to realize is, as I’ve gotten older, it’s harder for me to split my focus. Funny enough, what made me realize this was the fact that I can’t actually do the second monitor thing anymore. There’s an old adage of the second monitor content like a YouTube video, movie, tv show, etc always playing in the background while working on something. But eventually I realized I can’t do that without just ending up watching whatever is on that second monitor rather than what I want to be working on. Eventually I came to realize this is also true for the creative goals I’ve set for myself too. There’s a lot of different things I want to accomplish, different ideas that come to me, but because I don’t properly focus on one thing at a time I find I’ve been rather inconsistent.
But I’ve learned that focus without intention leads to rather unsatisfying results. I’ve come to realize there’s a lot of “I want to do this” but not enough thought on “why am I doing this?” In the art course I took by Mogoon, one thing he said that started to stick with me more and more was the difference between personal work and commercial work. I always thought of commercial work as work for profit but he framed it in a sense that it is work meant for other people’s enjoyment rather than my own. Lately I’ve been thinking about that a lot when it comes to the writing and the art that I do. Am I making this for myself or for other people’s enjoyment? Ideally I’d be doing both but I realize that’s not always the case.
Without rambling too much, this is a fairly round about way of saying that I haven’t nearly been as focused on what the intention behind my work is. I’ve been working on a lot of “personal” projects rather than the “commercial” projects I should be working on. Striking that balance between the two is something I need to work on as I recognize that I want to share my work with others more than I want to make things for myself, but there are still things I want to do for myself as well.
Now for the tangible updates. Editing for book 3 is going well! I’m hoping to have my third book The Legend of Nariko: Shadows of a Dead World published by November of this year. The new editions of books 1 and 2 is hitting a bit of a snag as I want both to be released at the same time but I’m conflicted on how I feel about the book 2 cover art. It’s not bad, but I feel like it could be better as this is a commercial work for others and I feel if I’m not satisfied with it, I doubt others would be as well. I’m also hoping to have all 3 books in hardcover as well. I’m also hoping to have the draft of book 4 done by the end of this year. I really want to speed up my publishing process as I’ve come to realize the gap between books has made it hard for people to remember what happens between books.
As always, thanks for following my work!
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 