Hello everyone!
I hope you’ve all had a good start to the year. I find it’s a good time for reflections on what happened last and planning around how to make this year better. It’s not necessarily a means to criticize oneself but to consider what worked and what didn’t work. One of the things I came to recognize is that last year was a very art focused year for me. I spent a lot of time and money on improving myself as an artist and I feel happy with how much I’ve progressed. That being said, I also recognized I didn’t do as much writing and editing as I feel I like I should have. I certainly did not do as much reading as I should have which always bothers me. I do believe to be a better writer you do need to read more books, especially those within the genre you’re writing and I do need to do that more.
This year I want to focus more on maintaining a proper balance between my interests. While I want to continue doing a lot of art and hopefully opening an online art store at some point, I don’t want to forget where my passions lie which is creating stories. I’m just finishing up the last parts of my third book, The Legend of Nariko: Shadows of a Dead World and I do recognize that the fact that I’m taking so long to write and publish the next books in the series makes it harder for the readers to remember what’s happened. I want to create a better experience for my readers and while having a character refresher at the beginning helps, it’s not the best feeling having to do that. I also want to start writing a science fiction series that I’ve been thinking about a lot and I want to try the traditional publishing route just to experience that. I also want to try something that combines my love of writing with my love of art which is creating my own manga series.
But while there’s so much I want to do this year, I also recognize a problem I have is trying to do too much at once and losing sight of my priorities. Time management is going to be a far more crucial skill I’ll need to develop in order to actually accomplish all these things. First and foremost though I need to prioritize book 4 above everything else. My main goal will be to at the very least finish the first draft this year so I can publish it next year. Finishing the first draft of the science fiction novel I’m writing would be a nice goal, but I can’t have that delay book 4 and end up having a large gap between books in The Legend of Nariko series again.
There’s a lot I want to hopefully achieve and I’m feeling surprisingly optimistic about it. Here’s hoping 2025 is a better year for all of us!
– Raphael
Raph's Cozy Musings 