The Struggle to Complete the Story

So here I am, sitting at the keyboard again. Another quick update on progress for you all.

The book editing is going slowly. I admit it, I have been distracted by the need (?), desire (?) to create a wider social media presence, all while still not having finished the first book in final edited form.

I have a focus issue.

I spent some time listening to a range of views on how to get your book marketed and the majority of the advice is all...set up a website...post continuously on social media...respond to everyone else's posts to get noticed...etc.

Well, I have done a lot of that recently. I have joined Wattpad, Substack, Royal Road, Instagram, as well as having been a member of the ProWritingAid community for a while now. Has it made any difference? Am I gaining traction in marketing my book?

The simple answer is probably not enough.

The whole process of spending time on social media 'marketing' is very time consuming and generally draining. Each time I open one or more of the apps, I get a range of posts thrown at me. Some of those are funny, some useful, some just time wasting adverts (and this seems especially true of Instagram, where the algorithms seem to want to send me endless Maine Coon reels - cute but not what I need).

And all this time usage is losing me valuable time when I could be focussed on my editing.

Then, just to compound the problem, I so want to write stuff, that I also get a bit distracted by writing a few chapters of a couple of alternative books I want to get going on. This is draft material, but again is taking me away from editing. One of the books is a prequel to the first major book in my series. Fair enough, it at least has value as part of the Harbinger Six worlds series. But the other is a paranormal mystery story, absolutely nothing to do with the series I want to complete.

In essence, I need to knuckle down to editing, reduce my social media activity and focus totally on completing the first main book - The Rise of the Bane.

Can I do it?

The brutal answer is probably not; or at least not completely.

Firstly, I do think having a social media presence is a sensible thing to help market the books as I write them. To that end, engaging with others isn't a bad process. But I do need to reduce the time I spend actually just trawling the sites, looking for new ideas and posts.

Secondly, I need to reset my objectives. To that end I was looking to get the second half of the book edited by year end. Ambitious? Certainly! Can it be done? Well...I have a holiday or two coming up that will distract heavily from the process and `I am committed to joining NovNov with PWA which will take out the whole of November, but I think I can at least complete the editing of 20 of the remaining chapters which would only leave 10 - so my ambitious aim is probably going to slip by a month, but that would be ok I think.

Thirdly, I do want to progress the plotting of the second book in the Harbinger Six story arc before the end of October - to that end I will have to set aside some time to plot. Normally I am a pantser more than a plotter, but in this case I want to create a more structured plot, so I can work on the draft during the NovN Ov challenge which would make sense.

Finally (fourthly), I will still issue updates and articles to the various social media sites as key topics surface in my mind as deserving to be aired. So far, I have written the blog notes on this website about super powers, Gods, healing factors, superspeed, super strength etc. Without wanting to give spoilers away as I write these, I still want to engage in thoughts on what works and what might not for superhero fiction.

So that's where I am at, just now...struggling to balance all the competing things I either need to do, want to do, or am desperately avoiding doing. And I strongly suspect this is the same situation others find themselves in.

Until next time...