Blog – Page 27 – Kit Campbell Books

WriYe and Romance (Again)

Hello hello, squiders.

I almost don’t want to do this one. I feel like every February, the WriYe blog post revolves around romance.

(No, I’ve gone and checked, and one was about motivation, and another about inspiration. 2019, however, was definitely about romance. Ah well. Maybe I’m projecting.)

(Although there is some repetition in the monthly prompts in general. I suppose that, too, is to be expected. Maybe this is the last year we do the WriYe prompts.)

Again, like I noted last month, they’ve changed the prompts this year so they’re just a statement instead of a series of questions. February’s is The role of romance in your novels.

Hm.

I feel like as time has gone on, I’ve moved away from romance in my novels. Like, my earlier novels almost always have a romance of some sort, though it is not generally part of the main plot. The trilogy that I’ve been working on forever (and should be editing Book 1 of) has a romance in it, though I do like that one–slow building and natural feeling. My fantasy that’s alternately YA or MG based on the way I’m feeling about it (originally written Nano 2006, I think) has the start of a romance between one of the main characters and a minor antagonist (for her). My YA horror (Nano 2007) has one of the main characters pining after a friend, who returns the feelings, but they’re both too shy to act on it. And Nano 2008, which eventually turned into Shards, has romance at the very core of the story.

But more recently…I haven’t included it, unless I was working on a story for Turtleduck Press which, until recently, required a primary or secondary romance in all its works. So there is a love story in City of Hope and Ruin, and in anthology stories I wrote for To Rule the Stars and Love Shines Through.

But let’s look outside of that. From 2009 to 2019 I wrote a scifi serial about a sleepy town that’s not what it’s seems. No romance in that, though the main characters pretend to be in a relationship to avoid suspicion. In 2014 I started Excalibur-1 (which I finished in 2018), and, again, there’s no romance in there, though I believe I do set up a potential one in the future.

I did a lot of revision in the 2015-2018 time frame, so that’s all older stuff.

In 2019 I started World’s Edge (which I finished last year), which is single viewpoint, a rarity for me. There is romance in there, but not the main character’s, though the romance does drive the main plot. (If you recall, I was playing with my viewpoint character not being the protagonist.) 2020 I wrote my cozy mystery and, yeah, I guess I did set up a romance in that. A potential one, for the future, since cozies do seem to include romance. (Though they rarely actually get together. Interesting, that.) 2021 I did my now-finished Gothic Horror. No romance though. Too busy trying not to die, I guess.

Hm.

Oh, there was my scifi horror novella in there too. No romance. Again, trying not to die. Death is bad for romance.

Looking at everything, I guess I do include it, but not necessarily as a main component. At least, not anymore. I’m not even sure I’ve included it as a major subplot in a while.

That probably says something. But, I think, that I kind of feel like I did a lot of romance, and now I’d like to look at other relationships, or see how a character fares when they’ve got to step up all on their own.

(Plus I do seem to be writing a lot of horror lately, and a lack of support can help the feelings of isolation in a horror story. So.)

(Hm. Maybe that’s why. A minor shift from straight speculative fiction to speculative fiction with a horror bent. I probably should think about that too, why everything revolves around horror lately.)

Anyway, huh, that ended up being longer than I expected.

How do you feel about romance in novels, squiders? A necessary component? A distraction? Sometimes good, sometimes bad?

Draft Done! (And Other Sundry)

Hooray! I finished my first draft of my Gothic horror novella yesterday! (I also sat down and wrote over 3K in less than a few hours, FINALLY, omg.)

Is it good? Who knows? It also doesn’t matter til it’s time to revise it.

Man, it feels so good to get that behind me.

Now, in theory, we move on to other things. I’ve got to write the last selection of my serial this month (only 2.5K, in theory doable in a day, already outlined and everything).

An added complication is that we’re working on an anthology project over at Turtleduck Press, and I’ll need 5-10K by mid-March. Also not hard, just need to do it.

