Blog Post #10: Indie Publishing, Staying Focused on the Original Goal, and Preserving the Integrity of your Piece

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Facing all of the avenues of success as an entrepreneur and independent author can be overwhelming, but the trick to achieving your own success is focusing on what you’re passionate about and not pushing yourselves into spending all your creative energies on side projects.  

Hey guys, I know it’s been awhile — approximately an entire month and then some — since my last blog post.  To sum it up, I needed to focus solely on my manuscript, which resulted in June being my most productive month so far!  As of now, I am working on chapters 17/18 and I’ve reached just under 65,000 words on my first draft.  I am estimating this book to be 25 chapters in total, so my completed, super rough first draft should land around 90,000, and my brain/plotting notebook is already filled with small editing notes on what to add in my first rounds of developmental edits.  My goal is to do all my own developmental and line edits (multiple rounds each), and hiring a freelance proof reader before publication.  I have friends who are readers, writers, and artists who are very interested in the concepts of my story and who have told me they will review chapters and leave ARC reviews for me once I’m ready.

This brings me to the point of this post today: No, this isn’t me telling you I’m done with my blog, I’m telling you it’s gonna be randomly published on, at least for now.  My hope is to do one or two, maybe up to four posts a month, but as of now they won’t be on a set schedule, they’ll be written whenever I think of them.  I need to dedicate this time to my book, this story that I’m falling in love with writing and these characters I have very roughly developed arcs for that need fleshed out.

My initial intention for this blog was to pound out two posts a week for you beautiful people, but what I realized was I was exhausting myself and exerting my creative energies on a side project, not the real project.  I love this blog, it’s a great space to clear my head and get some advice about following creative passions as an adult, but stepping back from it for a few weeks revealed that my rigid schedule was going to turn this blog into a recycled piece of garbage, the same posts you’ve seen done countless times by other people.

Let me explain: I don’t want this blog to be another mouthpiece of a writer-working-to-author just trying to peddle books out to any readers who come across it.  I don’t want this to be another blog that doles out contrived, try-hard posts about a craft I’m still developing my own skills in.  The direction and intention of this blog is to be a place for me to organize and collect my thoughts, to give my two cents on how to juggle following your passions and keeping a roof over your head; not a direct piece of my marketing strategy, where I create a false persona of myself for “fans” to falsely idolize and I write blog posts that everyone has already read (or watched on a YT/vlog channel) somewhere else. Frankly, I’m not that person, and I never want to be that person, and running my creative energy into the ground to write articles about topics I either don’t care to write about or aren’t really qualified to do so, to hit an imaginary quota I put on myself makes me not want to do it.

There is a big push on independent authors to do EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE.  Going through the videos on Author Tube (YouTube’s author community), you get told that in order to cultivate the amount of people necessary to succeed at sales you need to juggle email lists for newsletters, pump out blog posts or vlogs on YT, start a patreon, join a bunch of social media groups with other authors and start critiquing each other’s work, consider putting out classes that people pay for, and other innumerable ways to push yourself out there. It is a lot, especially when you as an author plan to write books for the rest of your life to support an income and live your dream. The expectation is to start doing most, if not all, of this before your publication (while you’re still working for most people) in order to use it as a marketing hub, which is a perfect strategy, but you run the risk of flying too close to the sun and melting your wings.  Putting all of your time and energy in managing an empire of side gigs when what you really started for was to write stories you love isn’t rewarding.

Self reflection says it could just be me whining about what’s par for the course.  I could just be feeling the impending stress of needing to begin true marketing prior to a book publication and be getting overwhelmed.  Every publishing house hypes the launch of a book prior to release, that’s how you get the most people to buy it.  I guess the bone I’m picking at more is the struggle with keeping your sincerity and integrity while pushing out so much work and getting noticed, ensuring to not create a facade of a glossy, perfect person and putting that out into the world as the real thing. That’s ultimately what social media is, the best of everything projected as if that’s your real life, the visage of what you wish to share. It’s about the management of true quality control, ensuring everything you put out isn’t a rushed piece of shit that doesn’t give fans true value.  It’s about ensuring you have enough energy to keep writing your work, the real reason why you’re doing all of this in the first place.

