June 2022 in Review

Health/Fitness I made it to “exercised 20 times” in June! I didn’t even have to rely on my ‘at least do some stretching’ fall back.

I probably will not exercise today so I’ll get up now and do some stretching. (Also, when I say “some stretching” I mean “leg splits”, so my idea of stretching is comparatively intense. n.n)

Writing

I added 11,100 words to Alien Peacelords: it’s at 108,000. Percentage complete is at 83.25%, up by 8.25%. Estimated word count is still about on track.

I reached my June writing goal halfway through the month, and then ran out of steam. I’m very close to the end of the book and feeling like the romance is inadequately established and I’ve run out of space in which to fix it.

The Business of Writing

Likewise, I made my “spend 2 hours on Demon’s Alliance” early in June and then noped out of doing any more. I have detailed outlines of two new sections, so now I need to (a) figure out how to fit them into the existing text and (b) actually write them.

But progress!

Art

In my May month-in-review, I wrote that I was concerned that the time I was devoting to art practice was cutting into my writing time. And: “I do not want to spend more time painting than writing. Or, um, editing.”

In June, I proceeded to spend much more time painting than writing or editing: thirty-two hours.

So: yay, I’m getting in some painting practice! I might even be improving my skill level!

Nonetheless. I do not want to use ‘well, I already did something productive’ as my excuse for not doing anything else. Related: I do not want to use ‘I'm not writing enough’ as my excuse for not painting. Still a work in progress.

Social

I have not yet returned to hermit-mode, although I do think about it. Case rates in my area are way above their low in April, but also nowhere near their peak in January. Lut and I have talked about getting our second booster shots, and I think we’ll finally do it this weekend.

Gaming

Terrycloth and I played a new game together, Space Base. Technically, I have played this game before: Lut and I played it at Tabletop back in 2019 or so, once or twice on the same evening. I’m counting it as ‘learning a new game’, however, since I didn’t remember anything about it other than “this looks familiar and I think I liked it.” Lut liked it enough to join in playing with us, even. ♥

June Goals

• Spend 2 hours on editing list/final edits for Demon's Alliance: Done!
• Exercise 13 times (aerobics) and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes: Done!
• Look at goal list occasionally: Done!
• Look at schedule occasionally: Yes!
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: Done!
• Get Alien Peacelords to 82%: Done!

Stretch Goals:

• Consumption tracking: Done! Much less phoned-in than usual.
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): massive overkill on this one
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: done!
• Learn a new game: did this one too!
• Exercise 20+ times: just barely!

July Goals

• Spend 5 hours on final revisions (and/or further refining editing list) for Demon's Alliance: This is ambitious relative to how little I’ve been doing lately, but seriously. If I can paint for 30 hours in a month, I can use 5 to complete this book. Finally.
• Finish Alien Peacelords draft: also ambitious relative to the minimal progress of the last two weeks. But 4thewords.com is running their CampNano event and I need to start writing again for that anyway. I am, in fact, concerned that I don’t have an outline for a new story ready to go for when I finish Alien Peacelords and revisions on Demon’s Alliance, and that I will run out of stuff to write before I finish all the CampNano quests. But I will deal with that when I get there.
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic), and at least 7 more times that can be just stretching for five minutes.
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You.
• Make an editing list for A Game to You.
• Work on notes/outline for a different book
• Create complete editing list for Demon’s Alliance
• Complete final edits on Demon’s Alliance
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Consumption tracking
• Work on cover art for Angel’s Grace
• Create final editing list for Angel's Grace
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a CC 0 reference. (Making a painting that combines multiple references will totally count for this.)
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
• Exercise 20+ times

Doing Your Best, and The Parable of the Pottery Class

The parable of the pottery class goes like this:

Two groups of students take a pottery class. One group is graded only on their best pot. The other group is graded on the total number of completed pots they produce, regardless of quality.

At the end of the class, the group graded on total number of pots not only produces more pots, but has also produced better pots. The group graded on their best pot -- agonizing over trying to make each pot perfect -- learned less about how to throw pots. Their best work is not as good as the other group’s best work.

As far as I can tell, this story is apocryphal: it never actually happened. It makes a good story and it rings true, which gives it a longevity that many scientific studies lack.

My recent obsession with digital painting and completing one study of an hour or so each day has brought this parable to mind often.

In contrast, one of my friends quote-tweeted a comic artist saying something like ‘your audience can tell the difference between your best work and phoning it in. Fix your mistakes.’

There is a natural tension between the quantity and quality. The parable of the pottery class is flawed. It only works if the students want to improve despite the lack of incentive or reward for doing so.

You always need to care about both. If you don’t care about quantity, you’ll never finish anything. If you don’t care about quality, you’ll never improve.

But most advice I hear is on the lines of “finish things and move on.” Don’t rewrite the same book endlessly. Don’t labor over the same painting for years. Declare victory or declare defeat, but call it done and do the next thing. That quote-tweet has stuck with me because of the rarity of hearing someone advocate for no, don’t give up. Make each thing the best.

I gave up on today’s CuratorPrompts (#79) at 37 minutes, because I didn’t want to work on it any longer than that. It’s not my best work. Every painting I’ve done for CuratorPrompts is not my best work. Instead, I am doing the best I can in a limited amount of time. This one is done. There will be another CuratorPrompts tomorrow. I can try to do better on that one.

It stands in contrast with the third and fourth Demon’s Series books. I finished drafting the fourth book in January of 2021. It’s been eighteen months and I’m still not ready to release either one. I haven’t spent much of that time actually working on the books, of course. I’ve written two other books and 5/6ths of a third during that time, and edited one of those. (This is slower than my productivity in some previous periods, granted). Mostly, I’ve dragged my feet and postponed doing any work, rather than labored but made no progress.

In many ways, it is easier to let go of a picture than a book. If I give up on a picture and show it to everyone, and two years later I decide to paint the same picture again but better -- the same people will still look at it. Many artists make a habit of re-doing paintings to see how they’ve improved or changed over time. And I have even less investment in the CuratorPrompts paintings: these are studies completed for practice, not my own vision that I want to share.

But if I give up on a book and publish it, that’s it. If I made substantial revisions to it or rewrote it years after publication, few readers would give the new version a try.

So I will persevere.