Mupdate

Mupdate = a portmanteau of “me” and “update.” Mupdates!

So. Since I now put these newsletters into Instagram posts, I may start having to make them shorter… because Instagram sure be a fickle beastie. I had to make special templates and it still takes like two hours!

But it is what it is. If I wanna share on the social medias I have to play by their rules.

Anyway! This month was a bit of a quiet one. Bathroom 2 simmered until a few days ago because Luis was busy on another job and I had to make sure all my tile got in on time.

But now he’s started, and the demo is underway!

It’s always neat to see what a house looks like with all its clothes taken off. Strangely vulnerable!

Aside from that, the biggest thing I have to update on is my bullet journal. I went to a stationary store and saw one and just thought… why not.

I had quite a good time learning about it. And… buying pens. I had very few colored pens. Now I just have to get in the habit of updating it.

The most challenging part is marking off my time by the hour. It’s especially challenging to remember what exactly I did a day after I did it. So, my accuracy is… not perfect. But it’s definitely something different!

Here’s what that looks like. Also, excuse the stickers…. I am very bad at using them!

Might transfer the hourly stuff to my computer. I keep picking up the wrong pens and mixing up colors and such. We shall see.

So now you know how I spend my time… mostly working! Though this month has been wind-down month as well, due to the holidays coming up.

Focus Time!

Apsu’s Children Novella

Addressed my outline again and made a 3rd draft. Got some feedback. And with the feedback, along with some market research, I’ve decided I need to do… more research, haha.

I want to align the book more with the historical fantasy genre. And what’s currently popular there is myth retellings. So, I’m going to try leaning more into the myth of Apsu from ancient Mesopotamia. Which means I need to learn some more about him and ancient Mesopotamia.

Oof, I never do myself favors do I? Ha.

vTubing

Laying out my goals last month really helped! As a result, I was able to finish the opening stinger animation for my YouTube videos. Here’s a little GIF preview:

I keep looking at my list of things to do and getting a little overwhelmed. It’s really just a lot of stuff.

Breaking it down and thinking about ways to make it manageable is helpful. I’m still not setting deadlines for anything, but I’m starting to think I need to. So… we shall see.

Fundamentals of Lighting Schoolism Class

After laying out my goals, I’ve started to re-evaluate what I need to work on education-wise. I’m thinking of changing it up to work on the expressive character class or the storyboarding.

Expressive characters is winning out because I need to develop a shorthand for storyboard drawing, and I think learning how to draw expressively will help make developing a shorthand easier.

Preoccupations

Small one this month. I’ve been using my bullet journal to list out to-do’s.

Also attended the Digital Publishing Report conference in late November. The Author’s Guild put together some really interesting insights on how book sales are going at the moment.

Most interesting bit to me was that self-published authors (who are full-time authors) actually earn more money over a 5-year period than traditionally published authors. In fact, traditionally published authors lose money over that same 5-year period.

Some big factors for why full-time traditionally published authors lose money over the 5-year period while indie authors earn more are:

• Indie authors are simply more invested in their work and push it harder in marketing efforts.

• Books come out less frequently for traditional publishers. It just takes longer to produce them.

• More books = more longevity and more success.

• More books also = more experience in publishing

Another interesting insight that came out of the data presented was that authors who sign exclusivity contracts—such as with Amazon—earn less over time as well.

My takeaways from this are: Publish more, publish often, and publish widely.

Indie Publishing

So… long story short, I’ve also finally decided to go full into self-publishing a few stories for the learning experience. So just going to transcribe some of my bullet journal notes here:

Working on outlines for three stories:

• Research tropes in them for marketing purposes

• Research comparative titles and integrate those into the outlines

• Integrate the creation process into vTuber video blogs

Setup for sales:

• Purchased three new domains. None are live yet!

• Need to code the new author website based on the Marley Nox resume website

• Need to make some updates to the Marley Nox resume website

Make up some workflows/pipelines:

• Writing fiction

• Publishing fiction

• Publishing audiobooks

• Animation

And… that’s it. Just drawings on the drawing board!

Faretheewell

My newsletter now has an archive! Yaaay! Like a little blog. So, if you liked any past issues, you can go back and check them out again.

And thus we come to the end of yet another scribbling.

See you in the new year! :3