As an aspiring independent author looking at the long game prospect, I am reflecting on what my true goal in this game is.  I feel like the story I’m wrestling with is very high concept, it requires a lot of world building and character arc development and it’s very taxing to weave these character developments into the overall pacing of the rest of the story.  It’s something that I will be working on for years to come, before starting other series I have notes written for stashed away.  TAW is my baby right now, with all of the different long game ideas and weaving in an entire flashback arc at the end about society before WW3 and the atomic decimation of the globe, it could be eight, ten, twelve books total.  Considering possibly weaving my other book ideas into the same universe, like the fantasy series being a comic book in my dystopian world, a horror series set in the pre-dystopian reality. Just different ideas that I have to keep somewhat fresh, yet preserved long enough to dedicate myself to TAW.  I brainstormed TAW: WRP for five years before it came out to be an idea I could divulge myself into (and before I stopped telling myself I could never do this and stopped doubting myself); I can hold on to these ideas too.

Shout-out to Sarra Cannon, I’ll link her website and YouTube, Heart Breathings, below.  I haven’t read any of her books but I love her web series, she’s a great example of a writer who turned her creative passions and entrepreneurial spirit into an empire; writing what she wants and supporting her family by following her heart.  I hope to do the same; writing from home while homeschooling my future children until I can afford to get them into private school.   She also provides classes to purchase, and I would argue her experience of writing 20+ books in multiple series for the past ten years puts her in a different echelon of mentor than others in the AuthorTube community who also offer classes.  I eat, sleep, and breathe her Anchor Series and when I begin editing I’ll eat, sleep, and breathe her Editing Series, both linked below.  I love her message of writing what you love, always studying the craft of writing to be a better writer, and focusing on high concept story ideas to make sagas that fans adore.

So, artists, remember to stay true to what you want, and don’t get caught up in your side games while focusing on crafting the true product. Grow and accept needed change, but always remember your original goals.  Think about what you want to pursue, and manage how much creative energy you spend.

Also, please feel free to message/comment any topics you want me to write about in the future.

Sarra Cannon / Heart Breathings:

Website: https://sarracannon.com/
Heart Breathings YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCasYwEzMc7tjKuAS-
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Elements of a Best Selling (or Anchor) Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyDruOi1q9A&list=PLg6zjsQP4PwcpMEj3Uo2b1sPFWrcule9
How To Edit Your Novel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg6zjsQP4PwejATdBaHiF_lyrV9Pw585u

Blog Post #9: 3 Reasons to Opt for a Stay-cation

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Stay-cations at home are great ways to unwind and realign your focus when you’re juggling working full-time and pursuing passion projects part-time. 

Mr. Frost and I are trying to stash as much money as we can before we journey into the next step of adulthood: parenthood, and thus, we have no big summer plans of beaches or cabins for 2019.

Instead, I’m giving myself a few five-day long weekends to give myself time to not only to relax or catch up on housework, but also to write and brainstorm ideas for my saga.

Stay-cations, for anyone who doesn’t know, is using time off from work to stay home instead of spending large sums of money on a real vacation trip elsewhere. I recommend these basically to anyone. Give yourself days off, give yourself long stretches of days off, especially if you feel like you’re in a rut, a proverbial hamster wheel of bashing your face into the ground, failing at your personal goals and feeling lacking at work.

Here are 3 reasons why you should give yourself a Stay-cation this summer.

1: You got A LOT of stuff to do at home and you can’t find the time. 

This is the bane of every weekend warrior: two days just aren’t enough. Whether it’s cleaning out the basement/attic/garage or the piles of laundry stacking up, or the yard turning into a jungle, don’t be too proud to give yourself an extra day or two off work to get your home duties finished. You will feel much more prepared for work when you’ve taken your house work off of your mind.

