This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Welcome to Grow Bug Tales. Welcome to Story Over Everything Episode 41, where I am talking about
and doing the readings for Grow Bug Tales Chapter 11, Section 3, I guess I'll call it.
So I have finally started building my buffer, which I will talk about more in the reflection section
after you hear the snippets of a story that I was able to come up with in my 10-minute writing sessions
over the week of October 28th through November 3rd. And yeah, that sounds a little funny because this is publishing
November 10th and why would I say, or possibly November 11th, we'll see what happens in post-production.
And you know, why would I publish something that I wrote before at this time now?
Well, because I think the buffer is an important thing to do and I think offsetting and saving my time
and using it more wisely is something I definitely need to do.
It's something I've been talking about for a while and here we are.
My 10-minute writing session for October 28th, 2023 is in Grow Bug Tales Chapter 11 and it goes like this.
But what am I going to do? I don't have anything to me the way Lock Your Hum does. I have to do something.
I don't think she can keep this up much longer.
Think, think, think, yes! Quiver worried for a moment that he had been too loud
but realized the sounds of fighting were far more loud than him.
He watched them again to work out the timing and approach that would give him the best chance to do the most good.
Quiver concentrated and grasped the nest where it was tied together.
He knew the binding would hold the entire nest together while he did his maneuver.
The hide nests were designed to withstand nudging and even being crashed into.
The clever construction fascinated him and he had asked Grunt a lot of questions about how the structures held together
and what kinds of stress they were able to handle.
I'll need to get the timing right on this. I doubt I'll get another shot at this.
From up above the fighting, Quiver held the hide nest above and carefully considered the best target.
The higher he went, the more damage it would do.
But the better chance there was of missing the mock wings altogether.
That took 10 minutes to write and it was 209 words.
Okay, my 10 minute writing session for October 29, 2023 took 10 minutes to write and I wrote 79 words
and it goes a little bit like this. Let me just center this thing.
I need two or three minutes.
Lose, guide my mark.
Quiver dropped the hiding nest and pivoted to look down.
It grazed one invader and redirected into a direct hit on a second, knocking out of the battle.
He whooped triumphantly and several pairs of eyes snapped at him.
Hum laughed.
The grazed enemy bolted to meet Quiver.
Uh oh! Quiver darted behind the nearest tree for cover.
The night was so long and he hoped the shadows would be enough to hide him.
Again, that took 10 minutes to write and it was 79 words.
And my 10 minute writing session for October 30, 2023 reads thus.
Chirped snapped from her days. She felt a sharp pain cut through her consciousness.
I'm okay now.
Hmm? Glimmer asked.
I'm okay. I can keep up on my own.
Chirped removed the hold Glimmer's radiant arm had on her to pull her along with the fleeing grow bugs.
Very well. Glimmer released her.
When we meet camp again, remember to talk to me if you feel up to it.
I will if I make it back.
That took 10 minutes to write and it was 75 words.
My 10 minute writing session for October 31, 2023 reads thus.
Chirped turned to leave.
Shush noticed and made a beeline for her. Is everything alright, Cadet?
Yes. I mean, I understand, Chirped.
It's what we must do. Take heart, child. We will persist.
A fresh bout of blubbering and whaling broke out from the front end of the caravan.
Shush turned to see who it was. I'll check back on you soon. Then turn back.
You're one of the toughest grow bugs I've ever met. You'll be fine.
Shush rushed off to attend to the others.
Am I really that tough? If I am, what am I doing here?
I should be there with Quiver and watch her hum. It's my fault she's in trouble.
And Quiver is too timid to do what he needs to do.
What would Quiver do if he wanted to break away from the group?
That took me 10 minutes to write and it was 139 words.
My 10 minute writing session for November 1, 2023 reads like this.
He would go along as long as possible and then just slip away.
So that's what I'll do when the time is right.
Chirped made her way back to the fight as quickly as she could.
She slowed once she heard the din of battle.
As she drew closer, she was surprised to see how I'm fighting three Maw Queens.
Hadn't there only been three before? Were these the same ones? They couldn't be.
There was a fourth one flying around the tree on the outskirts of the canopy.
She was distracted from the battle by the strange behavior of the attacker.
What was it after? Then she saw it. A flash of light here.
Then wings and shadow. Then another flash.
Yes, it was Quiver. He was hiding from one of the monstrous birds and the bird was chasing after him.
No surprise he's hiding. I'd probably be doing the same alone against one of them.
Hum looks okay for now, but Quiver needs my help.
Maybe we can help him once we're done beating that thing.
That took me 10 minutes to write, approximately. I stepped my recording, but I think it was 10 minutes and it was 176 words.
My 10 minute writing session for November 2nd, 2023, which is my 11th foray into...
No, no, it's my 20th foray into chapter 11 of Girlbug Tales, Reads Thus.
