Author's Notes on: The Season Two Sprint and Sticking the Landing
As much as I wanted to put out a traditional Author’s Notes, my brain recently has been filled with nothing but The Cardinal Directive — and for good reason.
For anyone not in the know, The Cardinal Directive is the longest running project on Author’s Notes — it was the first writing project I started on the platform and has been running consistently for more than two years now. Chapters (“Mission Logs”) are posted weekly on Fridays, with occasional release on Wednesday as well.
Let me tell you, Cardinal is my baby. I love this project to death and even two years in we’ve only barely scratched the surface of all the things I want to cover. Season Two started the first week of January, and I intend it to be available for purchase on Amazon by the end of December.
To accomplish this, I set a goal to hit 100k words by the end of November, leaving all of December to work on revisions and any finalizations as needed.
It hasn’t been easy — not by a long shot.
Part of my preparations was to make an outline — knowing now that I had a specific number of Mission Logs left in the year, I had to keep myself on track to finish by my deadline.
…I immediately deviated from this outline. If you’ve read any of my previous Author’s Notes where outlines have come up, you probably aren’t surprised by this news — it’s something I do quite often. I have the worst time sticking to an outline, even one that I’m 100% happy with.
Nine times out of ten, I make a decision as I’m writing that sets things down a different course than I originally intended. Sometimes it just feels more logical, or more befitting of the story than what I initially thought of, and I’ll always go in favor of what feels right over what I initially planned for.
In some ways, it’s a blessing. It keeps the story feeling organic and not artificially paced.
In other ways, it’s a great pain. Every week I think I know what I’m getting myself into, and inevitably derail myself. It’s caused me no end of stress these past few weeks as I’m constantly scrambling to keep up with my own decisions and changes and meet my expected timeline.
As part of this sprint to the finish, I also planned out several Supplemental File releases, which come out on Wednesdays. This was necessary for not only reaching my word count expectations (100k+), but for finishing the story itself before December.
I’ve been really happy with the pacing and content of the Supplemental Files, but it has absolutely dug into my time to write the main mission logs for Fridays. I’ve managed to not be late on any Wednesday or Friday release, but only through sheer spite and willpower — I hate missing deadlines.
I know that’s ironic, this article being a day late and all, but that’s really just what I get for burning the candle at both ends. The stress of keeping up with double the workload and double the expected word count meant that something had to give, and if it wasn’t the Monday release it was going to be my own health that suffered.
On top of that being generally a bad idea, I’ve done what I can to remind myself that bad health snowballs quickly into other things. I’m on a tight schedule, and I have to pace myself to make sure I don’t burn out or get too sick to produce articles at a quality standard that I am happy with.
There is absolutely a level of nervousness that comes with knowing we’ve entered the final month of Season Two of Cardinal. Over the course of the next few weeks, I have to make sure all my ducks are in a row and execute my plans for the ending to the best and fullest of my capabilities. It’s downright scary sometimes wondering if I can pull it off, not only in the timeframe I’ve set but in a manner that matches my vision for the ending.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of Season Two setting up the many dominos that will be cascading in these final chapters. When you’ve got so many payoffs in the pipeline, it’s satisfying but agonizing making sure they all hit at the right times, with the right emphasis, and in the right order.
I’m so SO excited for everyone to see how this season ends. …And also absolutely dreading it.
This is far from a new fear for me, and I think it’s an understandable one. After all, I’ve spent all of the past year writing Season Two, not to mention the time put into Season One. Everything I’ve done in the past year has been to set up what is going to happen in these final few chapters — all I have to do now is stick the landing.
Arguably, the most important part.
I remember reading once about how professional athletes keep their cool during those tense moments where the fate of the game is riding on them. As bizarrely simple as it sounds, the answer seemed to come down to two key factors: full and unfailing confidence in their own capabilities, and the hours and hours of practice to back that confidence up.
If you get to that critical moment and all you can think about is that you might mess it all up, there’s a good chance you’re going to choke because you can’t stop thinking of all the ways things can go wrong. You sabotage yourself by focusing on the ways you might fail rather than the ways to succeed.
Additionally, it’s a lot easier to believe that you can do something when you’ve spent countless hours perfecting your technique and can rely on years of training and muscle memory.
The principles aren’t exactly the same in sports as writing, but they’re not that different either. Sticking the landing and getting your ending down is probably always going to be an anxious process, but I try to remember that I’ve done it before. That I’ve put a lot of work and time into the Cardinal Directive, and that I have built up a lot of experience writing for the series over the past two years.
I’m far from an expert at writing, but I am well versed in writing for The Cardinal Directive — I know its characters, and as much as I am nervous to see the reaction to everything that’s about to happen, I’m confident in the story I want to tell.
I can stick the landing because I was there for every step of the way, and I’ve been setting up for it all year. Sticking the landing isn’t the hard part — it’s the easy part. Or at least, that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself.
Little affirmations like these may seem dumb or feel weird to say to yourself. I know I feel strange even writing them here!
Still… as cheesy as it sounds, believing in yourself is a weirdly powerful and comforting thing, especially when it’s coming down to the wire and all eyes are on you.
Self-doubt has been the death of many an aspiring writer. Don’t let it be you.
Because here’s the thing — you may not stick the landing perfectly, especially the first time. And that’s okay. There’s always time for change, room to grow, to shift your perspective and train your skills.
I have a general policy that I don’t do heavy edits on Cardinal — I like to keep it as authentic as possible to the original posted version. That said, if I wrote the ending, even if I’d already published the ending, that wouldn’t make me married to it. I would hate to do it, but if I realized after the next Mission Log that I needed to completely scrap my planned ending, I could make the decision to do that.
My hope is to come away from this month with an end to Season Two that I am happy and proud of — to stick the landing in one go with all the skills and knowledge I’ve gained over the past year since I started Season Two. I’ve been really happy with Season Two so far — it’s felt tighter and more focused than Season One was, and I hope to continue that feeling through our final few chapters.
I do my best to remind myself that I am more than capable of delivering that level of quality and consistency, and will make every effort to do so.
But I also do my best to remind myself that this is not a graded exam. This is a passion project — and my favorite one to date. Every word I write for it is born of genuine love for writing this series and sharing it all with others.
I’m very excited for the end of Cardinal, even if the process of writing it has driven me dangerously close to burnout several times. It’s a delicate balance of stress, anxiety, excitement, and love that’s hard to describe in any fewer words than that.
If you’ve been keeping up with Cardinal, I hope you’re excited for the end too! If you’d like to check out Cardinal, you can read the first three Mission Logs for free! How about starting here?:
But for now, that’s it for me. I hope you all have a lovely day and thank you for your patience with this delayed article!