2: Work is stressing you the fuck out. 

If going to work every day sets your anxiety sky-rocketing and sends you down a proverbial rabbit hole of dread and anguish, not only do you need to schedule some days off to relax, you should spend some of the time looking for a new job.

3: You need to catch up creatively.

Creatives tend not to foster good creations if we are stretched too thin and unable to dedicate time to our crafts, so make sure to give yourself days off to spend honing your skills and making new art.

Make sure to take care of yourself in the wild journey that is adulthood and responsibility, and don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t have a vacation because you have no money to go anywhere.

Blog Post #8: Using Journals, Planners, and Rewards to Fuel Your Metamorphosis

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Everyone has things about themselves they want to change, but people can get lost or “spin-their-tires” when they don’t have a secure and reliable plan in place.  This post is all about planning to succeed!

When I began 2019, I decided that this was the year to start becoming the person I wanted to be.  I wanted to cut out smoking cigarettes/cigarillos for good, I wanted to reduce my grocery and eating out budget, I wanted to continue to lose weight (I lost roughly 25 pounds in 2018, and another 15 so far in 2019.  I am hoping to lose another 40 before the end of this year), and I wanted to start my career of being a writer.

This is a lot to change at one time, and as these past five months of 2019 have flown by, I’ve come to face the hard truth: changing your life is a slow game, and you need to motivate yourself to make these changes.  Here are three tactics I use to perpetuate my changes and fuel my desire to keep growing.

Journaling: Journaling isn’t just something that angst-y teenage girls do when their parents ground them and they can’t see their boyfriends this weekend.  Many people turn to journaling as a way to release their emotions and really mentally reconnect with themselves. Journaling allows you to really think about where you are in the world and wonder, is that really where I want to be? I use my journal to list out my goals and brainstorm ways to reach them, to really deep dive into my feelings and remind myself why I want to change. Do not think that you need to buy into expensive journals, I bought a six dollar Exceed Dot Classic Notebook, a ten dollar pack of Papermate Flare Pens and began divulging my feelings, failures, or successes; and every time I do I am comforted with clarity and new perspective.

Planners: I love planners. I love their uniformity, their design, and most of all the prospect of success and goal-attainment.  Planners should be used to keep you organized on your tasks, and should be used for any use necessary in the path of your goals.  I use my planner to track how much money I spent that day, the daily chores I need to do, to meal plan, and to track my word counts/blog posts. Use your planner as an accountability tool, and use positive reinforcement with…

Rewards: Positive reinforcement has been shown as a more effective tool than negative reinforcement, so set the standards you need to achieve your goals and tie rewards to these.  Here are some examples:

John wants to lose weight, so his goal is to increase his exercise and decrease his calorie intake, something that he’s journaled a lot about wanting to do.  Once John has chosen a diet and workout regiment, in his planner he would plan out his meals and workouts for the week.  If John completes his workout and eating regiment for the week he’s going to treat himself to drinks and dinner with a few friends at a local bar.

Sarah wants to read and write more everyday, and has written journal entries chronicalling her goals.  In her  planner she would list her targets, such as to write her first draft of her novel for an hour everyday and to read for an hour everyday.  She’s decided that if she meets her daily targets for the week, she’ll reward herself by purchasing a new book on Saturday.

Make sure to balance the desire of the reward with the difficulty of the task, give large milestones and break throughs with large rewards, don’t cheat yourself by giving in when you didn’t earn it!

Take the time to search your mind and heart for your goal, and then plan to chase it down like a lion chases a gazelle. With tenacity and hunger.

Blog Post #7: Balancing Self-Doubt While Making New Habits

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Insecurities run rampant in the minds of all people,Habitehow do we release ourselves from the grip of fear and allow ourselves to spread our wings and achieve our goals?  

Insecurity is Hell.  It holds us back from chasing our wildest dreams towards happiness, it wracks us with fear and self doubt, it distorts our view of reality, changes how we perceive the world around us, and turns ourselves inwards when we fear the criticism of others.  So, how do we break out of this cycle, and give ourselves the opportunities to live out our dreams?

First, we need to accept that we are humans, that we make mistakes, sabotage ourselves, become engulfed in our emotions, or any other fallacy.  Chasing your dreams does not come for free, losses will be met but in exchange lessons are learned, knowledge is received.

Secondly, we need to allow ourselves to succeed by properly planning and forgiving ourselves if we come up short.  This is something I still struggle with now, and even though I generally feel like every week I get closer to my personal goals, I also feel like I slip back into old, die-hard habits of my youth.  The main take-away of this factor is to make a plan that you can reasonably stick to, implement the plan as best as possible, and keep track of your successes and losses in implementing the changes.  Don’t get emotionally hung up on the fact that you didn’t meet your word count goals this week if you’ve been making an effort to try to keep your house more clean or workout every day. (Hell, don’t get hung up at all even if you miss everything, because this probably means you’re expecting too much of yourself, and perpetuating your own self-guilt and demoralization is not going to help you do more the next day!) Everything is a give and take, and making changes in some areas will mean other areas need to be slacked temporarily, with the main goal being to successfully juggle all aspects, but everything takes time, especially implementing new habits which is why…

Thirdly, give yourself the time and don’t rush. Everyone wants instant gratification, but things worth working for do not (generally) come instantly.  All the great craftsmen of all trades had to work constantly at being a better artisan, and this took years of perseverance and struggle, but being the best you can be at something is all based on the journey as you learn more.

Make sure to temper your disillusionment with the reality that change is difficult, and to give yourself the time and space to grow.

 

 

Blog Post #6: 3 Reasons to Write Multiple Books in the Saga Before Self-Publishing the First

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For the self-publishers who are writing a multi-book saga, reasons why you should write and prepare multiple books before you publish the first, despite your excitement to push your creation into the world. 

As soon as I sat down to begin outlining TAW: WRP, I knew that this was only book one of a saga that will more than likely end somewhere between six and nine books to fully flesh out the world and guide the story in a meaningful direction with enough time to craft realistic relationships and impactful twists.

When I began researching how to self publish a series, I soon came across a piece of advice which said “We know you’re excited to publish your first book, wait until you have three for your series.”

What?!?! Wait until I have THREE finished?! ONE is already a feat, why wait until I have three???

Well, great things take time and a hell of a lot of work, and holding onto the first two or three of your series can give you lasting success well beyond initial publication. See the top three reasons below on why to hold on to your book babies just a little longer before sending them into the world.

Reason #1: Story Continuity

Don’t you just hate when you’re reading a great book in an immersive series and you come across a dreaded author mistake: a continuity error. Continuity errors are jarring in any storytelling medium, they are easy to spot in movies and shows, hair style changes, food on the plates at dinner, random knick-knack arrangements in the background move (good in horror movies, bad in romances). These errors pull the viewer out of the experience, gets them thinking about difficulties in editing, or how shitty the poor planning was. The same goes with books, if authors gets their characters’ names wrong, inexplicably change outfits, setting, or characters in the middle of a conversation (or anything else of the sort) it rips the reader out of the story and into a place of criticism, though arguably you deserve it for leaving these errors in your work.

Also, if a writer immediately publishes their books once written and edited, they’ve definitively set the parameters in stone for the story, and the standards NEED to be kept so the world stays believable to the reader (deviation from these set standards going forward in your story is the make or break of a good writer).

This rigidity in the story from early on can cause hiccups in long game story development if most of the story’s mechanics haven’t been hammered out in planning.

If an author chooses instead to give themselves the flexibility to take the story two or three books deep before publication, these issues can be straightened out prior to readers catching them and hating your work.

Reason 2: Quality

While continuity is a component of quality, overall quality itself is another beast entirely. This encompasses everything about your writing skills, plotting skills, and the overall concept of your story as a whole.

