Hey dragonlings! Welcome to my channel. Here we talk about reading and writing-although mostly writing.You'll find live writing sprints, vlogs, gameplay, writing discussions and more on this channel.
S.D. Hegyes is a pen name Skye writes and publishes fantasy books under. She currently resides in Montana with her husband, two monster-munchkins, a bearded dragon, three dogs, and three cats. She tends to write about monsters (and other creatures that go bump in the night) falling in love.
🤖 I work on multiple projects but usually in different stages. Before it was two drafting, one revision and one editing. Now it's three revising and one editing, might even get to four revising in the new year! 😅
The most I can write on at one time is four. Most of the time I write on two at a time while I edit another, and then format another. So technically four projects at once, but only drafting two. So far it's kept me in a decent rotation. If I keep this momentum, I think (and hope) that I can publish one book a month. With that being said, I'm honestly aiming for a book published every two months, just in case. PUBLISH THEM ALL ON THE SAME DAY could you imagine?! *is ded*
I did know people who were dropping multiple releases on the same day at one point. They had a rotation of 3 series and dropped a new book from each series on one day each month. It was CRAZY!!! But it worked for them... More power to them!
You've got a healthy rotation going! I like it! Maybe once I have more works out and one or two completed series, I could manage to make my brain agree to something like that... Maybe...
🤖I usually only work on one idea at a time but this quarter I've decided to work on two ideas. One will be a novel I finish and publish in the spring of 2025 and another that I will attempt to finish and publish for 2025 spooky season. I used to write quicker but my muse is lacking right now LOL I also used to write stories based on dreams but with my current sleep medications I'm not remembering as many dreams so that has slowed down my writing process
Oooh! I get the slowing down of dreams. I used to be able to remember my dreams on a daily basis, and now it's more like one a week? Bi-weekly? It's so weird in some ways. Good luck with the stories! You've got this!
If you’re like me and have multiple story ideas, how do you work on all of them at once? If you’re someone who only works on a single idea from beginning to end before you move on to something else, do you wish you worked on more ideas at once?
I need to start a "braindump" journal. I've got a little faux suede cover notebook that is all the creative things right now. Plot bunnies, outlines, etc. I've been getting in to modifying composition notebooks, lately... And I love college ruled, too. Although the satisfaction of a speedy fill with wide ruled is legit.
I have A TON of scrapbook paper from the days I was doing scrapbooking. I've been debating changing the covers of the composition notebooks and just... haven't... Probably won't at this point too. Love the idea though!
I love a good short story from new-to-me authors. It gives me a taste of what they can do and tells me if I'll like their writing style without committing to a full-length novel. Plus... They are HARD to nail down (in my opinion).
Great Stream. 10 years of writing = 10 years of Editing! (or that's how it feels). We are talking about putting $100 a month next year toward book stuff for conventions and such.
If I'd been smart, I never would have joined. I *know* I can't write a 5K short and still my brain was like, "Well, we could *try*..." Nope... We couldn't. I ended up dropping and I'm glad I did.
Gave up on the kanban board a long time ago. Just wasn’t working for me! 🤷🏻♀️ Overhauling my planning because that has become too overwhelming right now so I’ve cut it right back to something more manageable for me. 😄
Thank you! I keep adding more ideas on a daily basis to my plot bunny bank. I've been able to shove some ideas into current series/worlds, but others are gonna have to sit and stew for a bit.
Very interesting! You've got a ton of great themes. I need to go through all the stories I've written over the years... at least the ones that I have left. I lost a few in a computer hard drive crash.
I feel this. I'm currently trying to make a list of all the short stories I've written over the years and... Yeah... I've lost a lot to the gods of technology over the years...
⚽ My biggest issue is making plans based on the one day where everything went right and I achieved astronomical amounts of things. "I wrote 18k words in a day, once. Any day I do less than that, I'm clearly a lazy failure." It's harmful, and awful, and I'm doing my best to move past that. Or at least give myself the grace to acknowledge that sometimes IRL stuff derails my best attempts at being creative. That doesn't mean I failed. It means I need to adjust, course correct, and keep going.
This. All of this. It's such a hard balance. Sometimes I'm glad I don't remember things unless I write them down combined with the outta-sight-outta-mind method. It means that I can't remember everything I accomplished on REEEALLY good days unless I go back to any records I have of such. It's the one time it's such a blessing. Bring flexible and able to adjust is such a good theory... Even if it's sometimes difficult to put into practice.
Coughing... when I was recording Andino Andina the podbook, I needed to complete the recording before moving, but I was also recovering from the pandemonium. 3 words - breathe - 3 words - breathe cough breath - 3 words. Believe me it was a lot of work to puzzle that together and making sure tone of voice etc sounded cohesive. But I did it. Also looking around for a new way to write that suits current, low spoon, foggy head, me, that doesn't create so much editing and revising. Project paralysis is me too.
When I watch streams for writing sprints, I still use my timer no matter how long there sprints are. I just use them as body-doubling help so I get started and keep going. All of my projects have their own planners for organizing the project, and then I have one hb90 planner for tracking weekly tasks for all projects, and then daily plan, and then daily doing lists (which change based on what I got done the previous day). I have my kaban as a weekly board, and it's in my planner, I don't interact well with the wall. I do however keep my book progress on the window so I see it every day. I'm redoing it for the new quarter. :-) Love your videos. I found one of your books. I'm enjoying it. Thanks for publishing and sharing with the world! ⚽
Thank you for reading it! I promise, more are coming soon... ish... I would love it if all my projects had their own planners, if for no other reason than to see how long it took me to work on them and what I accomplished when. That's essentially what I'm trying to accomplish with my Notion, but I go days/weeks/months without updating it too. All about balance!
