An indie author’s regular spoiler-free update on his writing, editing, cover design, marketing, publishing, website maintenance, and blogging. Issue 89.
This week in one word: streaky.
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Previously on WWW…
In the week ahead, my review of Kill Switch by William Hertling is scheduled for Monday. I’ll return to working on the two cover designs I have in progress, but I want to focus more on the edits to The Spike Volume 0 and/or the revisions to The Spike Volume 2.
After three weeks of focussing on cover designs, I switched to other tasks this week.
The majority of my writing time was spent revising The Spike Volume 2. The previous couple of weeks, I’d only totalled about five chapters, but this week, I revised ten and two halves (of different chapters). There weren’t any major rewrites, but plenty of smaller changes, either adding, moving, or removing a sentence, paragraph, or group of paragraphs.
Most of the revisions are character-related, adding more depth to them or their relationships. A few times I’ve moved bits earlier in the story, as it would make more sense for the character to have had a particular thought or feeling nearer to the event rather than too long after the fact.
I have 36 chapters and the epilogue to go; there are some bigger rewrites still to come.
As scheduled, I posted my review of Kill Switch by William Hertling on Monday. It’s an interesting technothriller but isn’t as good as the first in the series, which I still recommend.
I did relatively little cover design work this week, just over three hours on The Spike Volume 1 second edition cover, and did a big circle. I don’t mean I literally drew a big circle, I mean I tried an idea to add more detail to the design, didn’t like it, went off on a tangent, came back, looked at an older reference image I’d been using, and realised what I should have been doing for the detail.
So whilst the cover isn’t any closer to being finished, I do now have a better idea what I need to do.
As I was lying down to sleep on Wednesday night, I had an idea that I think could be really good for The Spike Volume 0 cover. It’s going to be a collection of six short stories, so I wanted it to represent all of them in some way, and I’ve come up with something that might work.
The next step is to mock it up and see if it looks any good in practice.
It wasn’t part of my plan for the week, but I began writing my next blogpost. The planning is (mostly) complete and I’ve started typing up the content. I don’t have an intended publication date yet, but expect it’ll be a couple of weeks minimum.
I’ve also come up with some new ideas, including a potential new series, so may begin work on those soon.
Also also, I have it in mind that I want to post a blog series about my books around the time they’re published, so I may start work on some of those in the near future so that they’re ready to go at the right time.
Last week was the first time I’d hit at least 50% for my creativity vs consumption for three weeks in a row, and as I mentioned then, as far as I’m concerned a streak starts when it reaches three. I wanted to keep it going.
This week, my percentage was 53%. Now that’s four in a row.
This is a much harder sequence to keep going than writing every day, but that had seemed difficult at the beginning. Tomorrow will be my 800th consecutive day working on my writing. Every day now, it’s not even a question of whether I will do some writing, it’s when. So who knows how long I can stay above the 50/50 split?
I still need to find a way to work faster though…
My priorities for the next seven days will be revising The Spike Volume 2 and progressing the cover design for The Spike Volume 1 second edition.
I’ll also continue writing my next blogpost, and want to edit The Spike Volume 0 too.
I’m nearing the end of reading The Poet Empress by Shen Tao so my review will probably go live either late next week or early the week following.
That’s too much work for one week so something will inevitably be left for later.
Reading this week: Contrapposto by Dave Eggers and The Poet Empress by Shen Tao
Watching this week: Peaky Blinders season 1 (rewatch) and Schitt’s Creek season 1
Playing this week: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
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In addition to the three short stories available to read for free here, there are three more yet to be published that make up The Spike Volume 0. The new three are in the final stages, and will be available some time before Volume 2 is published.
I’m working on a new cover design for a second edition of The Spike Volume 1, with two different versions being developed in tandem whilst I decide which colour layout I prefer.
I’m also working on covers for the two individual parts, 1.1_Application Infiltration and 1.2_Laying Down The Law, which are going to be published separately for the first time. I want both to have a similar style and layout.
Draft 3 is under way for The Spike Volume 2!
Volume 2 is my biggest and most complex project to date, containing three separate books from the perspectives of seven characters.
The aim is to finish Volume 2 in 2026.
Early brainstorming has been done for The Spike Volume 3. I know how it must begin; I have an ending that I think will be great; and I have a long list of ideas (that keeps growing) to get from one to the other that needs to be whittled down and put in an order. I’m not intending to do much more work on this until revision is complete on Volume 2.
I have other project ideas that are on the backburner:
Project Lawless is a non-fiction book.
Project Fang is a fiction book that I’m still trying to work out a way to incorporate into The Spike.
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Every week I share something that’s inspired my creativity.
This week, as most of my time has been spent on words rather than cover designs, I chose instrumental music as my background noise, and my go-to is the Mr Robot soundtrack by Mac Quayle.
It’s got to the point where I can always immediately bring the opening of the second track to mind, and it always gets me in the mood to write. I don’t start by listening to this track every time – I’ve got all four seasons and it’s pretty long, and it’s all really good – but having a Pavlovian-ish trigger to get me started on a writing session is invaluable.
What’s inspired you this week? Please share in the comments.
See you next week.
Arrowmaker Books 