S.M. Butler's Blog, page 8

It’s November 1st. At some point on this day–unless you’re a NaNo Rebel–we will all be looking at a blank page. Some of us started at midnight, some won’t start until later tonight. But there’s nothing more exciting to be than starting a new piece of art and creativity.

But let’s be honest. When you think about it, 50,000 words is pretty intimidating and scary. I know that I started this month nervous, wondering just what on Earth possessed me to set a goal for twice what I normally write in a month?

The thing I have to remember–and that I want all of you to remember–is that it’s okay to be freaked out by it. Ignore those authors talking about how they NaNo every month and that this is no big deal. They are not you. And it is a Big Deal.

Imposter syndrome rears its ugly head hard core in November, because so many are trying something new and exciting. It’s awesome that those authors can write 50,000 words every month. I used to be like that. But they aren’t me, and they aren’t you.

People are different.

And it’s unfair to yourself to judge your accomplishments and challenges based on someone else’s experience. What is hard for you may be easy for someone else, and you shouldn’t judge yourself based on what’s easy for other people.

I had to teach myself how to plot without writing a draft first. It was hard and I messed up a lot, and I tossed aside a lot of stories. What comes naturally to others–plotting before writing–didn’t come naturally to me. But I worked at it. I figured out how to do it. This November, I’m writing a book that I plotted before I ever wrote a word of it.

That’s crazy to me.

There’s no one way to write a novel. In fact, I don’t think that I’ve ever written two books in exactly the same way. Some people are linear, some people not so much. Some people need every last detail planned before they can even type “Chapter One” in their file. Some people just start.

Write what inspires you. Write what makes you happy. Maybe you’re not very good with descriptions, but you’re killer with a plot. Start with what you love, what you’re comfortable with, and the rest will follow from there.

Whether it’s your first book or your tenth, NaNo is about accomplishing a goal, about being motivated to getting words on the page. Don’t let that inner editor censor what you want to write. Just get the words. Let the magic flow.

And if you need some encouragement, find me on Twitter. I’ll be your cheerleader this November.

Happy writing!

The writing has been somewhat non-existent this week. To the point where I’m getting worried about NaNo and if I’m actually going to be able to write 50k in a month. I haven’t been consistent with writing and I’m very aware of that.

I may be being dramatic. November might come and I could be fine. You never know.

But I made the decision that writing is going to be fun for me, for at least the next couple months. I mean, writing is always fun for me, or I wouldn’t do it, but I really wanted to concentrate on finding that love that made me want to do this for a living again.

Sometimes, we get bogged down in everyday life. We get caught up in our kids’ lives, or we pick up extra shifts at work to make it through the bills. We lose ourselves as we hit the daily grind. Sometimes, we need a reminder of the things that we love. We need that reminder that we are still living, breathing beings that need a moment to ourselves on occasion.

This week, I have grand plans. I have two videos to film and edit, 6k words to write, and Bloodlines posts to edit. Oh and a secret project to do that I can’t talk about yet. I also need to work on the character profiles for the NaNo project because there’s only a handful of days before NaNo starts and I’m very behind on Preptobering.

But at least I got this blog post out this week. It’s such a small thing, and I’m not even sure if anyone reads it, but writing these posts makes my week start off right with a small victory. It’s like making my bed when I wake up–which by the way, I’m really bad at remembering to do.

Hope you guys have a fantastic week, and until next time, I’ll see ya later.

Can you believe it’s October? I can’t. I also can’t believe it’s already almost a week into October.

I spent most of this week switching my newsletter provider. While I liked the one I was using, it was expensive and I’m trying to cut costs. My writing business has been in the red for a few months, mostly because I haven’t been working toward publishing another book this fall, so I’ve been actively trying to figure out how to not spend as much.

It took me about six hours to switch over, because it wasn’t just taking my list and importing it to the new provider. It was also creating the automations and the test campaign to see how the sending rates are, and creating new sign up forms to switch out for the old ones. Thankfully, I did host my own sign up forms on my own website, so I managed to keep the URLs the same and just needed to switch out the embedded forms. It’s likely no one will notice the difference. That’s how it should be. But I like talking about these behind-the-scenes things because you guys have told me that it’s helpful when I do.

Stepping back and allowing myself to not publish a book has alleviated a big HUGE stress off my back. But I also won’t have that income this fall, which I would have gotten in time for Christmas. And I’m sorta okay with that. This is why I have a full-time job still. BUT… it means I need to find another secondary income for a bit while I’m setting up my business for next year.