But it’s already February, and I can see how this goes, where I never get to revising Book 1 (again) because other things keep popping up.

But does it make sense to start Book 1 only to have to change gears and switch to the anthology project sooner rather than later?

In theory, I could do both at the same time. I can normally handle one writing and one revision project without overwhelming myself and losing time to having to shift gears. But this will, fingers crossed, by the last revision for Book 1, and I want to be able to really focus on it and make sure it’s getting done correctly.

Augh, decisions.

In non-writing news, I’ve started my video game for the month. I’ve picked Jenny LeClue – Detectivu off of some friends’ recommendation. (I don’t know why Detectivu, except maybe to rhyme? It confuses me.) It’s a point-and-click mystery game that’s on the silly side, so it’s pretty much right up my alley. I’m about three and a half hours into it and we’ve just gotten to the (first?) murder.

Having trouble focusing on reading this month. Currently in the middle of three books and not making decent progress on any of them. I need to fix that or I’m not going to hit my goals for the month.

How are you, squider? Doing anything fun? Making progress?

Once Again, I Forget

Hello, squiders. Sorry for, like, just disappearing last week. I ran into this issue where I was so not looking forward to something that I found it hard to do other things.

Very inconvenient. Must ponder how to avoid in the future.

Anyway, it’s now February, the darkest and shortest month of the year. We got a foot of snow today, yet I still had to go out in it, and will have to do again, because despite literally everything else being closed, rehearsal is apparently still going to happen.

Which brings me to the main point of this post.

In December, I tried out for my local theater company’s show, The Pirates of Penzance, because I think it’s funny and I like pirates. I spent a ton of time working on an audition song, which, like usual, was amazing at home and went way worse at actual auditions (though probably the best they’ve ever gone, so that’s something).

Oh, and the bigger, mobile one is old enough to participate now, so he came along to audition.

So, long story short (too late), we both got cast as police, which was a disappointment to both of us, since we wanted to be pirates. Also, the police are only in Act 2 so we also have to sit around for half a show, which is hard for the bigger, mobile one, who is on the autism spectrum.

Anyway, back in December we had a rehearsal where we just sang through the show start to finish (very boring, should have brought a book for bigger, mobile one) and I had this revelation while I was listening to the principals sing.

And that was that I didn’t want to be them.

Like, I’d gone to all this trouble to do a solo instead of an ensemble audition, and why? I didn’t want a solo. I never want a solo. I don’t actually like singing by myself in front of people and I don’t actually really like doing musicals, so what the actual heck?

Anyway, because the police are in the show so little, we haven’t actually had to do much (we’ve been to three total rehearsals) so it’s kind of been out of sight, out of mind and not much stress. But now we’re less than a month from the show and I’m torn between “Oh God we’re almost live and we haven’t even blocked all of Act 2 I have to practice omg” and “I don’t really care, this is the easiest part ever, I would rather be writing.”

(The bigger, mobile one is an added complication. He’s been doing a lot of complaining about the amount of time rehearsal is taking up–again, not much, not yet–and he’s having difficulty with the choreography because he’s 9 and has no training and also apparently no rhythm. He’s also easily bored and has trouble following along in the music or the script. Perhaps not my best idea. At least he’s having fun when we’re actually doing stuff.)

So I was complaining to my husband that I was never going to do another musical again, that what I really wanted to do was straight acting but this group almost exclusively does musicals, etc., etc., he pointed out that I’d said all of this the last musical (which was Music Man in Feb 2020, right before everything shut down).

And I’d forgotten. I’d completely spaced that I’d come to this realization during Music Man, that the musicals weren’t for me and I should stop doing them and focus on other things I wanted to do, like writing or finding a theater company that did non-musical shows. I’ve gone back and looked at the blog here, and I’ve got a whole post about it.

Is it because COVID happened? I mean, 2020/2021/2022 thus far are just kind of a huge jumbled mess in my brain. So would I have remembered that I had decided not to do anymore musicals if things had stayed normal? Or would I have forgotten again otherwise?