Chirped burst out from behind the leaves and charged at the Maw Queen that pursued him.
It flinched as he sparked and shone brightly, dashing towards its face.
It jerked away and crashed into a boat it had been able to see.
Am I really going to do this?
Chirped pivoted and pursued his pursuer.
Light arms grabbed at leaves and twigs, ripping them from the branches, and he cast them at the bird.
No good. Between his meager strength, the lightness of the floor, and the size of the bird, it was not an effective strategy.
Chirped blazed towards the Maw Queen, hooping and hollering as she did.
It actually turned and gawked at her for a few moments before she bashed through it.
Chirp, you were great. So were you, naturally.
We need to go help him. I know, I saw her when I...
Chirped was cut off by a twisted echo of her battle cry.
That took me 12 minutes to write and it was 154 words.
November 3rd, did not write.
So I hope you folks enjoyed hearing those.
If you want to hear the full context, each of those I actually recorded a little bit of commentary for.
If not right after I wrote it, then shortly thereafter.
And I think it's interesting, and I think you might find it to be interesting.
You can find those on YouTube or on TikTok as shorts, and I might even be able to put them on Facebook if they're short enough on the Reels section.
But those will be found on the Facebook page.
It's called Story Over Everything. You can look it up. I'll have to link it. I'll start linking it in my show notes.
And everything else will be linked there as well for you to find the full thing and hear the full context if you're interested in that.
And if not, you can hear me typically doing some commentary on what I wrote as a whole as I listened back to it as a whole.
But this time I'm not going to do that. I'm instead going to talk about this buffering thing.
So that's something I've talked about for a long time.
Thank G-d I finally had the strength, the discipline, the wisdom, the... I don't know what, to go ahead and do it.
And it is not as easy as I thought it was going to be.
And I have a very busy schedule right now.
And I thought I had basically figured everything out, but I surprised myself with how wrong I could be.
And that's not a wonderful feeling.
Honestly, I should have developed a system for buffering.
Well, there's an argument part of me feels as if I should have developed a system for buffering
so that I would have an easier time with doing the buffering.
And now I'm pretty much at the point where, based on the fact that I have, I think,
five or six other Harry Potter books that I've already recorded skimming leaves episodes for.
And my... I'm not going to call my friend, but I guess, you know, Internet Buddy,
Squall Charleston, who I did the Terror Valley Book One, Schools Out for Never.
I did an interview and a review with him.
And I'm planning on reading in a couple weeks his second book in the Terror Valley series,
You're Not My Sensei, is coming out.
And I plan to read that and do a skimming leaves on it and do a separate interview with him for that.
So little things like that are going to bump me out.
Skimming leaves are going to bump out and pat out my time.
And that's great.
And the interview, I think, for Squall, I'll do separately as well.
I don't know, maybe I'll do a bonus thing and do two story over everything episodes in a single week.
That's not, you know, ridiculous.
But we'll just see how the timing works out.
But like, I'm going to have that interrupt my Harry Potter books because just I want to get his out in a timely fashion
and whatever. That seems to make the most sense to me.
But anyway, that's fine.
But what I'm saying is those episodes, the skimming leaves episodes, at least, I think,
I think I'm doing, am I doing every other week?
I'm going to build it to it slowly.
I might have them be every other week, which means that I'll be eventually pushing out my production on these
story over everything like, you know, documentation sessions of my writing by a long time.
And please G-d, I will keep to a consistent writing pace.
And basically, I'm hoping that the production behind the scenes stuff will still be coming out.
I have to really think about this for a minute.
It's not a logarithmic function where, you know, I'll be 10 years ahead of myself.
Like, you know, I'll be writing stuff and, you know, I'll be releasing books and you'll hear, you know,
10 years later, the behind the scenes.
That doesn't make sense. I don't think that's ever, I think we're going to get to that point.
But it should give me a healthy buffer if I have at least those six books.
I think it's five books. Then Squalls at six.
So that's six weeks worth. That'll bump me out.
That's over time. It'll just grow and grow.
And I think eventually I'll be like, I don't know, at least a few months ahead of time in my actual writing.
But that means that I'm going to have to develop and keep a system set up so that as I'm producing the content,
I'm capturing it and I'm storing it and saving it and prepping it, maybe, you know,
and then scheduling it ahead of time to be saved and published.
And I got to tell you, I've had a very difficult time with doing that and doing everything else I'm doing.
And also I've started doing this five days a week releasing, alternating one day I'll release my 10 minute writing video,
which is time condensed, and my 10 minute drawing video.
And right now the 10 minute writing and drawing videos that I'm releasing are not overlapping at all with the, with these sessions.
And actually those are what I talked about. Those are on the YouTube channel, which is technically,
it's called Swinging Through Comics right now, but I think I'm going to change it to Story Over Everything,
or just maybe M.J. Munoz. Again, I'll have it all linked in the show notes.
