What I Learned From Publishing My Third Book

Hello everyone!

It’s been a few days since I’ve published my third book, The Legend of Nariko: Shadows of a Dead World, and I had some time to reflect on the process. There was a lot of good but also a lot of bad I recognize that came out of how I approached writing it. While I am happy that I did manage to finally finish and publish my third book, the fact that I took almost four years to publish it is what is currently preoccupying my mind most. I spent some time thinking about it and I came to some realizations.

Deadlines Did Little to Actually Help and Only Caused More Stress

Something I hear quite often is to set deadlines for yourself to keep yourself accountable and put some pressure on yourself. I believed this wholeheartedly and I put some deadlines in place hoping to push myself to put more focus on staying on task. At first this seemed like a good idea, but it quickly devolved into a kind of apathy. It always felt like I had more time and could take it slow and not feel rushed. What ended up happening was that I would get complacent and keep putting it off and doing other things instead. When the deadline came close, it just came with stress and panic, leading to having to push the deadline and feeling disappointed as a result.

Consistency and Discipline, even if it feels forced, works infinitely better than motivation

A saying that is often repeated ad nauseum is that discipline is far more important than motivation. For a while I used to be very disciplined in my writing that I would write every day. But this writing always felt motivated as well and very focused. However, during the pandemic, I lost my ability to stay motivated and that discipline eventually eroded. But something interesting also happened. A lot of people who follow me may have noticed that my artistic ability has increased considerably which has lead to far better book covers. In 2024, I focused on taking art classes and working on art every day which helped me improve a lot over time. What I noticed was that, even though it didn’t always result in meaningful progress, working on art everyday lead to consistent and honestly decent progress and improvement. It was sort of proof that discipline, even without motivation or what felt like “meaningful progress”, still ended up helping significantly. It eventually lead to bouts of motivated work that could build off of the slow and steady work.

Experimenting with an idea and Trying it out Works Better Than Trying to Think It Out

This one sounds kind of weird but I really have to explain how this came about. While I was writing the first draft of my book, I was always considering whether or not one of the three arcs made sense. It’s a fantasy series which allows for some really imaginative scenarios but there’s always a question of whether or not it’s a bit too far out there. It wasn’t until I fully wrote it out and stepped away to reread it later that I realized it didn’t fit with the rest of the book or even the series really. I ended up rewriting the entire arc and it ended up feeling a lot better than what I had originally written. I realized I had spent so much time wondering if it was a good idea instead of actually writing it out and seeing if it worked or not. I came to understand that I’m not the kind of person that can visualize it in my head completely. I can create a partial idea, but I have to put it on the page to really grasp what the idea actually is. Funny enough, this was also something I came to realize as I slowly improved in art. Though an important thing about this is that it only applies to things that can be done relatively quickly or save time without having a major cost. With writing, this only cost me time as opposed to actual money or resources.

As a partial aside, I just noticed it now as I wrote the original title of this section as “Stupid ideas aren’t stupid until you write them out” which, in hindsight, sounds pretty dumb.

I realize this comes off as quite a bit of a stream of consciousness sort of post but I find that very same approach is what has been helping me slowly improve as both a writer and an artist. I took almost four years between publishing books and I don’t want to take such a long time between books again. Understanding the reasons why is important if I want to improve and avoid taking this much time in the future again.

Thanks as always for your patience and I hope you enjoy my writing! 😊

– Raphael