The title is out there! On top of the newsletter announcement, I released the title to everyone on social media over the weekend. The website is updated and I even included it below. Now, as always, I move onto next steps. Let’s talk about what those are as well as my constant look down the road.
Drawing from the Well
Last week was a good writing week, though nowhere near as good as the prior week. I’m really pushing to finish this draft. Edits call my name and keeping my focus on finishing the draft is becoming more and more difficult. We’ll get there but, MAN, I want to be there already. For now, I follow Meg LaTorre’s advice and just keep writing.
Scenes: 222/246
Words: 133,341/~148,000
Filling the Well
This was a GREAT reading week. I discovered Audible Free Listens and listened to a few quick fiction and non-fiction books. Really interesting stuff. Between that and some books on GetAbstract, I’ve caught up to pace and am ahead of my GoodReads goal. It feels good. I’ve got one Free Listen left and a couple of weeks to get through it. Hopefully, that’ll be done this week. Then it’s back to Hoopla for audiobooks until September 1.
70/100 for #ProjectBookworm2022
Our rewatch of Ink Master continues. We’re almost finished with Season 3. Watching this show evolve back to what I remember is weird and kind of cool. I can’t wait to get my first tattoo!
Dragonflight Alpha continues while Patch 9.2.7 is live. There’s a lot going on at Blizzard these days and it’s all pretty exciting. I can’t wait for Beta to start to see the totality of the new expansion.
Well Chat
I’m always looking at what the next step is. As I’ve described before, I’m a big planner and base my approach to any achievement on first principles. I figure out the big goal and then break it down into smaller and smaller parts until I reach pieces that I can actually act on. It’s all well and good to say “I’m going to publish a book.” but you can’t JUST publish a book. There’s a lot that feeds into it.
So you do research, you learn what’s necessary and the “best” ways to accomplish it, and you make a plan. Once you’ve got a plan, you’ve taken the first (or maybe tenth) step. From that moment on, I’m looking at the next step or two.
Right now, I’ve got two projects going: book one, Blood in the Storm, and book three. Where’s book two, you might ask? It’s in a good place as far as its editing and is ready to go to the editor when the time comes. I’m working ahead drafting book three in the meantime. Yeah, it’s a lot of lists, a lot of steps. Right now, book one only has a few steps left, and yet I’m looking forward at three of them, minimum. Book three has its own long list, but the focus is the first draft, which has *checks notes* twenty-four steps left. After that, it’s onto editing which has many, many steps. I’ll walk through that another day.
To many, having such long lists with so many involved steps can be discouraging. That’s not the case for me. A big checklist is daunting, but checking items off it is addictive. Those tiny bursts of dopamine from completion drive me through listless bouts of wanting to give up. Yeah, that happens to me too.
So I keep my eyes on the prize and focus on the next steps directly ahead of me. How do you push through on long projects?
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG