After the breakneck writing pace of the last year or so, I find I’ve gotten stuck on powering through my drafts, even though it’s not necessary with my current schedule. This has made me woefully neglectful of other projects, like this website. I don’t know why I’m so hyperfocused on finishing each draft as quickly as possible; perhaps it’s just a knee-jerk reaction to spending a year giving myself short deadlines.
Latest on the docket: a prequel novella for Abnormal. Titled Gifts Divided, it chronicles the life of a young Sniper who is selected to join the Gene Scan Units after a devastating war and concurrent virus decimate the US. I’m excited to get back into the Abnormalverse and have more to show for that world, and maybe once I get this novella done I’ll be able to dip back into the fourth Abnormal book, Dead Cities Rising. My previous attempts at starting ABN4 have been met with frustration and dissatisfaction with the direction it was taking. Maybe now I’ll be in a better mindset.
I also am struggling with keeping up the marketing aspects of the writing biz. I was doing okay for a while, but now I’ve started slipping again. As with other things in my life, the pace of my writing has caused me to neglect other things. I used to be fanatical about making up graphics for quotes and snippets of my work, as well as other promotional things, but now I find myself struggling to grasp the attention span needed to do these.
Call it ADHD hyperfocus. Call it obsession. Call it what you will; the point is, I need to break out of whatever it is.
First thing’s first: Stop writing like I’ll die if I don’t make my word count today. Granted, I made my word count already today, but that’s only because I’m giving myself two months to write 20k words…so my word goal is laughingly low at the moment. Still, I need to allow myself to do other things. I have to snap out of it.
With my reverse harem trilogies done (for the time being), I don’t have the pressure that I did before to finish ASAP. The box sets that I’m still participating in are spaced out enough that I have plenty of time to take a more leisurely pace to my work-outside-of-work.
After I slow my roll, I’ll get this site back on track. I plan on scheduling a minor overhaul, where some old works will be free (with newsletter signup) and others will be back in a different format. Then, once that’s done, I’ll get graphics for promotions back in production, and I’ll probably rework my Facebook reader group while I’m at it. Maybe pick a day during the week to feature other authors in a mini-takeover. Pay it forward.
Now that I’ve broken away from the writing cave long enough to write this post, I think I’ll start on this right away. Close the Word doc, open some stock photo images, and get to work on other, non-writing stuff.
Keep on the lookout for updates to this site! I really do intend to make it pretty and what have you soon. 😉