If there is a tier list for good excuses on being late for a blog post, then having a child has to be up near the S class. I feel like I’m starting each post with an apology (to no one as of yet) and an excuse to myself why I’m not keeping up with my two week goal, but the last couple of times feel like reasonable exceptions!

Both mommy and baby are doing excellent, and I just got off two weeks of Paternal leave during which I was hoping to get work on Penumbra done as well as get a blog post up, but neither happened unfortunately. In fact, aside from a bit of miniature painting (yes, I am at that level of nerd) I didn’t get much done! Or that much rest, but I suppose that’s to be expected with a newborn. Really I don’t know what we were thinking having three kids!

I did have an excellent experience however that has helped me decide to dedicate myself to working harder on my writing. It’s looking in on the writing world to convince yourself that writing is a simple way to make quick money. Unfortunately (except maybe under drastically rare exceptions) that’s simply not the case. It’s a load of work with no guarantee of any pay off significant or otherwise. But if you want to succeed you have to put in the work. That sounds like generic, over the counter advice, but I think it applies to writing just as much, if not more than anything else. I saw a quote by Elon Musk that said something about success means putting in 80 to 100 work weeks. I don’t think I can dedicate that much time to this, but I think it’s a good ideal to have in mind if you want to be a successful writer/author.

On another subject, I read an interesting comment on Reddit that I think everyone should keep in mind when writing. A user made a comment (in relation to coincidence, a topic I would like to spend more time on some other time) that they read to see how characters get out of difficult situations. I think at my core I knew that was an important concept of writing (and indeed likely everybody who writes or reads does) but I hadn’t thought to articulate it that way. Writing is interesting if there is conflict, but we can’t just have conflict piled on top of itself without being resolved. It is about conflict, because we want to see how interesting characters deal with that conflict. When writing any scene I (you, everybody) has to keep in mind that the reader may be interested in your world, or your magic system, or your villain, but what they really want to see is a fun and interesting way for your character to escape their conflict. Something to consider.

My goal is to have Penumbra‘s polish finished in 30 days. Gotta get to work!