I love trying new things! And I even tend to revisit things over and over because as life circumstances change, what didn't work for me at one point might work now. And vice versa.
My WHOLE thing didn't work. I've had no motivation to do ANYTHING. I've been doing the bare minimum with this channel. I'm hoping that I can accomplish Kate's 100KQ4 thing so I can get the stories out of my head. It's getting cooler here (I lied, it's still 90 out) so I can get out and walk more...I need to work more on me because I'm not and just sliding down the mud hill. I'm working on something for a different channel that I've wanted to do for a while. I just need to not wait for motivation, I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen and it's just...not.
I decided to post more on TikTok, stop thinking RU-vid equals book sales and I have. Made a publishing plan going forward for the next six months. Oh and I’ve decided using initials and work g romance wasn’t the right move. Sales tell me so. My kan ban board hasn’t been touched all quarter, too. I need to figure out a better system and where I want to look and track things.
@@SDHegyes well it’s hard to figure out what words to post plus what background. And I can do like five of them in a day for drafts. But I don’t feel like it correlates to sales. But I also don’t show my face on my author TT account. But I’m in the process Of changing things up and see how things go after I implement those changes/
@@SDHegyes well it’s a plan that’s in my head and haven’t shared really but also I have realized I need to step announcing publishing g plans cause they rarely work out
@@StephanieWhitson yeah... My publishing plans (for now) are: when a book is completely ready to go, I'll schedule a 2-3 month pre-order for it. Annnd that's the extent of it. Puck's Choice is the exception and that's because of its publish-versary.
Doing the sprints that are different lengths did not work. Limiting myself to 3 projects, and 3 goals doesn't work for me. It causes my anxiety to be higher, letting all the projects exist and be planned loosely, and working on them slowly works better. Hard deadlines of any kind don't work for me. Chronic health issues wipe me out when they flare up every month, so all my plans and goals have to allow for giant time shifts. I'm autistic, and adhd so time blocking, and scheduling what projects I will work on on each day doesn't work. I've setup the weekly hb90 lists now, and I use more of a bullet journal style to shift things around daily as my brain picks what it's willing to do. -- hydraulic for the chair might need to be replaced, amazon sells the parts for most chairs.
Ooooh! Thanks for the suggestion about the chair. It's becoming more of a problem every day. More for my own annoyance than anything else. I think one of the biggest things is finding out what does/doesn't work for you. And it's weird because sometimes those things change. The kanban board doesn't work for me now, but maybe in another 5 years I won't be able to function without it. Who knows?
Yeah i dont like trigger warnings personally. It spoils books imo. I think trigger warnings should be kept on a separate website for people who want/need them. [Also why do people who have certain triggers read dark romance/horror/etc??? Lol]
That was something I wondered to, but I think the answer lies in that they find some things in dark romance/horror/etc therapeutic but others triggering? Like, I'm not a fan of slasher or gore-filled horror that presents in a lot of zombie-related media, but I love zombies. I'm my own contridiction! lol
I'm so used to headaches, I've learned there's some things I can still do with one. It just depends on the intensity, and I can't do it long without breaks. They still suck though.
So glad I'm not the only one with multiple pen names and a lengthy list of ideas! When you're ready I'd be happy to tell you whether your cozy mystery is a cozy or not.
I would love that! Yeah, 20 years of writing and whenever someone says, "I don't have that many ideas" I'm sitting there going, "HOW?!? Can we trade places? My brain won't STOP giving me ideas."
🌠 Pen Names, only one. I started planning them 4 yrs ago and then decided not to. I don't want to maintain author sites for each pen name. I'm also stuck in editing my books I currently have 3 in edits, and can't seem to get out of that phase, to a finished state I can publish, so pen names are not relevant yet. :-) Love your videos. Thank you for sharing.
I think keeping up with social media is the reason I decided I didn't care who knew my pen names were me. I'm not planning on using separate social media. When I get to the point where I'm publishing under all those names, the pub house website will be up and running, and their socials will be managed by someone who has more time and energy to devote to it than me, and that's how all marketing for those names will be done. lol I know all about getting stuck in editing. Many of my projects are one draft 3+ because I get shiny new ideas that can work better, screwing up everything else I've already written. I'm glad you're loving the videos. 💙
I keep joking that I'm going to randomly drop a whole bunch of stories at one time to the point where someone somewhere accuses me of using AI to write books that have been sitting on my computer for 10+ years. lol
That's an idea I hadn't considered. I definitely had that idea for another book whose covers no longer match the genre. I was going to use the covers I currently have for them and once they've been pubbed for a few years, use their earnings to pay for new covers that match the genre better. Thank you!
There's nothing like holding your own book in your hands. The ones I have on my shelf still make me giddy. It's like, "Yeah! There's people out there who like my work. Hell, *I* like my work! Win!"
Ebook to hit your goal of December 3rd and do the paperback later with its own release week. 32:05 Nevermind. Spend the money. Release that paperback by the 3rd, too.
Hahaha! I like how you changed your mind. I did contact the cover designer. The worst that can happen is I don't get the proof in time, but I think I'm going to still try for a same-day release. At least then I'll know I've put the effort in.
