Schedule heading into next year (Patreon)

TL;DR: I'm taking December and January off.

Kind of. December is for rest, long with visiting Los Angeles and my mum (not at the same time). Then I'm going to spend January writing without releasing so that I can try and get through next year without being constantly wrecked like I have been this year.

The long version that is essentially me making a whiny blog post:

I knew going into 2022 that is was going to be a hectic year. It's there year where my lifestyle finally started to change as a result of the success that all of you, my amazing readers, have made possible.

I was looking to move out of my apartment where the walls shook in the wind and my bedroom window was wedged shut with a stick and into a house. I got a house (and a mortgage) and a car. That was just the start of all the changes I've been experiencing in my life this year. I'm helping my mum move out of state now she's getting older and needs the to be somewhere warmer.

All the changes in my life, big and small, have put a increasing strain on my ability to crank out chapters. I've taken more time off this year than ever before and I'm still feeling like a car trying to eke out the last stretch to the petrol station on not much more than fumes.

Next year should be a lot less hectic, but I've also been doing this for a few years now and I'm increasingly having trouble maintaining this pace of chapter releases. The problem isn't the schedule as much as it is the fact that I'm always hard up against the schedule. When I'm chapters ahead of the releases, the time pressure eases up and I get regular rest, which makes everything faster and less stressful.

But real life has encroached a lot this year. A lot. Buffer chapters get chewed up like I'm tossing them into a wood chipper and I regularly find myself still working on chapters just a handful of hours before they're released.

When I'm writing, revising, editing, proofing and releasing a chapter all in one day, the chapters simply aren't everything they could be. And I'm not everything I could be, either. When I get tired like this, everything gets slower. Right now, my day is basically get up, write, find enough time to eat and (occasionally) wash myself, then go to bed. Usually after the sun has come up.

For the last few years, I've thrown everything I have into this story and I need some work/life balance. I need to do things that aren't sit in my office or exhaustedly sprawl in the lounge room, reading on my tablet for a 20 minute writing break.

It's not sustainable. I'm spending my whole life in my office, aside from board game Saturday, and Sunday which I usually sleep through entirely. At this point, I've had to cancel board game Saturday for the whole month so I have the extra time to do work on the manuscripts for publication.

I also need to take better care of my health. Spending all day in a chair, repeatedly getting take out at 4am because that's what's open when I'm done writing is not a healthy way to live. I'm extremely chunky right now, as the game night attendees will see, and my health is not great generally.

This is not a problem without a solution, but its one I've always avoided. I need time. I had some big breaks this year, including a nice holiday with my mum, but I did not get any writing done during them, as much as I wanted to. I was always recovering from the writing I'd already done.

I'm taking December off to rest. Mostly. Then I will be writing again in January, but I won't be releasing. I will be building up the largest buffer I've had since I started releasing chapters back in July 2019 and I realised with horror what I'd signed myself up for.

That's a joke. Mostly. I still love doing this, but I need to do it better. I need 2023 to be different, and that means I need to take the time I've always avoided taking and set myself up to succeed.

I know this is pretty whiny. I'm complaining how hard my awesome job is and I know many of you would like to do the same thing. I hope you succeed, because for all the effort and the late nights and the exhaustion, I love what I do. Holy crap do I love getting to tell this mad, silly, insanely fun to write story for a living, and it's you, the readers, who made this possible. You have all changed my life, and this is the year where those changes really started to show. So, in a way, it's your fault that I'm taking January off.

I'm veering off into unfounded accusations now, so I think that's about enough whining. Also I need to go revise the chapter that will out in eleven hours from when I'm writing this, although it will come out a few minutes before this post goes live.

In short, I'm taking December and January off because I'm super tired. I need to rest, and then I need to get ready to keep writing those books to as high a standard as I can get - while still cranking out five chapters per week. I know some of you have and will again suggest reducing the release rate. That is something I will do with future projects, but it's a personal challenge to myself to maintain this pace for the duration of this series. I will be taking my breaks, but when this story is on, it's on, five chapters a week.

Thank you all for your continued support and understanding.

-Travis Deverell (Shirt)