March Update

Hey! Feels like we just had this chat, right? Yeah, February's update was just a week or two ago, but I'm taking this time to reset the schedule for these posts to be on the first of the month now. I want the general format to be to recap what happened in the last month, and cover plans for the next month and what I hope to see.

With that in mind: let's talk about February.

My primary goal for February was to have a story ready for publication by the end of the month, so that I could actually launch my Patreon and start that rolling. This was (barely) a success! My Patreon page is published and live with the prologue to my first serialized story, "The Gaia Machine". I intend to have Chapter 1 out within the day, and both will be entirely free as an intro to the story as a whole. Chapter 2 will be coming later this month, and will be the first subscriber-only chapter. I've also got plans for more stories I'm working on, including other long-form stories and a few short stories, which will all go up on the Patreon as well. I want to post some art on there as well, mostly doodles and simple four-panel comic strips, just as bonuses for subscribers. There'll be additional writing-themed blog posts on there, as well as monthly update posts in the same thread as these update posts on here, though obviously more focused on the Patreon and the writing that's being posted there. I initially planned to do my first monthly post right at the launch, aka yesterday or today, but I think I've decided to hold off and make the first one on April 1st so that it can recap anything that happens this month.

Obviously the Patreon absorbed a large part of my work hours. Other than that, I wanted to write more for my blogs, which didn't really happen. I have a couple things I want to write sitting in my drafts, including a post talking about the Myrient shutdown announcement and the importance of archives. The workload for this story ended up eating away every waking moment, including yesterday just to get everything finished and posted in accordance with my self-imposed deadlines. Now that it's up and started, hopefully upkeeping it will be an easier feat moving forward. I want to start balancing the new fiction for the Patreon with writing for the site, keep both updating consistently. Like I said, I have a lot of ideas sitting in drafts, as well as some ideas I haven't been able to work on yet. Hopefully some of those things can get finished soon, though I'm not setting any hard and fast plans as of yet.

I have a lot of plans and ideas for more things to work on, so I'm hoping it'll start to catch people's attention and gain at least a small following over the course of the next month or two. My goal is to stay consistent with the uploads and progress, even if it's to no one at all. Once any given story is completed, I'll be selling it as a whole on the Patreon shop feature, and maybe looking into things like itch.io? I'm sure there's other places to sell a digital story like that as well. March is gonna see at least the next chapter of "The Gaia Machine", and I want one other thing to release before April, whether that's a short story, the first chapter of a longer story, or something else.

To be quite honest though, I'm exhausted. The expediting of the writing process in order to meet my (albeit self-imposed) deadline drained me pretty much down to empty. If I didn't have this update to write and Chapter 1 to post, I likely would've taken the whole day off. Tomorrow is probably gonna end up being my day off instead, just so I can step back and rest. Again, things should get easier now that I'm continuing a story that's already started, and not having to start it from scratch. That's always the hardest part, creating something out of nothing. Once things are started, it's easier for me to keep it going, so this kind of exhaustion shouldn't happen regularly. I'm honestly really proud of what I was able to produce, as quickly as I did, and in the quality it is. It's not perfect, in fact I want to get more and more of my friends to beta read new chapters in the future, but the feedback I did get prior to posting was invaluable, and the story wouldn't be the same without it. Shoutout to my girlfriend for giving me some of the best feedback and advice, as well as naming the whole story itself! I love you!

But yeah, other than that, I'm just gonna take it easy for a couple days, and jump in on Chapter 2 and more writings. Hopefully I can balance things out to keep working on the site as well, it's still a high priority for me. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go scarf down a donut and play Monster Hunter: World.

~ Alex Amelia Pine