No matter how well you plan or hard you work, there will be times when it all goes a bit wrong. August was one of those months for me. Pressure got to me and my work suffered because of it.
What causes it doesn’t really matter. It could be a bad review or a rejection. It could be things to do with everyday life. The important thing to note that these things happen and you’re going to have to overcome them. You have to get up, dust yourself off and get back on the horse.
September, for me, was about getting back on the horse.
For a long while now I’ve been a meticulous organiser. Doing what I’ve managed to do this year has meant being incredibly productive and that’s meant having systems in place to maximise that productivity.
I’ve been using a mix of GTD (Getting Things Done) with ToDoist and it’s worked very well. But when I started the rewrites, clearing my decks so I could focus on this, I let it drop by the wayside a little. It’s understandable. I was no longer trying to juggle multiple balls, just the one.
So finishing August stressed, with a sense I was behind schedule, September was about picking the system up again and using it to help manage my time better and give me some short term focus. I made some tweaks as well that allowed me not to be overwhelmed by busy days by breaking tasks into time slots.
Day job stress compounded the pressure in August but they owed me a lot of holiday and so I took steps to block book time off in October so I could work on the rewrites. Just getting that approved took a massive weight off my shoulders and allowed me to focus on moving forward.
As a result my output was better than it had been in August.
Other than my regular articles for GPSTracklog and Fantasy-Faction I’ve not been working on a lot of other things. I’ve been collecting ideas for Black As Knight’s sequel. I’ve had a rough idea for some time now, but I’m now trying to flesh that out, aware that this book will go back to my agent just before Fantasycon. That’ll only give me a week until NaNoWriMo.
As I’ve reported elsewhere I also attended my first Bristolcon and was pleased with how well it went, especially my first ever stint as a moderator. I have a panel and a reading at Fantasycon but I’ll give details of those in a separate post.
So September was a little dull overall and I’ve got to the stage where as much as I love the book, I want the rewrites done. Hopefully October’s report should have some good news on that front.
YTD wordcount: 445,000
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