Once you publish your first book, an invisible clock begins ticking for your next book in the series, which can induce authors to run with the first few ideas that hit them for their subsequent stories. These ideas can be awesome or TERRIBLE, with not a lot of time for the author to differentiate between the two.

Holding off on immediate publication allows authors to brainstorm longer on large plot arcs and character developments, giving more of a guide for their creativity, instead of chasing every bad idea like a rabbit into a hole. (Which is why I HAVE to plot as an author, because I chase all the shitty ideas if I don’t plot and weed through them.)  Giving yourself an adequate amount of time to get deep within your story allows you to hammer out any difficult plot points before they become a huge mess, and allows you to sew in bits of foreshadowing VERY EARLY in your story, which gives re-read value to your readers. Imagine foreshadowing something huge in the beginning stages of book one and paying it off at the end of book three, this gives your reader an entirely new way to see your book’s first two installments. You can also dedicate precious time to crafting b-plots that span over novels when you chose to hold onto the manuscripts: love stories, character arcs, plot pushers, twists and surprises, etc

Reason 3: Marketing

The bane of many self-published authors: Marketing.

Marketing is a HUGE component that you not only need to utilize but you have to excel at utilizing! Marketing is how to turn your book launch into an event, how you’ll hype your fans (and potential street team) for publications, how you’ll connect with readers through giveaways and reviews, and how you’ll tantalize readers, and even book stores, into purchasing your beautiful novels. This all sounds great, but what’s so daunting about marketing is that essentially it is preparation and swift execution.

Everything about marketing starts with planning and ends with execution of the plan: your publication dates and the length between your publications, what your websites look like (all of them, social media pages too), what your covers look like, what schedule you post blog posts or vlog videos, your newsletter schedule, basically everything about the look and timing of your business as an author.

By waiting to write multiple books in the series before publishing any of them you can make sure EVERYTHING about the marketing of these books is COHESIVE. Do the novel covers’ designs match? Do you have your graphics created to blast all over your platforms when you publish a new book/do giveaways/send your newsletters/etc?  Do you have your summaries reviewed and edited? Take into consideration these questions and realize these are only a fraction of planning. Holding off from immediate publication gives you a chance to make a marketing strategy and map out your small steps to your big goals.

Remember to enjoy the process, writers! Self publication is an undertaking, but is less intimidating with proper strategy and time.  I will be writing more articles on writing and marketing techniques in the weeks to come!

Blog Post #5: Writing the First Draft; Just Get the Words on the Page, Seriously

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Second guessing ourselves is natural in the creative spirits, but second guessing also delays our own creative processes by introducing unnecessary insecurity and self turmoil. Learning to let go and just accept the process is key.

Currently, I am 13 chapters into the first draft of my first novel, and it’s a humbling experience to say the least. When I first began on this creative passion project, I thought that getting the first draft was going to be so easy after nailing down the “details” in my outline, but when I began actually fleshing out the world I was building, I realized that there was so much more that I had not accounted for. This, naturally, meant more time was necessary to complete this draft, which made me very insecure and frustrated with myself. I had to let go of those initial expectations when I saw that they were unrealistic.

“Just get the words on the page” at first sounds placating, like yes, thank you, never thought of that before. Often when I heard this advice on YouTube I would snub my nose at it, thinking if it was so easy to just put the words on paper and write out a good story, wouldn’t all books be great then? What I hadn’t taken into consideration was the polishing and improvement that comes with each round of revision and edits. I naively believed that I could get a best selling book on the first attempt, which is obviously not how best sellers are created.

Getting the words on the page is letting caution fly in the wind, it’s letting go of high expectations and coming to terms with what your skill is at the time of writing. It’s realizing that even if you delete everything that you’ve written in two hours, you still spent two hours honing your craft and practicing how to write better. It’s finding peace in the process.