Will I forget again, and in another two years be right back where I am now?

God, I hope not.

But just in case: Kit. Do not spend time and money putting together a solo for musical auditions. You will be grumpy about not getting a real part but also be grumpy about there not being any real parts you actually want (which is a straight acting/no singing role, which is extremely rare in any musical). You will be grumpy because you were a big deal actor back in high school/college and feel like you should be able to have a role where you can show your chops but you will not get a chance to do that in this theater company. You must accept this. Let the musicals go. If they do readers’ theater or a straight play, focus on those. Otherwise, look for other opportunities elsewhere. Or, you know, just focus on your writing.

You’re already writing and drawing. How many creative things do you think you can manage? Be reasonable.

But, anyway, I may be a bit spotty this month. I have feelings, squiders. They are confusing and stupid. (It’s something like–I am having fun when I actually doing something but I am also resentful about having such a small part. I don’t know. Stuff.)

(ALSO I am always cast as a police officer. Something about me must say police officer. The first role I ever got in a show was a police officer, and I’m at 75% police officer roles with this particular theater company too.)

(I was a pick-a-little lady in Music Man, which thus far is the only non-police role. There was a police officer role, but that person had lines so of course I did not get it.)

13K for January, though, which was not shabby! I’m into the climax. I meant to start it today, but we had a snow day (except from rehearsal, apparently) so I have had small, mobile ones everywhere.

See you later, squiders!

WriYe and the New Year

Once again, we’re doing WriYe (short for Writing Year, formerly NaNoWriYe in the ancient past of the aughts). This is…*counts on fingers*…year four since I came back at the beginning of 2019. Every month there is a blog post prompt, and I tend to do them, because it allows me to not have to think too hard about a blog post every so often.

They’re doing a different format this year where, instead of a series of questions, there’s just a single prompt. So, for January, the prompt is:

Tell us about your plans for the year.

Not unexpected. It is that time of the year.

(Also, hey, did I tell you guys that I sold a short story last weekend? 2022 is already going better than either 2020 or 2021.)

I’ve talked about working on overcoming the procrastination habits I’ve fallen into over the last couple of years and my video gaming goals already, so I guess let’s talk about everything else I have planned for the year.

Let’s talk about reading first. Back in, oh, 2009 or something, I set a goal of reading 50 books a year, which I have managed every year since then (sometimes squeaking through, sometimes with easy sailing). That’s about a book a week, though I tend to read several books at a time. It’s inefficient, but whatever.

Occasionally I add modifiers to the challenge. 2020 I believe I had a requirement to read something lying about the house (which apparently cumulated in me reading a lot of things I’d bought at library book sales), and I think it was 2019 where I tried to read a book per book shelf. (Made it through four or five shelves before I got distracted.)

This year I’ve got two: 1) book per month that is lying around and 1) book per month off either my Goodreads Want to Read shelf or my library’s For Later shelf.

The thing I have to look out for is the same thing as 2020, where I focused on the library book sale books, i.e., books that I knew I would read and then get rid of. The spirit of the challenge should be to read books that I really want to read that I haven’t gotten around to yet. Something to think about.

Writing-wise, my main goal for the year is to do a final revision on Book 1 of my trilogy (as identified as my main writing goal in my life when I did my soul searching last fall) and create/revise submission materials for it.

(Also I’m going to finish the first draft of the Gothic horror novella I started during November. Almost done, only have about 8K left to go and have already written 10K on it for the month, so hopefully that’s done relatively quickly here.)

Now, submission is a horrible, confidence-draining process, and I will need to do something else once we reach the submission period. So here’s what I’m thinking, in some vague order:

-Revise my scifi horror novella (got lots of good beta feedback, and it sounds like the book is in pretty good shape in general)
-Create/revise submission material for that so I can be in double submission hell, I guess
-Revise the cozy mystery I wrote for Nano 2020 (some feedback, pretty good, though)
-Create/revise submission material for that? (Misery loves company, ha ha)
-Finish my serial (only Part 4 still needs to be done, and should be out March or April, I believe–I forget the schedule and will have to look)
-Release serial as an ebook

The cozy mystery, if it gets anywhere, will be under a penname. I have one picked out and everything.

