February Update: Backtracking

Well, last month, I stated that for February, maybe I'd edit or maybe I'd write short stories or maybe both. What I didn't consider was the possibility of neither.

And that's what I did.

I'm not sure what happened. I lost my drive to finish the Witch's Daughter story, then nothing else seemed interesting, and then I got Lisa's dev edit. I was supposed to get that the 10th, then the 15th, then the 18th, then the 20th, and then it finally came on the 22nd. So of course, I didn't want to start into anything early in February knowing I'd need a week in the middle to work on someone else's book, and then it came over two weeks later than planned, which took up any other time I would have worked on my stuff.

I don't say that to sound bitter, although in hindsight, I guess I am a bit. Trying to leave time for Lisa's stuff takes away from my own. Which, I'm not doing a whole hell of a lot these days. But still. Knowing there are times I won't have any freetime makes it hard to get excited to start anything.

Anyway. I have her copy edit next month, so I'm not sure how much of my own stuff I'll get to in March, either. But. I hope to maybe at least read Mystwatch 1, so I can get into the Mystwatch mindset and maybe poke at book 2 edits. I have April set aside for Sally Prescott, so I hate to get too into anything and then have to switch gears. Copy edits usually take me 10 days or so. So I'd have two weeks, I guess.

Maybe I should just focus on short stories. I can write one of those in a day, if needed.

Or maybe I should just keep relaxing until April.

I don't know. I really thought I'd finally fallen back into this. I was excited. I had a plan.

And now I'm not excited and I'm behind on my plan. Well, not too far behind. If I don't get short stories written this year, that's fine. Those were just a way to tiptoe back into it. I can still work on some of my goals.

I talked to Aron about reading Mystwatch 3. I told him I'd done significant edits on books 1 and 2, so he'd need to reread those, as well. He wants them in hard copy, though. Which means finding covers that aren't awful at the very least. I've spend a lot of today looking at Selfpubbookcovers.com, but things on there are pretty hit and miss. I may be better off just trying harder on my own. Although I did find two that I kinda really like. If I can find a third that matches, maybe I'll do that. Although $300ish on reader copies for my brother...maybe I should hold off on that. I can work on cool covers in the time it will take me to finish editing. It'd be cool to take pictures around Lawrence and use those. Maybe I can even get people to pose in them for me. Jack could make a convincing Shaidron. Mary would be an awesome Diana. Aron could totally be Makai. Then I'd just have to figure out the silhouettes of the creatures I want to include and fuck around with effects and figure out good title/author text.

Yeah. I wanna do this, now. Heh. Sometimes I explore visual mediums to express my creativity. This could be fun. I'll have to brainstorm some ideas. I'm thinking that iconic Lawrence alleyway, the city scape from the top of the parking garage, and then maybe entryways into cemeteries? Oak Hill for sure. Maybe I could venture onto the Haskell grounds. Or maybe under that bridge on the rail trail. The view from Burcham could be neat.

Anyway. That's probably putting cart before horse. But. It's something I've thought a lot about since he requested real books. Getting proofs through Amazon is easy enough. And if they're just for Mary and Aron, they don't have to be perfectly copy edited and proofread. They just have to be as good as I can make them.

So, yeah. My update this month is I didn't do much of anything. I've done a lot of thinking, as usual. Hopefully March, there will be more doing.