Just Here To Complain

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed recently. I have too many goals this month, I think...or to ambitious of goals. I'm supposed to get half of what remains in my audiobook recorded and edited, as well as write 1,333 words a day, and publish the eBook, paperback, and hardcover of Three Vampire Weekend. 

That's a lot, but then there's still the other things that I'm doing as well. Unstated goals you could call them. I have to keep going on my new healthy lifestyle that's helped me lose 85 lbs. this past year, and get the videos shot and edited for that process. I have to keep writing blog posts (I've written a blog post for every day since September 1st of last year). I also have to get my podcast episode for this month put together and published.

Put all that together, and it seems like a lot, but there's more. I've been doing a lot of reading in my spare time as well, and by reading, I mean listening to audiobooks, which is my favorite way to read, and I've been trying to read as many books as possible. I've been posting about what I read here on the blog a bit, and I mentioned that the most recent Stormlight Archives book was in my holds queue. Well, it finally came up.

I got the book, and started listening to it, and noticed that the runtime of the novel was 57 hours. 57 hours! The average book that I listen to is around 12 hours long. This one was about five times as much.

I don't know what it was about that, but it really depressed me. It made me feel uninterested rather than excited. It should have been great news. I mean, if I had bought the book, it sure would be cool, because I'd have paid the price of one book but gotten about five books worth of story. 

Of course, I didn't buy it, but was checking it out from the library on their app called Libby. That might have been part of the problem. The library lets you check out a book for two weeks. For me, that's generally plenty of time to listen through an entire book. I almost always turn in my books early, because I finish long before my time runs out. Not with The Stormlight Archive, though. It's nigh on impossible to finish one of those books in your two weeks of allotted time. You'd have to treat it like a full-time job, basically, and that's how I felt.

I listened to the book, but only half-heartedly. I knew I wasn't going to make it to the end. I was going to have to put it on hold a second time to be able to finish the thing. That's what I had to do with the third book in the series, Oathbringer, too. When I thought about listening to my book, it made me feel tired. It didn't sound like fun, it sounded like work. Not only work, but work that I was bound not to finish in time. Many days, I just listened to music on my drive to work instead, because I didn't feel like listening to the book.

Yesterday, I crossed over the 50% mark on the book, but my due date was today. I decided to call it. I'd done enough. I made it halfway, which was all I was ever going to do anyway. I made a note of what chapter I was in, and the timestamp of where to find that chapter, and turned the audiobook in a day early.

It kind of feels like taking a load off. Now I can listen to a book that I may actually finish in time, so it won't feel like spinning my wheels. I'm listening to a new book already, and I think I liked the Brandon Sanderson one better, but I still feel better about listening to this new one, because I can actually finish it.

I don't even understand why he would write such a tome. Why would someone do that? Nobody would be upset if he gave them a book that was only three hundred pages. That's pretty standard. If he did, he could have four books for every one that he's selling now. Assuming that your fans would buy all four, then you'd have four times the money from all the sales too. It's just mind boggling.

So, it doesn't make sense for the writer, or for me, the listener either. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think I'll be writing any thousand page fantasy novels anytime soon.