So I encourage you as a writer to write down the words even if they feel like the most juvenile and underwhelming writing you’ve ever mustered out of yourself. Often times it’s not that bad when read later, and even if it is you can revise or remove it. 

Blog Post #4: Shedding Procrastination and Planning to Relax

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Being stuck in a never ending cycle of procrastination and working till the last minute (or longer) is hard on yourself, and a habit even harder to break. Once you establish the habit of a system that works for you, you can plan time to relax without feeling like you’re cheating something else.

I was a habitual procrastinator. I’d wait till the last week to write fifteen page final papers. I’d write small papers that night, or an hour before class if I really wasn’t prepared. I stayed up all night for a morning Art History final, managing to pull out a pass grade due to sheer force. Projects waited until the last moment, chores waited until Sunday night before I was able to get to sleep, and some weeks dishes still sat piled in my kitchen, a terrible start to the new week. I often ran late for work.

In feeble attempts to combat this, I would make lists of things I needed to do, house chores, yard work, exercise regiments, drawing goals, writing goals, meal planning to combat ordering out (which I will make an entire post about at some point, because meal planning is really a great way to get your shit together and save money); basically filling up my weekend (and weeknights) with a mountain of shit to do, with only two days (or a few hours after work), which destroyed my chances of really having any time to relax. With no scheduled time to relax I would “cheat” from my own lists, blow off the dishes for the day, fuck working out, “I’m drinking cranberry and vodkas tonight and we’re getting Chinese takeout and pizza!” I’d say to Mr. Frost.

At the end of the week was the worst, Sunday afternoon through the night, after enjoying a fun Saturday with my husband, I’d be scrambling to get the laundry done, to get the dishes clean, to meal prep lunches for the week. I’d be so burnt out even though I just “relaxed” the day before, all because I set up expectations that couldn’t be met within that time frame and then sabotaged myself in a blaze of liquor and defiance.

I came to terms with the fact I needed to start getting a head start on things, I had to start keeping up with the dishes every night (I don’t have a dishwasher, and probably won’t until we remodel the kitchen, and God only knows when that will ever be). I had to start the loads of laundry Friday night. I had to get up and go grocery shopping on Saturday, and do the weekly cleaning in the morning so I could enjoy Saturday night and all of Sunday. When I took the time to strategize how to tackle chores as they were needed rather than pushing them off, I was able to unlock all the extra time I needed to pursue writing, both as a novelist and a blogger.

I’ve also started waking up an hour early to work out with my husband in our mini home gym, which consists of a bunch of hand-me-down cardio and lifting equipment from family and friends. Working out is a release for me, but it’s always been a point of contention, feeling like another arbitrary task on a list of shit I had to do. Now that I’m not up all night putting laundry away or scrubbing dishes, I’m able to go to bed on time and wake up early.

Procrastination does not set a person up for success, and making a plan that actually works is the key. Once you’ve established a plan that you can execute effectively you’ll realize you have time to enjoy, without having to take away time from your responsibilities. This allows you to really enjoy your leisurely time, rather than stress during it, perpetually guilt-tripping yourself.

Artists, remember your responsibilities and tackle them ferociously, don’t cower and push them off! Schedule the time and activities to keep yourself sane!

Blog Post #3: The Status Quo and Its Tempting Cloy

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How stagnation of the status quo lulls us into the comfort of mediocrity.

As anyone who’s been following noticed, I went MIA last week, namely because I procrastinated my way into a weekend of day drinking and ordering food, not a wise choice when you’re on the other side of 25.

Procrastination is something that I’ve struggled with my entire life, and I always followed up fucking around with mentally beating myself, and around the cycle I’d go again. In school I constantly pushed off my schoolwork for playing video games or posting in forums online, and because of that I fell in the dead center of my large graduating class. Mediocrity stared me in the face, and I had no one to blame but myself.

The comfort of the status quo sweetly embraces you when you’re tired, tells you to stop being so hard on yourself, and lulls you into a false reality of self-inflation. I intend to break this chain, to really start dedicating myself to obtaining the life I want, to being the person I want to grow into.