I’m spending the fall months writing new words. I pretty much do this every year. I don’t know how but I’ve managed to time writing new words with NaNoWriMo every year since 2008. It was never really on purpose, but it always happened that way.

My first goal is to write more on Bloodlines, enough to get me through the year. Enough to finish out this first story arc and get started on the second. And I need to get that done during October. Because November is a whole new book. That’s goal two. I haven’t talked a lot about that book yet, because I’m still figuring things out with it. So while I’m writing Bloodlines in October, I’ll be brainstorming this new book and trying to flesh it out in time for November.

I know I’ve been sort of absent here on the blog. This is the main reason why. I’ve been trying to figure out my life. LOL. I relaunched my YouTube channel and that’s been taking a lot of my time. I’ve been focused on writing new words and plotting out new books and keeping Bloodlines running regularly over on Patreon. These are all Important Things. And that’s why I tend to forget that the blog is here. You guys usually happily remind me to update here though. Apparently going a month without posting any updates is too long.

I’m going to do better. Time management isn’t really my strong suit, but I can’t get better at it if I don’t try. So, all through October, I’ll be working on improving my time management, which I’m going to need to do if I want to get through NaNoWriMo in one piece.

I can do it. I’ve done it before. And I’ll do it again.

It’s the end half of September, which means I need to start planning next month. However, October is a new quarter, so I need to start planning for the last quarter of the year as well. I looked at my calendar, at the deadlines I set for myself, and I realized… none of that is actually going to happen.

The thing is… I don’t feel ready for this last quarter. I’m not where I wanted to be for the year. I’m stalled on Reapers 3 revisions… I’m completely blank for Reapers 4 to the point where I’m wondering if I should bother. I had grand ambitions of getting a Christmas story up this year, but that’s not going to happen. One look at my overdue deadlines and my current weekly schedule changed my mind about that.

Which leaves me wondering what I’m going to work on for NaNoWriMo this year. I’d planned this time into my schedule so I’d be writing for that month, but with the Reapers revisions looming over me, I’m not sure if I should.

I usually escape the stress of figuring out this part of my writing life by writing on the Bloodlines serial over on Patreon, and somehow, I’ve managed to gain about two months of backlogged content to post there because of that. LOL.

I really wanted to take it a little easy this year, especially since the holidays actually fall on my regular days off. I wanted to spend that extra time with family, not frantically trying to catch up to my own deadlines.

There’s a fantasy trilogy I want to write. I’ve got the entire story all ready to go in my head. I bet if I sat down and opened up a new document to write it, it would vomit itself on the page. So maybe, I’ll write that one for Nano?

I’ve held off to try to work on Reapers, but in all honesty, it’s just too hard to work on Reapers 3 right now. I think I’m associating too much stress with that book, so I’m going to take a step back from it, let it rest and try to forget the expectations I set for myself. Then maybe I can come back to it with a fresh attitude and get it done without wanting to tear my hair out.

Maybe I’ll put what I work on up for a poll on Instagram or Patreon or something. LOL.

Hey y’all! I hope you’re having an amazing weekend. I don’t have much for you today. I’m exhausted and in need of sleep. I also have an assignment for a class that I haven’t done yet, so I’m gonna get on that because the boys are coming over this afternoon to hang out with me and I know that nothing else productive will happen once they show up. LOL.

So, I’m just gonna leave these two videos I posted this week right here. Teehee.

Enjoy!

I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings as I stare at my revisions for Reapers 3. Mostly because I hate the way this book starts. Which is what revisions are for, after all, to fix what sucks and make it better.

I started thinking about what I liked and what I hated about beginnings in books that I read–because that’s what you do when you’re avoiding working on a book. LOL. Okay, maybe that’s just what I do. But I like learning new things…

Honestly, it’s all subjective, what works and what doesn’t. What’s a cliche and what’s not. Everything I came up with on this list, I’ve probably read and liked in a book in the past. So take this list with a grain of salt, because any of these cliched beginnings can work in the right context.

(As an aside, none of these are how Reapers 3 starts…

If you’ve been following my planning adventures over on YouTube, you’ll see that lately I’ve been doing a lot of functional planning with no sticker use or washi, and I’ve really been enjoying it. So, I decided to do my monthly layout with just colored pens and I really had fun with it.

So check out the video, let me know what you think. And if you like planner videos or writing vlogs, go ahead and subscribe to the channel so I don’t feel lonely over there. LOL.

My week this week started out like any other. It was fine. I uploaded a vlog-style video on Wednesday… or was it Thursday… I can’t remember. It was one of those. I talked about outlining, which is new for me.

Not really weird, honestly.

