This year hasn’t quite been the most productive of my career thus far, but there have been a lot of awesome things churning in the background. And many of them are about to open some incredible doors that may lead to some amazing experiences.

The trick, though, is to see them through. Remember, a goal means nothing without action.

What Kind of Goodies Are On the Horizon?

As you might know, I have my fingers in a lot of different pies. Unfortunately, this means I’m spread pretty thin. It’s nothing I can’t handle as long as I can hit a certain number of hours worked each week.

Anyway, a lot of these pies are quite tasty, and I’m looking forward to seeing what becomes of them. They may or may not pan out; that isn’t the point. The journey and the experiences are what I’m after.

Some of the newer things on my desk are quite exciting.

Finishing Up Shadows of Atlantic City

Last week, I put the final touches on some edits and handed Shadows of Atlantic City off to the beta readers. Now, I am working on the book’s cover while I wait for their input.

Shadows is easily one of the better books I’ve written. Of course, every author says that about each proceeding book as their careers continue. But there’s definitely something special about this book.

It’s not nearly as dark as Kingmaker, and is a bit more fun and lighthearted than most other things I’ve written. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed it so much. Or maybe because it was my first attempt at a pseudo western, which is a far cry from the fantasy I normally write.

In any case, it’ll be out soon and I plan to do something fun, such as a giveaway and/or a party for its release.

Going Back to School

Starting May 5th, I’m taking the first steps to getting my master’s degree in Creative Writing. But first, I need to finish up my bachelor’s. It’s been a long time since I went to college, but the transcripts from the defunct Westwood college transfered with no problem.

That means I am already a quarter of the way to getting the bachelor’s degree. That’s a fairly decent chunk, all things considered.

Why am I getting a master’s degree? I don’t really know, to be honest. Most people go to school to improve their career paths. I already do what I love, so I doubt it’ll help me find a new job.

Nonetheless, the master’s program should show me a lot of things about my style that I wouldn’t have thought to Google. I had a similar experience when I took the Reedsy masterclass for How to Write a Novel. You can only Google so much, and Tom Bromley highlighted all kinds of things I missed in my research in search engines.

Working the Blog Posts

I’m still trying to find a good balance where all of my blogs get adequate time. For a while there, I was doing quite well keeping two of them on a routine schedule. Well, things kind of fell apart over the past month, and the blogs had to be put on the back burner temporarily.

However, I should be getting back to a routine schedule here in the next week or two. It’s a lot of content, and I’m spending a good part of this week looking for posts that might actually perform well in Google.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why some bloggers excel when I struggle is because I refuse to use AI to write a single line of text. And I only write about things that I have experienced firsthand or of which I have intimate knowledge.

In other words, I’m not cranking out content from automated systems or blowing smoke up someone’s butt calling something the “best” if I’ve never used it.

Expanding the YouTube Channels

One of my primary goals is to get the YouTube channels to generate at least $17.88 per day in ad revenue. That would give one hell of a cushion should my funding dry up while going to college. That is to say, I need $17.88 per day to pay for tuition as a parttime student.

In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a lot of money. I used to make that inside of an hour writing for clients on Textbroker. Well, content mills took a massive hit after generative AI opened the doors to free and crappy content. Content mills aren’t as glorious as they once were.

So, I am doubling down on YouTube and looking for ways to make the process easier for me to make content. It’s the editing portion that winds up chewing most of my time. Since I can’t afford an editor at the moment, I need to make do with what I have – which isn’t much.

I have some decent plans for WriterSanctuary and ColoradoPlays. However, it’ll take some doing to get Crossing Colorado to a monetized state. It’s difficult to pass heath and fitness information if you yourself are not healthy or fit.

People are ficklel, and most don’t listen to someone unless they match their perceptions of what to expect. In other words, I need to lose some damn weight.

Maybe This Can Be a Quarterly Update

Those are the newest things on my desk. I’m mostly excited about the book and college courses, though. I would love to get Shadows of Atlantic City published and marketed so I can start working on Fury, the sequel to Kingmaker. And I am looking forward to what I can learn taking the college classes for writing.

Of course, I won’t get to the good writing stuff until much later. I’m trying to kill off the mundane classes and saving the best for last.

I’m thinking about turning these little updates into a quarterly thing. I want to do something with this website, which is a culmination of everything I do online. And a quarterly update as a creator will give me a few new posts and perhaps entertain anyone reading them.

The problem is that I have to remember to write the updates. If I don’t put it into Asana right now, I’ll surely forget…as I do so often.

I’m also debating on going back to a weekly update of the most pivotal things I’m working on. It’ll be something similar to what I used to do on Buy Me a Coffee. It doesn’t take me very long to crank out these updates, so it’ll be something I could do in the mornings right off the bat for about an hour.

The trick is to write something here that I don’t cover in the Substack, WriterSanctuary’s blog, or the WriterSanctuary YouTube channel. I’ve kind of broken myself up a bit across a variety of platforms.

Then again, the Substack is mostly for fans of my books and my thoughts about self-publishing. This blog is centered around ALL of the things I do online, and WriterSanctuary is meant to help other writers find their paths.

Eh…it’s an existence.

Still Working On the Year of Time

Overall, I’m still utilizing my time better than I did on average through 2024. So, the Year of Time is still holding true. However, I still need to work on keeping myself productive throughout the day.

Not all of the chaos in my life is external. There are a lot of times when I get into my own way and slow progress. For instance, I often take a 30-minute break after working for 25 minutes. That really isn’t sustainable if I want some of these goals to bare fruit.

Take today, for instance. A few paragraphs ago, I damn near got up and took another break instead of finishing the project.

I have a few bad habits that I need to break that I’ve developed over the past few years. No one is perfect, and a lot of these habits aren’t going to be overnight fixes.

Things Are About to Get Interesting

There are several big things that are about to happen in a short amount of time. The two biggest being publishing my next book and starting classes for the bachelor’s program.

I’m also excited to dump more time into the YouTube videos. It would be awesome if I could use the money to pay for my tuition. But no one is going to watch them if you don’t make them. And that comes down to time management.

Overall, I’m still doing better than I did last year. And for me, that’s a win!