Reading Round Up: 20th – 26th February 2020

The deadline for the novel I’m writing to include in the Darkness Rising boxed set is literally two weeks away and I have been doing far more editing than reading this week. It’s been keeping me awake at night, worrying about getting everything done on time. Creating whole worlds and fantasies for entertainment is something I wouldn’t trade in for anything but deadlines are the biggest burden of being an author.

I managed to read this week’s book Siren by Jade Thorn (check out the review here) in two big sittings. Partly because I enjoyed it and partly because I didn’t really have much choice. Trying to find time to read this week has been next to impossible so once I’ve got the book in my hands, I’ve got to read it and not stop for anything.

But this week I did reach out to several authors in my genre to ask about their “author anxieties” to see what kind of problems need solving in our author brains. I got a lot of amazing feedback from some fellow authors and now my list of anxious author topics is way longer than I expected!

We’re all battling the days and everything in them to get to where we want to be, some harder than others but that’s just luck. Unexpectedly, The Anxious Author feature is actually taking off so I’m anticipating running it for a long time and I’ve already had a request to guest post on the feature. I’ll let you know once we’ve hashed out all the details who to expect and what they will be talking about!

This is definitely one of those weeks that I will look back on hopefully in a few years when maybe I’m a bit more of a successful author and remember that this was one of the weeks that made it happen. The hard ones where there was no time to read or write but I had to do both in abundance. The weeks that feel like you’re trying to run through a swamp with weights strapped to your ankles.

The thing is, even though it has been a long week (I know, it’s only Thursday, that fact doesn’t help in the slightest!) it makes me feel motivated. When the seasoned professionals in any industry talk about hard work and the hours you put in and the blood, sweat and tears that you’ll leak, it’s easy enough to take that on when you first start out. So when we’ve had a tough week and we come out the other end, we can feel like we’ve really achieved something.

This is what it takes and we’re doing it.

Next week probably isn’t going to be any easier, in fact it’ll probably be tougher still until the deadline has passed. I’m out of optimism this week but in truth, I don’t want to lie to myself about it. If it’s going to be another long week, I’m happy to do it if it means getting that bit closer to my dreams and goals.

Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!