But I’ve been feeling a little off this week. Not horrible. Not bad.

Just off.

I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling that way. So I fucked around a little, made a new banner for Patreon and Facebook. And changed a couple little things around this website.

This happens sometimes, where I feel kind of off and not really feeling inspired about anything in particular and usually, it’s my personal anxiety flaring up and a sign that I probably should take it easy for a couple days. Because what comes after that if I’m not careful is not pretty. And I’ve taken great pains not to repeat the two year hiatus I took from writing a couple years ago. It was a very unhappy time for me, for a lot of reasons, but I think not writing or creating had a big part to play in that.

Anyway, when I sat down to do this week’s Plan with Me video, I wasn’t feeling inspired or ready to plan out my next week. Clue #2 that I was getting burnt out.

So I did a quick, easy, functional only spread. No stickers. No washi. Just planning out this week. I looked at my To Do list for the last couple weeks and noticed the pattern of the same things not getting done. So, this week, I cut those things out. Not going to worry about them. It’s just going to be something that gets backburnered for now. They are things that I need to do eventually, but… I think not stressing myself out because I’m not doing them is more important for me.

Creatives often forget about that whole mental health part of our lives. We need that, because if we’re mentally exhausted or stressed, creating new stuff doesn’t happen. Often, we burn out and then it’s months (or years) before we’re feeling back to normal.

So, this week is going to be a light week. I’ll be spending more time over on Patreon, and less in other places. And that’s just so I don’t feel overwhelmed with what I’m not getting done. It’s going to be a more relaxed week, so hopefully, next week, I can get myself back into a better, more productive routine.

Talk to me about what you guys do for mental health weeks when you need them. Got any awesome ideas I can try?

As a quick aside, here’s a couple links from this week:

I’ve been doing these weekly PWM videos for the last two weeks as sort of an accountability system for myself. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, it might not have escaped your notice that I’m a huge procrastinator.

Crazy, right?

The first weekly video, I did because I wanted to share what I was experimenting with in my planner and just have a little fun. I’m really loving the YouTube thing, so this was just supposed to be another facet of it. But I found myself using the planner more during the week because I made myself sit down and plan out my tasks for the week.

So I made this video. I’m hoping that it’ll have the same effect. I still don’t get everything checked off during the week, but I think I overshoot what I’m physically capable of doing anyway, so I’m okay with having a few things left undone for the next week, even though my OCD is screaming inside my head.

LOL.

But anyway, I just wanted to share this video with you and hopefully, it’ll help you out as well, or you just like hearing me talk about planning. That’s okay, too. Heh.

In my effort to be better about posting on social media and not cocooning myself into my own little hermit world, I’m changing up my weekly layout in my Hobonichi cousin author planner.

I set up a posting schedule for social media and wrote it in my planner so that I could check them off as I go during the week. I don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s important to me to keep connecting with people, in both my online and offline lives. Not just because my business is largely socially based and online, but also for my own mental health.

I’m not one of those people that can take social media breaks and be happy about it. Unlike most writers, I’m extroverted so I need to connect with people. It recharges me, reminds me of why I do what I do. It’s a tough combination with being shy or anxious, because sometimes my anxiety and fear gets in the way. I hide from people, from situations that trigger the anxiety. My anxiety one of the reasons I took two years off from writing. But it’s also why I was so unhappy during that time and I didn’t really realize why until recently.

When I was a child, I had undiagnosed social anxiety (because it was the 80s and social anxiety wasn’t a thing that people knew about back then). It was so bad that I refused to talk in school. They almost held me back in the first grade because they didn’t think I was developing like the other kids. But I was a smart kid, I wasn’t behind or stupid. I just didn’t want to talk. Thankfully, my parents refused to hold me back. It took moving to another country and this wonderfully nice third-grade teacher to get me to talk to anyone that wasn’t family or someone I’d been around for a long time.

None of this is in that video up there. It’s just a fun video about me trying a new weekly layout. But in creating that weekly spread, it made me think about all this afterward. Why I get stuck in ruts a lot, why routines drive me crazy. And it’s because they’re safe. I can hide with a good routine. I don’t have to try something new that I might fail at. I knew that somewhere inside me.

Sometimes, I see people with Real Anxiety and I feel guilty because my problems aren’t as drastic as others. I don’t have panic attacks. I don’t feel depressed. In general, my life now is better than it was two years ago. But my problems are still my problems and I deserve to be as mentally healthy as the next person.

Who knew a nine minute video would provoke so many thoughts? This is me that we’re talking about, after all, so maybe I should have.