And, you know, the videos will always point to wherever they, you know, should point to.
Ultimately just come back to M.J. Munoz.com for all your needs. All your needs. Every single one of them.
Anyway, so dumb. But the, yeah, so like this week I published a few things.
This is, I'm on my second week because I began the first week of November, or the first day of November,
which started on a Wednesday. So I did a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday publishing,
then I didn't do anything Saturday or Sunday, and then I did Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
just barely by the skin in my teeth, and I got something, I'm going to have to work on producing
and getting up number, you know, the Friday, you know, daily writing or reading thing.
And, you know, that's cool, and I like it, and it's good. And I'm seeing a lot more views on the website.
I'm seeing, like, it's funny, I created like a little Facebook page that corresponds to the website
and everything published from M.J. Munoz.com goes there to the Story Over Everything Facebook page.
But I'm a little confused because I'm not really seeing views or clicks on the page itself,
but somehow I'm seeing almost every day a few clicks coming over to the blog from Facebook,
and then just generally I'm getting a lot more visibility and a lot more views to, or views and visitors,
actually to M.J. Munoz.com. So I'm a little confused as to how all that's happening,
but like that stuff doesn't really matter if I'm not consistently making content,
and I both mean behind the scenes content that I'm kind of building my brand on,
and the actual books that I need to be writing, the actual stories I need to be writing.
So, Grow Bug and the Kid books, which are books one through five in the Grow Bug Tale series, I guess,
are, I mean, are they one through five or are they two through six? Because it doesn't really matter.
Because there are six books so far in the Grow Bug Tale series.
Those are all done with an asterisk, and that asterisk is that I need to finish Grow Bug Tales,
Cadets in Crisis, and, or Flight of the Maw Queens, one of those two.
I need to finish that book up 100%, go through it, edit it a little bit, revise it, clean things up,
and then go through the five picture books and make sure everything's consistent and they all gel together,
and then I can go ahead and release them. So, yeah, I do have a plan.
I do have a good way to make things move forward. I'm still debating whether I should release the chapter book first,
or if I should release the picture books first. I kind of think I should do the chapter book first.
That way it's out there, and then I can kind of use it and leverage it in getting people's attention on
the Grow Bug Tales picture books and getting them published and kickstarted and all that good stuff for the art that I need to pay somebody for.
And that probably makes more sense. Anyway, I have to balance the projects going forward into the future,
while also making sure that I build a habit of daily uploading and publishing the full writing or drawing sessions,
which, just to clarify, like the writing sessions that you heard here, well, those are pulled from them.
So I write for 10 minutes. I'm recording the actual process of my writing.
I'm time-lapsing it, and I started doing this more recently after a couple weeks of doing it, pretty consistently.
I started doing, I'm going to actually write it here. I'm going to take down, I'll record myself writing it.
I'll record myself doing the word count and typing all that stuff in. I condensed that video,
but I pause for a few seconds after I'm done with everything for the content part of it as far as the visuals are concerned.
And then I will go back over that little snippet that I just wrote, you know, 72, 200 words or so,
and I will read that and then I will make my commentary on it.
And then I can, it's nice, I have one file that now has my B-roll footage basically,
which you won't see on the audio podcast, or the podcast at all, but you'll see in other formats.
I have my B-roll footage and then I can cut, I can split the thing, drag it over,
and put it in place so that I have my audio commentary under it, which is wonderful,
because that's the one less file for me to grab, it's the one less thing for me to store somewhere and have to pull,
which is really cool.
But yeah, I'm doing it imperfectly, but I'm doing it, and as I'm doing it, I'm learning more,
and I'm refining the way I'm doing things, and my thumbnails were a mess,
and I've been publishing things out of order in the, you know, every other, you know,
this five-day-week publishing schedule that I have, and it's kind of killing me.
I mean, both I don't like, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of extra work, but I think it's a good work,
and I think it's valuable, so that's good, but it's also the way that I'm doing it out of order,
and it's kind of janky, it's frustrating to me, but I just, I gotta get the work done,
I gotta get it out there, and it's okay if it's imperfect for now, I'm gonna make it better,
and it's all a process, and I would encourage anybody who's out there struggling with their, you know, creative stuff
to just make it, make it, and do it, and work it out, and you're gonna suck for a while,
you're gonna fail, and stumble, and it's gonna be ugly, and a little embarrassing to you,
but people won't care that much, you're your harshest criticT, critic, and I add a "T" at the end of a lot of words for some reason.
You are your harshest critic, and you're always gonna be harder on yourself than other people, hopefully, if you're not a narcissist,
and you just need to push through, and you need to have that ugly birthing process for yourself
to become a better version of who you are, it's just, ugh, it's life, it's a part of life, anyway,
that's all I have to say for now, thank you for your time and attention,
and until next time, folks, take care, this is MJ Signing Out.