I also have a goal of releasing two more SkillShare classes, but SkillShare is making some massive changes to the teaching side of the platform (changing how many minutes people have to watch before you get royalties, changing the platform they’re paying through, etc.) and I will need to look and see if I still want to stay there or try out a different platform.

Anyway, that’s the general plan for the year! I have to do the Book 1 stuff, but the rest of it is kind of fluid. Still, I predict a lot of revision, though what specifically I’m revising may change.

Any big plans yourself, squider?

Library Book Sale Finds: Simone LaFray and the Chocolatiers’ Ball by S. P. O’Farrell

Man, how long has it been? I think since 2020 at least, since I was doing some sort of reading challenge that year that was getting me through my stash of library book sale books.

Back to it!

I picked up this book at a library book sale, where I paid a whooping $6 for it. (As I recall, we ended up only buying a few books because it was less “lots of books for cheap” and more “extremely expensive and not much of a selection.”)

I’m not sure what I was thinking. The genre was not at all what I was expecting, so either I bought the wrong book, or I’d completely forgotten everything about this book by the time I got around to reading it.

Title: Simone LaFray and the Chocolatiers’ Ball
Author: S.P. O’Farrell
Genre: MG Mystery
Publication Year: 2019

Pros: Great villain, good possibility to see him again in later books (that do not currently exist)
Cons: Plot is predictable, main character is supposed to be very observant but misses things when plot appropriate

I found this book really hard to read. Like, I’d pick it up, read a few pages, and then put it down again and not want to touch it. I had to force myself to keep reading. I’m not sure why–it might be the voice (which is first person) or it might be because I could see the way the plot was going and it was making me anxious.

Seriously, though, I don’t remember this being a MG mystery. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with MG mystery. I read it occasionally and it tends to normally be a quick, fun read (you don’t typically have anything too life-shattering going on in MG). I’m sure a lot of the predictability in the plot comes down to that.

Obviously I’m in the minority, too, as this book has only glowing reviews on Goodreads.

Simone LaFray is a precocious 12-year-old who is an operative for a French secret agency. By day she helps her father run his world-famous patisserie. Her mother also works for the agency, and her attention-seeking younger sister and their dog round out the family.

Simone is literally perfect, and none of the family has any real flaws, which is not unheard of for MG. The plot is a bit slow, but follows a known art thief arriving in town, ostensibly to finish a job that was interrupted the year before. The art thief was my favorite character. He has a cool nickname–the Red Fox–he eludes everyone the whole book, including Simone, and he has a flair for drama.

Would I recommend this? I don’t know. I didn’t enjoy it, but maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind.

Read anything good lately, squiders?

So Far, So Good

Howdy, squiders. I’ve had an interesting week–had a close contact test positive over the weekend (no worries, they’re doing fine) and so decided that it was best to get tested myself, just in case. (Just got my results back, and I don’t have it.) But, of course, you’re not supposed to interact with anyone while you’re waiting on results, so my week has mostly consisted of checking to see if I had results yet, and then wondering what to do with myself.

Couldn’t really plan, you know? I did the test Monday morning and called my boss mid-day-ish to double check policy and let him know that I probably wouldn’t be in on Tuesday, and I used Tuesday to get a fair amount of writing done.

But then I didn’t get my results Tuesday night, or early this morning. So I had to call my boss again and deal with the fact that I hadn’t known if I was going to go into work or not and so had not planned my day.

In retrospect, I should have planned both ways, and then I could have just executed whichever plan was necessary. Next time.

Anyway, I have my results now, and so we’re back to normal.