Remembering these past consequences I am turning the ship around now, I don’t want to fall by the wayside in mediocrity, and if I’m going to excel at anything I’m going to have to put the time and work in. So no more laziness, no more excuses, I’ve set personal goals and rewards for these goals, and I’m really hoping that these rewards will fuel me to maintain my goals.

I will post new blog posts twice a week, once on Saturday and once on Sunday going forward. At times you will also see book reviews (once I’ve gotten them written and edited, they are long winded and analytical), as I’ve started re-reading my own collection, and I’ve compiled an Amazon list of 60+ classics, contemporaries, thrillers, horrors, and romances, to begin purchasing to (hopefully) enjoy and review.

Ultimately, my goal is to begin a BookTube/AuthorTube YouTube channel dedicated to writing, but I have to start small, I have to get the snowball rolling, or I’ll drop it again. I’m hoping to start this prospective channel in fall of this year, depending on how writing/editing my first book goes, but I have to establish the rituals first, I have to make consistent blog posts before I can make and edit YT videos. I have to start consistently writing daily if I want to write three or more first drafts this year.

Good news is Mr. Frost has OK’d buying a real domain so I can create a full website for my upcoming books/credence as a real author, I just want to finish the first draft of book one, which is half way completed, before deep diving back into HTML and CSS, coding which I haven’t done in about a decade.

Another good bit of news, I think I may have come up with the full title of my octet:

Tales of the Americana Wastes
Book One: The Wasteland Revival Project

I hope that sparks some interest in the wild ride I’ve been cooking up which is coming out to look like an R-rated mixture of Fallout, The Walking Dead, and Hell on Wheels/RDR, though I could only hope to craft stories half as addicting or immersive as the four I’ve just listed.

I appreciate anyone who reads these blog posts, I am writing them in the hopes of uplifting kindred spirits, to give a place of reprieve and understanding to the weekend artisans. No matter how tired you are, how meaningless it feels to practice your art, take the opportunity to do so, and try to make a habit of it.

Blog Post #2: How to Balance High Expectations for Yourself and Maintain Your Own Mental Sanity

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Having high expectations to meet long term goals is something that runs in the blood, and brains, of type A personalities, but how do we learn to appropriately adjust our ambitions when repetitive failures of goals discourage us from chasing our dreams?

I’ve been trying to write the first draft of the first book in a very large dystopian saga since the middle of 2014. The idea has been brewing in my mind, and in the beginning it spawned binders full of brainstorming notes and a few short stories, scenes written mostly to test myself and see if I still had some writing talent left. My brain never shook the idea after five years though, and the wait finally paid off when I had a clear revelation of how to solve a plot issue, which propelled me back into the prospect of writing not only a novel, but an octet. (On the way to work, of course, when I couldn’t write anything down, so I had to repeat the newly formed plot points over and over again until I got to work and was able to jot them down in a four dollar notebook I had purchased to catch these shocks of inspiration).

When I finally began to sit down and write out the first few chapters in the beginning weeks of 2019, I had the entire first book roughly outlined (my outlining consists of bullet-pointing the plot beats and general happenings for each chapter, and then I “pants” everything else.), and the first few chapters came really easy. I figured that I would be able to breeze through all of the chapters as fast as I had the first ones, but I was so fucking wrong, and I laugh at myself now in between kicks. Now that I’m reaching the very beginning of the midpoint and the start of the real twits which correspond between multiple streams of story running congruently, I’m realizing that writing these later chapters, and subsequent books, will take much longer than I had anticipated.

In response, I can feel myself stressing out from not meeting my goals, and I’m left reconsidering my marketing plan and timelines again, something that I’ve already done before, which only bubbles my newly brewed cauldron of discouragement.

