Thursday 30th March 2017

You’d think waking at 10am would have resulted in me feeling rested.  However, given the events of yesterday, I’m still owed about 6 hours sleep even after my 7 hour nap last night.
On the plus side, my day job day was much shorter than normal.  On the downside I still felt a little out of sorts.
As a result I decided to use the day for some menial marketing-related tasks.  I still feel tired enough that I think it would impact my writing quality so put off any work on the novel and instead focused on things that didn’t really require a lot of thought.
I spent the evening working on my website.  I realised I’d not updated my bibliography in a year and so I spent a lot of time finding out what articles I’d written and wrestling html so that images didn’t overlap.   I changed out some of the old fat pictures of me, with more recent ones.  I updated some Four Realms pages to remove the buying links (since it’s now out of print) and removed some dead pages.  I added a newsletter signup form (not that I plan to push it right now but I’m of the opinion to have every available option even if I decide not to focus on it)
One of the things I’ve recently thought about from my time looking at Facebook Ads, is that there’s not really a good place to jump into The Climb.  After all, it’s a daily blog and as such there are always threads that date back to previous issues.  I felt that what it needed was a “Start Here” page.  It would have a little introduction and basically give an update on where my career was at.  Of course, I’m assuming that people would be interested in the content because of my writing career.  That may prove not to be the case.
So I figure that if anything changes (book goes on submission, sells to a publisher, etc.)  I can update this page.  Then I can link any ads or social media links to that page from where they can then delve into The Climb.
This is all an assumption, but you have to try these things.  I ended up creating a Start Here image and getting it to link through to the page.  I still want to change the image on the front page but once that’s done I might give Facebook ads a try.  I still have an awful lot to learn and so all this work isn’t the biggest priority
I’m aware that I’m not using my usual productivity tools to track all my various tasks at the moment.  Around the time I first drafted Black As Knight I did a lot of work on productivity to help me ensure I was maximising my day.  And whilst I seem to be getting a load done without using it currently, I’m worrying that important stuff might be being forgotten.  I’m going to task myself at the weekend to get my ToDo list up to date so that I don’t miss any important tasks.
Walking into town today I’ve been thinking about video content.  Given how hectic yesterday was, I think it demonstrated to me that no matter how quickly I or others could edit, I just don’t do enough interesting stuff for a vlog every day.  Not that I really wanted to do daily vlogging anyway, but I think it’s been a validation that a vlog once or twice a month is probably going to be the natural cadence.  I plan to start properly filming for April come Saturday and I think the big challenge is to ensure I only video the pertinent stuff otherwise I’ll end up with hours of footage that’s just no use (and that someone will still have to go through).
I’m also thinking of some other content, maybe writing advice related.  A trouble with a lot of writing advice is that it comes across as the one true way to write when in reality there are lots of different processes.  I’m probably going to think about it over the next few days.
I’ve also got some ideas for content at Eastercon next month but I might need to do a bit of prep work first.
I went to the gym this evening despite my bad back.  I’m thinking I pulled something in my lower back due to the shoulder presses on Tuesday.  It always seems that I have a monster session where I break personal bests and strain something in the process.  My lower back seems particularly vulnerable.  It held out OK today but I took it easy and didn’t try and break any records on my deadlift.
I also found time to play a little Star Wars The Old Republic.  My reasoning here was that as I was still recovering from yesterday I should take it a little easy.  However, I’m really not liking the planet I’m on.  I’m not sure if it’s the environment or the quests but despite trying to blitz through a load, I found myself logging off after only an hour.  That’s probably not a bad thing, I suppose.  I still managed to go up 2 levels though.  Part of me is bored with gunslinger and wants to create a jedi.
Of course, any day I end up not writing leaves me feeling antsy, but this was a conscious decision and I did get a bunch of marketing work done so it was still a productive day.  I really need to think about the next chapter tomorrow so once I complete the current one I can dive straight into it.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels.  Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.

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