When Should You Stop Promoting Your Creative Project?

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The question in this week’s title is especially relevant for me because as of this week, MFA Thesis Novel has been out for three whole months.  For the big publishers, that’s the typical amount of time in a book cycle, where new releases tend to come in 3-month seasonal waves.

In the past three months I’ve been doing a lot to spread word about the novel: in addition to the pre-order and the novel release party, I also contacted local bookstores about carrying the novel, built a new website page to feature it, talked about it on my email mailing list, answered a few author interviews, listed it in my alma mater news, recorded guest appearances on podcasts, and got some of my writer friends to review it, in addition to pitching the novel around to other reviews sites, bookstores, and media outlets.

I’ve also been doing a mini drive to get more Amazon and Goodreads reviews, which are incredibly helpful for helping people find the book.  (By the way, if you liked MFA Thesis Novel and want to help in a super-easy way, consider leaving me an Amazon and/or Goodreads review!)

In the past few weeks, though, I’ve found myself running out of steam, with fewer bookstores to contact, avenues to explore, and hype to generate.  This has gotten me thinking about a really important question: Continue reading »

Every Creative Person Has Their Bad Days—Even Me

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Part of the reason I keep this blog is so I can keep people in the know about when things are going well or I’m working on cool stuff.  But, I also want to be honest about when things aren’t going so well.

In the past few years I’ve become more aware of online performance—as in, that idea that people only put the best version of themselves online to create an idealized narrative of who they are and how things are going.  We all do this to some extent when we post about great stuff (“Hey, look at my awesome vacation/car/girlfriend/boyfriend/new job/house/really cool hobby!” etc.) but don’t post about our not-so great stuff: For example, how many posts about breakups, massive debt, job loss, or lingering malaise have you seen, unless they were deliberate cries for sympathy?

I think creative people can be susceptible to this as well, especially when they shy away from talking about their setbacks online.  In the long run, this can create an idealized version of the creative life, where it seems like everyone is getting life-changing publishing deals and drawing every day and getting roles in movies and putting amazing art into the world, when in reality they also have the same setbacks and low points you do Continue reading »

Bad Bosses Blame Their Employees for Mismanaged Workplaces

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A while back, I worked at a Day Job that was really, really busy.  While I was there the workload went up exponentially, though we only had a small increase in staff.  That meant we had slightly more people doing a LOT more work, which meant way more work for all of us.

During that extremely busy time, my boss dealt with the situation by checking in that we were constantly on task and not goofing off.  “Utilize your time well,” was her favorite phrase (complete with pretentious use of the word “utilize”), and she repeated it over and over at meetings.

Years later at a different Day Job, I experienced something similar.  At this particular Day Job I was responsible for waaaaaaaaaaay more work than a reasonable person could do in a 40-hour workweek, which led to a lot of stress and confusion.  To make matters worse, my boss often expected me to be in two places at once, and would regularly add extra tasks on to my already enormous workload.

This time, I tried explaining to my boss that there was simply too much work to do.  However, when I did, he always pivoted and said that I needed to manage my work better, stop wasting time, and learn to prioritize.  Continue reading »

June 2022 Novel Update: Steady, But Not Slow

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For those of you keeping track, in January 2021 I started a Secret New Novel manuscript that I’d been wanting to write for a long time, and that’s a LOT more complicated than my previous work.  Unfortunately, though, I ran into some snags, then took a long break.  Over a year later, I hadn’t even made it to the halfway point of a rough draft—and that REALLY wasn’t where I wanted to be as a writer.

All that’s changed, though, since I left my busy Japanese university job and came back to the States.  After some readjustment and setup time, I set a firm date to start working consistently on the Secret New Novel again: Tuesday, May 3rd.

It’s been nearly two months since then, so I thought I’d answer a really important question: How has it been going? Continue reading »

Do You Treat Your Creative Work Like a Business?

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I talk a lot about “creative work” on this blog, but what does that really mean?  I guess I can loosely describe it as “anything that has to do with making things or getting those things out into the world.”

In that sense, for me as a writer, creative work would be…

That’s just the actual creative part, though.  There’s also:

The things on the first list are purely about creation: the act of making art Continue reading »

I Used to Lie During Job Interviews: Here’s Why

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The other day I was updating my CV in preparation for a part-time gig I picked up through word-of mouth.  In the opening section I wanted to summarize the work I do, and after some trial and error, I came up with this:

I’m a working fiction writer and editor/writing coach with experience in EFL (English as a Foreign Language). My teaching experience extends to Japan and across cultures, while my editing work extends across both fiction and academic scholarship.

When I think about the work I’ve done, and the work I’d like to be doing in the future, this statement feels really natural to me—as in, it sums up my experience accurately, and isn’t just an exaggerated image I put down so I can get jobs.

That got me thinking more about previous years, when every time I wrote a resume or went to a job interview, I tried to craft an image of myself that the company wanted to hear.

In short: I used to lie about myself and my career goals. Continue reading »

Finding Meaning in a Day Job, Career, or Creative Work

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Having a meaningful life is pretty important.

Think about it: If your life isn’t exciting, interesting, stimulating, fun, important, influential, or engrossing, what else is there to look forward to?  Mindless consumption of entertainment?  Repetitive chores and routines?  The empty pursuit of money and material wealth?  Those don’t sound very good to me.