I realize we’re not even halfway into January yet, but I’m feeling really good. I’ve made decent progress on the draft of the school horror story I was working on for Nano. I’m up to the second plot point, so we’ve just got to go through the dark moment and the climax (which hopefully will be fun!) and then I’m done with that and can switch over to revising Book 1, which is my main goal for the year.

I’ve already read three books for the year (including one of my TBR) so that’s going pretty well too, and I’ve done some drawing and watched some videos on gouache, which is a new paint type that I got for Christmas and need to try out.

Fingers crossed that this momentum will last. I could really use a good year creatively.

How are things going for you guys? Making good progress?

Video Game Time

Hey, squiders! First week of the new year is down. How has it been for you so far?

I’ve done okay, though I’ve been focusing on the easy things first.

(Also, as I think I told you, I made a resolution to read a book off my TBR lists once a month. I’ve ended up with three books, however, because I kept looking them up at the library and they weren’t available. So I put a couple of holds on stuff and eventually found a book that was available.

And then, of course, the holds came in.)

You know what’s easy? Playing video games. In theory.

Here’s the deal with video games. I am a binge gamer with obsessive tendencies. It is really hard for me to play, oh, an hour, and then go do something else. I tend to play several hours in a go, have a hard time refocusing onto something else, and, if left to my own devices, I will do this for a week or so and then wander off and not touch that or another game for months.

This isn’t true of all games. Multiplayer games I can normally play for an hour or two and be good for the day, and I can do that several days in a row and on and off. I think it’s because my brain categorizes those games as socialization or spending time with friends or something, something that separates them from video games as a whole.

Like, when I and everyone else in the world was super into Among Us last year this time, I wasn’t playing five hours of AU in a day. I’d play an hour and a half on average and then I was done. When I play AU these days–admittedly a lot less than I was–that still seems to hold. It might also be because multiplayer games tend to be fairly repetitive so they don’t lend themselves to repetition aside from competing against other people.

The other exception is dancing games. I love dancing games. I am good at dancing games. I used to Dance Dance Revolution all the time back in the day, and these days I play Just Dance on the Switch (or the Wii) before it. I think if you played six hours of Just Dance in a go you’d probably die. I average about 45 minutes, maybe an hour.

But, anyway, I said to myself that I should get the video game goal going. I think, maybe, my thought was I’d start a game and then play it on and off through the month, apparently forgetting the last several decades of evidence about how I actually play games.

The first thing I tried is called Spellcaster University. I got it for free through Amazon Gaming, which I didn’t realize was a thing (apparently it comes free with your Prime membership). It’s your fairly standard build and maintain sort of tycoon, in this case a magic school that gets destroyed every ten years when the dark lord rises up. I played, oh, four years of the first school on the first, then played some more yesterday, where I spent like six hours finishing off that first school and then two more (and had just started the fourth when I stopped for the day). Depending on the students’ training they can get different jobs when they graduate, and I think those bonuses must stack in between schools, because I feel like I got way more powerful a lot faster this last school, to the point was I was starting to be able to fight against the dark lord to some extent.

There’s the binge gaming kicking in again.

Over Wednesday and Thursday this week I also played a choose your own adventure visual novel based off of Hamlet called To Be or Not to Be. It was pretty fun–I especially enjoyed some of the Ophelia paths–but the base game got boring pretty quickly. I found a guide that told me how to unlock all the achievements and did that, then found one that explained how to unlock the artwork (my favorite piece being the ghost of Hamlet’s dad making friends with the sea creatures), but then I realized there were 100 art pieces and that my time would be better spent making magic schools, so I called that game done and moved it into my Completed section on Steam.

So I count the goal done for the month. I started two new games and beat one of them, and I’ve definitely played five hours.

Probably should work on figuring out how NOT to binge game. I had honestly forgotten that was a thing I did, since most of what I’ve played in the last year and a half is either Among Us or Just Dance. I did play a great horror adventure game over the summer called Oxenfree, and I didn’t binge that either. Wonder why not?

Maybe it’s just tycoons and MMORPGs I binge, and if I can stay away from those, I’ll be fine.

