Juggling
The imagined woes of the self-published author are many and varied. Most are innocuous and on the whole self-imposed but they still have the ability to drag down a writer to a place where fear loathing and despondency lurk. Juggling these woes can, in itself, become a woe all of its own. The collective weight, on bad days, can feel like an elephant sitting on your chest, trying its best to crush the life out of you. Then again, on good days, completing some of these tasks can imbue an immense sense of satisfaction.
Below I’ve listed a broad selection of some of the things that I have to juggle at any one time; all in the hope that I can keep all the balls in the air.
Writing - It goes without saying that, as a writer, this should be one of the things I should be tying my time up with; and yet it seems to feature less and less as time goes by. As demands grow on my time I find I am doing less and less of ‘that’ thing I love. It is now reduced to blitzes of activity whenever I can squeeze it in. Surely that can’t be right?
Corrections - With book two, Blast, marching ever-closer to a publishing date, correcting work has become an immense pressure. Not only is there a huge amount of material to sift through, there’s also the stress of anything I miss will be forever entombed between the pages of the finished novel, forever screaming back at me.
Artwork - For a writer this is an unusual one, as not many writers design their own front covers from scratch, well not to the extent I do. I build the covers in fully rendered 3D environments, meaning that if I had the temperament and the skill, they could be turned into fully animated pieces. You could actually fly a camera around inside my covers and other associated artwork and turn them into mini films. Of course the render time would be insane. For example: As I write this blog I am actually rendering a test version of Blast’s front cover. This is a still image and has been rendering for the last eleven hours! If I wanted to turn it into an animation I would have to render a further twenty-four frames for every second of the animation. I think I would grow old and die before that were complete, and melt my computer in the process.
Background information - I’m forever trying to ‘fill out’ the world of Merry Hell; make it bigger and more detailed. I seem to spend more and more time trying to work out how everything should fit together and how the world can grow to fit the ideas behind the coming novels.
Twitter - How many hours should you spend scouring the twitters? Obviously not enough. The effort with keeping up with everything writing based on twitter can easily become over whelming. To be honest I’m not sure I’m doing it right and have probably missed a lot of opportunities.
Facebook - Facebook is yet another distraction and weight upon my time. Again it seems endless and all consuming. Luckily I do have a little help on the social media side of things but it always seems like a huge cliff to climb.
Blogs - Yes, like this one, can take up a huge amount of my time. Some of them can turn into miniature books by themselves; requiring planning, drafting, proofing, correcting and embellishing. I produce two blog entries every week. And that turns into a major commitment over the course of a year. A lot of the background information I mentioned earlier goes into what I call ‘the histories.’ These smaller entries form the backbone of a timeline detailing a distance past, going back many hundreds of years, well before the adventures of Havoc take place. Then there’s the main blog items that I call ‘musings’ - This being one of them. These take just as long and twist and turn through my psyche as I attempt to document my journey through the literary world.
Selling one book while creating another - It seems that a book is never quite finished. The promotion of Havoc plows on relentlessly. It’s a thankless task that consumes far more of my time than I ever imagined. Soon, of course, it will be joined by Blast and the work load will double. Looking forward to that, Not!
Learning the new skills required to make stuff - As a writer who is also a techie, I find myself on a never-ending job of skills training. I’m always finding some new piece of tech to make my life easier. Funny, it never seems to work out that way. I seem to bounce from one piece of online training to another. Trying to gain the skills in a few short days that others have spent a lifetime amassing.
The day job - That thing that we must all do to pay the mortgage and put food in our mouths. There’s always something about the day job that doesn’t sit well with anyone. Having to ‘waste’ time earning a crust when we could be writing; it beggars belief.
Self-advertising - Call it awareness, self-promotion, networking whatever. You have to keep out there, bringing attention to yourself and your books. Of course writing is a lonely business and doesn’t always attract the most gregarious people so you can imagine how much of a chore this can become.
Stressing - This seems to take up a lot of my day. Worrying about this, worrying about that. From cover design to spelling mistakes, from editing to writer’s block, every aspect of this writing journey seems to end in me stressing about something. It’s incredible how much time stressing about something can eat up.
Editing - A never ending process of tweaking and modifying that takes days and days. Every time you open up your manuscript file you seem to spot something that needs changing. It’s like a painter never knowing when to stop. In the end you just run out of time and send the work off to the publishers. You’re never really finished.
Thinking - You’d be amazed how at just how much time you can spend staring at the wall and thinking. I can waste literally weeks doing little else. Of course, my parents always just put it down to lunacy, little did they know I was building a world inside my head.
Checking - Checking and rechecking every last detail is a thankless task but if you get it wrong someone is bound to tell you about it.
Responding to email nags - Each day an endless stream of email floods in all demanding my attention. Everything from editors notes for clarification to the British Library demanding to know where their copy is.
Juggling balls or spinning plates; it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry - Barring Playstation; you’ve always got to make time for playstation.