People, I’ve found, find meaning in all kinds of ways.  Many find meaning in family relationships: finding a romantic partner, having kids, raising their own family, or connecting with parents, siblings, or other close relatives.  Society places a lot of value on family too, like how the nuclear family is super important in the West.

A lot of people grow up with the impression that family and romantic relationships are the best way to make a meaningful life (i.e., that family is the most important thing).  As such, many people have the impression that careers and paid work are only important in that they allow you to provide for a family.  In other words: Continue reading »

May 2022 Novel Update: Outlining —–> Drafting

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It’s been a really good month for novel drafting.  But first, a quick rewind….

Since January 2021 I’ve been working on a Secret New Novel Draft that I’ve wanted to start for literally years.  I knew this novel was going to be big—and for a while, I thought it might be too big.  As in, I wasn’t sure if I could do it.

As such, I tried taking time to research and plan the novel first…which didn’t go well, since my research wasn’t focused and much of the story seemed to exist in a murky haze.  I needed to write the story so I’d know what to research, but I also needed to research to write the story.  Augh!!!

So, I decided to jump right into a rough draft and see where it took me with the seat-of-your pants method of writing.  (Writers who do this are commonly called Pantsers, a name I find somewhat ridiculous…)  This allowed me to move forward, and helped me get quite a ways into the draft. Continue reading »

Speedrunning Legend: An Interview with Karl Jobst

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Karl Jobst is a YouTuber and streamer whose channel documenting video game speedrunning has tens of millions of views.  He holds a plethora of speedrunning records in Perfect Dark and Goldeneye 007 on the N64, and was the first to beat the Dam level of Goldeneye on Agent in 52 seconds, surpassing a record that had stood for fifteen years.  His YouTube videos have covered astounding speedrunning feats, new discoveries, investigations into video game market manipulation by Wata Games, and the scandals surrounding gaming personality Billy Mitchell. The last of these videos led to his being sued by Mitchell in September 2021, for which he is currently awaiting trial.

Karl and I first met in 2000 on the GameFAQs.com Goldeneye 007 page when we were both fourteen and writing strategy guides for the site.  We corresponded by email, then fell out of touch for over twenty years until I found his YouTube channel.  I reached out to him as a blast from the past, and over Zoom we discussed classic gaming, positive life changes, and finding the balance between money and passion.

 

Part I: As Soon As We Did It, I Was Hooked

 

But I Also Have a Day Job: How old were you when you first got into video games?

Karl Jobst: Two and a half.  Some of my earliest memories are of playing a computer game, specifically Ultima V.  It’s a very complex game, and I don’t think the modern generation would even be able to play it.  Back then they didn’t really hold your hand and guide you.  It required a lot of proactiveness and investigation.  I probably wasn’t doing it right, because specifically my earliest memory is of me dying in the game. Continue reading »

Freeing Up Your Mental Space is REALLY Important for Creativity

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Sometimes I get burned out or depressed—and when that happens, it’s a whole lot harder to work on a creative project.

I talked about this at length last fall, when a towering workload at my Japanese university job combined with a ninety-minute commute and having to check the final formatting on MFA Thesis Novel left me feeling overwhelmed, constantly pushing myself to the limit, and crashing hard on the weekends when I wanted to work on my secret new novel project.

All told, I felt overwhelmed and too damned busy.

I’ve written about the double downsides of being busy before: the first one’s obvious, but the second one’s something we often forget:
Continue reading »

I Made a Kick-Ass New Website!!! (and Here’s Why!)

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(I mean, a kick-ass new website besides this one, of course ;-)

ianmrogersauthor.com has been online for a few weeks, first in a “Coming Soon!” capacity, but more recently in more substantial form as I added pages and links.  I’m really happy with how it’s come out, people seem to like it, and I can always go back and makes changes later.

I wanted the new author website to have a cleaner, sleeker feel than But I Also Have a Day Job (which I intentionally designed to look like a blog from the late 2000s) and be easier to navigate, ESPECIALLY on a phone.  The plan is to keep the new website as a separate entity from BIAHADJ (which I assure you isn’t going anywhere!) as a way of highlighting both MFA Thesis Novel and my editing work (which I’m doing more of now!).

When people who don’t know me look me up, I’d like the new website to make a better first impression and be a bit cleaner around the edges while still retaining my intentional overuse of words like “awesome” and “totally.”

I also wrote a short humor piece especially for the website: Imaginary Hate Mail I’ve Received About MFA Thesis Novel.  I wanted a fun, absurd piece that was a spin-off of the novel Continue reading »

April 2022 Novel Update: My Writing Hiatus is Almost Over…

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As many of you know, it has NOT been a good few months for writing…

When I last checked in on my novel progress back in November, I was facing an avalanche of pressures at my university teaching job in Japan, not to mention a busy few weeks working with Vine Leaves Press getting MFA Thesis Novel ready for publication.  For all of November to December I felt overworked, exhausted, and in a disconnected state of mind.

Then in January and February I spent a LOT of time prepping for my big move from Japan back to the States—mailing boxes home, cleaning out my apartment, and doing a whole lot of packing…which then turned into a whole lot of unpacking, plus dealing with jet lag and social readjustment when I got back to New Hampshire.

March and April, meanwhile, were REALLY big months for MFA Thesis Novel as I set up the pre-order and prepared for the novel launch.  This was a HUGE project Continue reading »