Things to ponder.

Thoughts, squiders? About games (and how to stop playing them at appropriate times)? Or resolutions?

Year-end Book Round-up 2021

Happy 2022, squiders! As always, to start the year off, we look at what I read last year. (Been tracking since 2009 or 2010, something, yadda yadda, etc.)

(Also I should be back to my twice a week schedule now. We’ll see.)

(Also also I did finally get my outlining workshop SkillShare class all fixed. It’s here.)

Anyway, on to the stats!

Books Read in 2021: 50
Change from 2020: -9

I did a lot of reading in 2020, mostly because I couldn’t focus on anything else. I’d say we were more at normal reading levels in 2021.

Of those*:
9 were Mystery
7 were Fantasy
7 were Nonfiction
5 were short story collections
4 were Dystopian
4 were General Literature
4 were Romance
3 were Science Fiction
2 were Memoir
1 was Alternative History
1 was a Fairy Tale retelling
1 was Historical fiction
1 was a story sampler
1 was a tie-in

*Some genre consolidation was done here. YA or MG titles went into the general genre. All subgenres of fantasy or romance, for example, also went into the general genre.

No audiobooks this year. Though we did listen to one–I apparently just didn’t write it down.

New genre(s)**: alt history, fairy tale retelling, dystopian, historical fiction, memoir, short story collection, story sampler, tie-in
Genres I read last year that I did not read this year: children’s, adventure, Gothic horror, horror, a play, science fiction noir, spy novel
**This means I didn’t read them last year, not that I’ve never read them.

Genres that went up: general literature
Genres that went down: mystery, fantasy, nonfiction, romance, science fiction

I think I read a broader swath of genres this past year. Plus a bunch of short story collections.

14 were my books
36 were library books

Oof. I must stop getting out so many books from the library and read my own books instead.

53 were physical books
11 were ebooks

Of note, almost every book of my own that I read was an ebook. Only the Uglies trilogy wasn’t. Also a problem.

Average rating: 3.59/5

Top rated:
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstein (fantasy – 4.5)
Totto-chan (memoir – 4.4)
Unfettered (SFF short story anthology – 4)
Solutions and Other Problems (memoir – 4)
Take a Look at the Five and Ten (general literature – 4)
The House in the Cerulean Sea (fantasy – 4)

More in my normal categories this year, though the memoirs are a surprise.

Honorable mentions of 3.9: Twas the Knife Before Christmas (mystery), Operation Moonglow (nonfiction)

Most recent publication year: 2021
Oldest publication year: 1896
Average publication year: 2013
Books older than 1900: 1
Books newer than (and including) 2016: 36

In theory reading newer books helps you see which way the markets are trending.

The first book I read this year was The Best American Mystery Stories 2020, edited by C.J. Box (mystery short story collection) and the last was Deck the Donuts by Ginger Bolton (mystery).

Read anything great last year, squiders? I’ve already read something good this year–This is How You Lose the Time War. Definitely recommend.

Okay, Let’s Get on the 2022 Train

Okay, okay. We’re three days away from 2022, so I guess we should act like it.

(On a side note, I’ve checked out a laptop at the library, which, on one hand feels very neat, but on the other hand, kind of makes me anxious about logging into stuff on a shared computer. My understanding is that they reset between people, but eeeeeeee all the same.)

(Will just have to log out of everything ever.)

My pondering about goals over the past few days has mostly followed the train of thought that I have spent a LOT of time procrastinating over the past two years–no spoons to be had–and how to fix that instead of getting sucked into time sinks for hours on end.

I’ve two main time sinks: Discord and YouTube.

I’ve been on Discord for years but never used it terribly regularly until about a year ago. That’s when I joined my Among Us server. I still was spotty for a bit, until the tournaments started up. Even now, when everyone’s back at work/school, I still spend a fair amount of time there even though it is less active. The biggest issue is first thing in the morning. A lot of the people are in Europe/the UK, which means it’s their afternoon in my morning, which is when they’re active. So I tend to stop by in the morning to say hi/catch up on stuff that happened while I was asleep, and then, since that’s when it’s most active, I get sucked into whatever’s happening or I hang out and ditz around seeing if something is going to happen.