However, I have to remember that I am the one who set these standards, and therefore, I can change them. This entire process is in my hands, and I am dictating the timing and schedule of my own writing and publication. I have to remember to be forgiving to myself for not reaching unattainable goals and striving for perfection when it doesn’t exist, I have to remind myself that the only standard that exists is a fixed point where I will diminish my returns and waste hours because I’ve stressed myself out beyond the ability to be productive.

I am not pursuing a book deal, I am pursuing self-publishing and launching a publishing house for myself and other aspiring authors to publish their works internationally. I can do this in my own time, I can write and re-write, and re-write some more, until I polish these books to the best that I can get them. My current (tentative) date for publishing my first book is April 24th, 2020, and I shouldn’t beat myself up if even this date, so far off in the future, is changed as well. Everyone completes their book in their own time, and good things are worth waiting for.

So artists, please remember to be forgiving of yourself when you don’t reach the goals you demand, to be a friend to yourself instead of a tyrant. Remember to check in with yourself, asking if you’re being too hard with your standards, or if you’re stressed from something else and it’s taking energy away from your creative process. Do not put so much emphasis and stress on your art to the point that it loses the luster you loved it for in the first place.

Blog Post #1: Getting Back into the Swing Sucks, Do it Anyway

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

It’s hard to return to your passion when you’ve been out of the game for years, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth picking up again.  

I’ve been writing since I was seven years old, and I can remember the first story I wrote as a child, about wanting to be an astronaut and travel to Jupiter, having just learned about the planets in elementary school. The development of my writing skill has grown from writing short haiku poems that were published in the local newspaper in the ’90’s (something my mother is still enthused about showing people if brought up), to writing bad “poetry” and sloppy short stories in a journal as a goth middle school girl in the very early 2000’s, to eventually moving on and joining online RP writing communities in my high school days. I had developed a nightly ritual of writing anywhere from 500-1,500 word posts and then I would wait in anticipation for someone to respond with their character, so on and so forth (these forums were basically fanfiction’s roleplaying cousin, where a popular anime’s/movie/book’s setting would be the backdrop as users would create their own characters, writing in limited third person, and god moding — controlling the actions and words of another person’s character in your post — was forbidden).

Then graduation came, and I lost all interest in creative writing while pursuing college degrees, being forced to churn out paper after paper for classes. Working full-time while attending college full-time simultaneously proved to be too difficult to bare, and I chose to pause on my higher education while working mandatory overtime at a call center.  During my time in this call center I got the idea for a book with such a large concept I felt overwhelmed by it, so I chose to sit on that for half a decade while I pondered the kinks that I felt.
 
What I learned while working my ass off at a dead end job that I absolutely despised with every fiber of my being was that letting my passion dry up and wither away, living without pursuing the creative avenues I had been blessed with only reaped sadness, bitterness, and regret. Only when I finally began to pursue writing again did I gain back a sense of who I was and what I truly wanted to do with my life.

So what do we do when we realize we’ve been running the wrong direction for the past ten years, and we feel like we’re so behind of where we could be if only we had been advantageous enough to continue on the path we had been before. Well, first step is to stop comparing what you had before to what you have now, to start being grateful for seeing the error in your ways at all, and we pick ourselves back up and begin the journey again.

Is it going to suck being shitty at something that you were great at a decade ago? Of course it is, but the point is to enjoy the hobby of making the art even if it is shitty, because one day you’ll create something magnificent and awe-inspiring, but that can only happen if you try first.

Many people continue on in their lives, shedding their passions and drives as the world weighs down on them with responsibilities and expectations. Not to say that responsibilities and expectations aren’t a necessary stress that we need to experience and learn to handle as we age from children to adults, but don’t let them keep you from doing the things you love and enjoy, even if you only get to do it for ten or fifteen minutes a day. Even if it’s a painting, dance, or manuscript that you won’t ever show anyone, it’s the time and practice you’ve put into something to better not only yourself, but the world around you.

So artists, do not let your creativity wither away in the face of exhaustion, expectations, and demands. Use your art as an escape, and pursue your passion projects, even into adulthood.