What did you get done this week?
The 4 productivity traps to avoid
When the topic of my writing comes up, people usually ask me “how did you write 2 books and a comic with a full-time job and kids?”
The answer is kind of boring: slowly.
I started writing short pieces of fiction 12 years ago, published my first short story in 2014 on Amazon, published part 1 of Guild of Tokens as a novella in 2018, the second part at the end of 2018, then the full book in 2019, and finally book 2 in 2023. I started my path into comics in 2020, finished the script for Blood of Atlantis issue 1 in 2023, published issue 1 in fall 2024, and am about to release issue 2 to my Kickstarter backers.
So from my point of view, I could have gotten a lot more done in that time span, and I am constantly harping on myself to up my word count. But I also try to keep things in perspective.
If you are struggling to finish your creative work, here are four productivity traps to look out for.
Finishing and releasing a project into the world is certainly motivating, but my infrequent release schedule means that it’s hard to use that as a primary driver. Instead, I try to just move things forward every day or every week, little by little, bit by bit.
This helps stave off trap 1: thinking how great it would be to write a book or write a comic. It’s tempting just to sit around day-dreaming about what that would feel, but dreaming without action doesn’t accomplish anything.
Doing admin work instead of writing is trap 2. Because hey, you need to market, communicate with creative partners, and do other back-end stuff to sell books and comics! So it counts. Except it kind of doesn’t. A productive week in my book is balancing the creative and the admin so there will be more books and comics to come out in the future. This newsletter has one-foot in and one-foot out of this trap. It’s certainly creative and people can pay for it, but it’s not an end to itself. (Although I may collect some of my Amazing Journey columns eventually into a nice ebook to sell). Putting it out next week helps me stay accountable to you and creates a streak, which can be a powerful tool to staying productive.
Speaking of productivity, trap 3 is trying to create the perfect productivity system. The reason it’s a trap is because you can create the most perfect Rube Goldberg system, but it’s completely meaningless if you don’t actually use the system.
Because I was juggling so many projects, a few months back I created a Notion writing calendar template where I blocked out which project I was going to work on which week. I managed to keep that going for a month before the system fell apart. Not that I stopped writing, but I just kept working on the same project every day, so the need to keep track of that seemed silly. But I have fallen into a bit of a rut with The Gaunlet, so next week I am going to try working on something different each day to see if that helps. Here’s my writing calendar in case you are curious:
Finally, trap 4 is watching other people’s success stories and trying that to reverse engineer your own success. There’s a reason that the most popular videos on a random successful YouTube channel is most often “how I got 100K subscribers.” People love hearing how other people succeeded. It’s super important to learn what others in your field have done that’s worked and not worked, but the more years I do this, the more I learn that everyone’s path is unique. Slavishly copying someone else’s road to success is like using a zero-day hack the day after. You need to figure out success for yourself.
So in that vein and in the vein of trap 1, I of course watched these two videos about husband-wife indie game dev teams and how they achieved success:
Stay tuned next week, when I unveil my newest venture: my journey into becoming an indie game developer! (Just kidding).
And now, as we are talking about getting things done (a book I started but didn’t finish), here is a rundown of everything I did this week / newsworthy things for my ongoing creative projects!
Secret Sauce / CloakRoom Kickstarter campaign
The Kickstarter for The CloakRoom issue 4, which includes my new cozy fantasy story Secret Sauce, has a bit under 2 weeks left! Back the campaign here and get 5 stories along with 3 back issues for over 450 pages of comics!
And then watch this fun clip I made showing the process of page 1 from script to finished comic page:
Blood of Atlantis
I finished the Letters column for Blood of Atlantis issue 2 and Toben Racicot, our letterer extraordinaire, is busy working his magic on finishing the digital copy of the issue. It’s looking likely that we’ll be able to send out the digital version and the backer surveys next week, which is super exciting, as only the creative team has read this issue up until this point. Hopefully it’s good! (Just kidding, it is).
If you missed the Kickstarter campaign, you can pre-order the issue through our BackerKit pre-order store and get a digital copy next week!
NYC Questing Guild
This was what I spent my writing time on this week. Spoiler alert: I didn’t get a lot of writing done. But! I am almost finished with the current chapter, which has been taking forever, so I am hopeful that with it finished, I can go guns blazing into the next chapter. It helps that this is a multi-POV book, so I can switch perspectives.
I also recorded the next chapter in the Guild of Magic author-read free audiobook, which you can listen to below. Check out the description for links to part 1 and to the professional Guild of Tokens audiobook, which is also up on my channel. While you’re there, like and subscribe so more people can find the audiobooks.
Stuff I read this week
This creatively titled section will recap the comics and books I read over the past week.
Drown Deep, by Phil Williams - book 2 in The Blood Scouts military fantasy series, which chronicles an all-female platoon during a secondary fantasy world version of World War I. You can read my review of book 1, However Many Must Die, here. This is one of my favorite indie fantasy series and I’m super excited for book 3!
One Piece, volume 63: after a bit of a hiatus, I am a few volumes into the New World arc, which apparently is like 20+ volumes long. I don’t know why they stopped dividing the arc labels into smaller arcs, but maybe it will make sense when I get to the end! Anyway, Luffy and crew are currently at Fish-Man Island, if that means anything to you. While reading, I had a brilliant endgame theory that I just had to run by my friend who is all caught up and he confirmed I was 100% right:
Assorted comics
I am months behind on my comic reading and am desperately trying to catch up. This week I managed to finish reading my pulls from the week of March 12, so only three more months to go! Unfortunately that isn’t even accurate because for some of my pulls, I am volumes behind so they go on the shelf for a bulk read later. Too many comics, too little time.
But I am really looking forward to finding out what happens at the end of X-Manhunt because it definitely hasn’t already been spoiled!
Adventures in cooking
I don’t know if any of you want to see what I have been making, but you haven’t been vocal enough to tell me to stop, so you get another food picture this week. This is a pre-roll egg, spinach, tomato and feta wrap. I made 12 so I don’t have to make more for a few weeks!
And that’s it for this week!
If you’re a writer or a person who tries to stay productive, what are the productivity traps you’ve fallen into? And how have you gotten out of them?
And if you’re a reader, what have you been reading lately?
Sound off in the comments!