On one hand, socialization is good for me and I do truly like the people in that server. On the other hand, stopping by in the mornings derails me first thing, which makes it hard to switch into a productive frame of mind later on in the day.

The YouTube issue goes a bit like this: I have a couple of channels that I subscribe to that put out regular content on a weekly basis. So I’ll go on to watch that week’s episode, and since I listen best when doing something with my hands, I’ll play my coloring game on my phone while the episode is going. (Plus it makes it feel like I’m not just wasting time watching YT.) My episode will end, but I won’t be done with my picture, so I’ll go on to a different video. I’ll finish my picture, but the video’s not over, so I start a new one. And eventually I run out of subscription videos and will move into random stuff, ad nauseum. And even if the picture/video end at the same time, it’s still hard to break out of that and move on to something else.

I think the solution here has got to be to limit my time.

I don’t necessarily want to miss out talking to my friends on Discord, but I’ve noticed that if I check it on my phone rather than my computer, it’s harder to engage (i.e., type) so it’s easier for me to move on to something else. I think I can do a morning check-in on the phone and then move on to more productive things while still making times for special events that may happen occasionally. And for YouTube, I think I’ve got to do one video at a time and then cut it off. It’s too easy to get into that “One more, oh, one more, okay, one more” mentality otherwise.

And, I think, if I’m not at work, I’ve got to set a time (say, 10 am) where I get off my desktop and do something else, no matter what, whether that’s a chore around the house, or walking the dog, or going to a coffee shop. Forcing myself to move should help me get out of a Discord/YouTube rut even if I’ve fallen into one.

(The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’ll sit down at the desktop to work, get distracted, and then stay there even when I realize I’ve been sucked into a time sink, because maybe in five minutes I’ll stop messing around and work, but that point never comes.)

Identifying the problem is the first step to fixing it, as they say. So we’ll see how this goes.

As for finite goals, my hope is that if I can convert even a third of my current procrastination time into productive time, I can get close to my pre-pandemic levels of productivity. Getting Book 1 ready for submission is my top goal, followed by finishing my novella for TDP, editing/revising my scifi horror novella and my cozy mystery, and getting out a couple more SkillShare classes (with less fixing needed next time. May need to invest in a better microphone). I should also finish my serial (part 3 will be out on Saturday) early-ish in the year and I can put that out as a novella as well. Hopefully more than that will get done, but it feels like a good starting place.

Non-writing wise, 50 books like normal, with the added stipulation each month that one book is from a TBR list, and one book is off my shelf at home. I’ve been reading a LOT of library books, but meanwhile everything else just grows.

And I am going to try out that video game goal I was thinking about. A new game each month or, if I haven’t beaten the previous month’s game yet, at least 5 hours of gameplay. I shall have to ponder what I want to play first. I have 60 or so Steam games and I’ve only beaten like 10 of them. (And I bought a new one a few days ago. Whoops.)

I have a bad habit of playing the games I’m least interested in first (saving the best for last, I guess?) which works when eating your dinner but is a silly way to game, so I’ve got to overcome that too.

Anyway, squiders, do you have goals for the new years?

Santa…Squid?

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! I drew you guys a Landsquid.

I drew him in 10 minutes yesterday. Tried that other set of ink again, and it’s still smudging, sigh. I’m out of ink on my Sakura microns so I need to get some more if someone didn’t get me any for Christmas.

It’s about time to start thinking about stuff for next year, but I’m finding it hard to find the time. Next week, I guess. I think I want to add in a video game goal this year. Keep buying them and not playing them, which is silly. So maybe play a certain number of hours a month? Start a new one? Kinks need to be worked out.

Anyway, I hope everyone’s weekend goes well and no one gets COVID. See you next week!

Books by Kit Campbell