Avery K. Tingle, The Gamer Author

May was a good month. It may have been my best month this year, so far. I made the gym a habit. I didn’t accomplish all of my goals but the progress is measurable. There is always room to improve, but this month, I’m not complaining.

What Went Right
Finished “Mysterious Ways”
I still have a horrible fear of failure, which cascades into a fear of finishing. Because once something is finished, it’s that much closer to being out in the world and torn apart. I’m not over that fear, yet, but I took a huge leap forward by making my own deadline. Book Five in the Journey To The Last Fire Series is done.

Produced “First Draft” Notebook
Somewhere between the somewhat-expensive Rocketbook and the dirt-cheap, collectible notebooks you end up throwing away after a year, there’s a dearth of affordable notebooks meant specifically for writers. My old Rocketbook is wearing out, and I love the product but it can get a little pricey. That’s when this idea hit. I plan to have it up for sale on Amazon by the middle of June.

Finished EDU Content Creation Workshop’s Gig Seeking Course
If you plan to make a full-time living creatively, investing in yourself is a must. Beyond that, you actually have to make time to educate yourself. The EDU Content Creation Workshop is one of the best educational websites available for creatives. I’m returning to freelance work this summer and needed to learn how to better position myself. This course did it. Write this into your budget. You won’t regret it.

Began “Midnight”
Traditionally I take breaks between stories, but after completing “Mysterious Ways” I took a look at my career and wasn’t happy with what I saw. I publish too infrequently and allow myself too much downtime between stories. Following months of planning, I hit the ground running with the sixth and final installment of my thriller fantasy series “Journey To The Last Fire”. It’s very much a first draft, but that’s better than no draft.

Cleared Podcast Playlist
I had this bad habit of letting my playlists accrue to insurmountable heights and then sweeping them under the rug. Bad idea.
I started making room for these during the ride home from the night job (which lasts about an hour). This month, I dove into KM Weiland’s Archetypal Character series and came away with better ideas of who my characters are. I already stacked my reading list for this month, too.

What Went Wrong
Pitch A Minimum of Five Clients
I wanted to hit the ground running with the freelancing endeavor. To that end, I wanted to build a list of contacts before I moved at the end of the month. May have gotten a little ahead of myself.
Going through EDU’s Gig Seeking Course taught me that I knew next to nothing about pitching clients (or anything else about the business, to be honest). So I invested the time into learning. June will be partially devoted to seeking work, now that I have the knowledge.

Begin Cat Rambo Series
I picked up a few of Cat Rambo’s wonderful courses on writing late last year, and I’ve been letting them languish ever since. I can only do so much education in a month, and I’m going to block off time in between Midnight and the Last Fire to dive into these.

GIMP 2.0.1 Tutorial
My plan was to download the series from Youtube and then go over them at the night job. I’m a hands-on learner, and I need to have what I’m working on in front of me to learn it. This is especially true with graphic design. So this is something I should’ve made time for at home. Also, again, I can only devote so much time to education per month. I need to make time for this in order to better my graphic design skill, so I can open up another revenue stream and design my own covers.

What I didn’t do was beat myself up for the mistakes I made in May. I acknowledged what worked and what needed to change. I haven’t written up June’s goals yet. They’ll be somewhat truncated as I have to focus on moving, but some things will get done. Some things will not. And again, I’ll adjust and move forward.

Thanks for reading.

Avery K. Tingle is a scifi/fantasy author currently residing in the Pacific Northwest. Owned by two cats, he is passionate about social justice, Star Wars, and mental health. Connect to his award-winning writing and social media here.