The Biggest Decision Since Starting the Story (Patreon)

TL;DR: I'm deciding between more, longer hiatuses or reducing the chapter release schedule to 3-per-week and coming back in January instead of February.


In my lengthy post where I announced I was taking December and January off, a big part of the response was that I should consider reducing the release schedule. This is something that I've been resistant to, but one thing that has been pointed out is that because I have such a hectic schedule I've been burning out faster and faster, which has required increasingly large breaks. Then, because I need those breaks to refuel, I never build the buffer chapters I want.

This has become a vicious cycle where I need the breaks but they don't give me what I need so I need more breaks and so on and so on. The fact that this year has been a crazy one for me outside of the writing, which I knew it would be going in, has only exacerbated this issue.

I announced that I was taking January off so I could get a chapter buffer and get ahead of things. The more I think about it, though, the more it feels like I'm trying to put a band aid on a severed leg. Those of you who have followed the story of Patreon or Royal Road for a long time will have noticed the changes in my breaks.

Since my first big break in 2020, after completing what is now book 3, the breaks have been getting both lengthier and more frequent. There's no secret to what is behind this: the burnout comes faster and hits harder the longer I do this.

I've stated on a number of occasions, including the post about the next break, that my intention is and always has been to finish how I started, releasing five chapters per week. A number of you have suggested I reduce this for the sake of my health and the quality of the writing, and I have always been resistant to this. What you have also pointed out, however, is that all these breaks mean that I'm not delivering any more chapters than I would if I reduced the release schedule and took fewer breaks because I wasn't as tired.

This is something that has been playing on my mind over the last week. One of the big reasons for that is my work/life balance is even more out of whack than normal. I've cancelled all my board game days this month and daylight is that thing that starts a few hours before bedtime.

I find myself considering the schedule change that I've always resisted in the past. It's not because of any immediate concern but about long-term viability. This has long been my intention for my next project, once HWFWM is done, but I am now strongly considering moving things up. rather than exhausting myself for months and then sleeping for six weeks, it might be time to make a change. Might.

The current plan is to take January off and then come back at the usual five chapters per week. Hopefully I will have a buffer of 15-20 chapters that will ease up the work/ life balance until those chapters get eaten up by life happening.

The alternate plan is to resume releases in January but at three chapters a week. This will be a much more sustainable schedule, meaning that I can take fewer breaks and spend some outside of my office, awake during the day time. basically, I'll be healthier and more sane, and won't need to take such huge breaks.

Plan B comes with one inescapable factor, however: the overall release rate will be slower. Not that much slower, though. If I'm at five chapters per week, every extra month I don't release takes eleven weeks to catch up to to a three-per-week schedule where I didn't take that month off.

One of the advantages of Plan B is that I won't need to take a month off to rest, then a month off to write buffer chapters, then burn through them in a month because my life got hectic, which it always does. Slower releases means that I can actually build, sustain and even grow a buffer, even while I'm releasing chapters.

As as has been increasingly demonstrated, the five-per-week burnout is getting worse every year. If things stay as they are, I will be taking January, August and December of next year off. There will also definitely be a month off in either April or May, and at least one of those months off will extend into a second one, probably September. If I go with plan B, then I will come back in January instead February and the breaks will be April, August and December.

Assuming I don't take any extra weeks off for mental health, they way I did after I finished book nine, that would be about 33 fewer chapters for the year with plan B.

I'm putting up a poll to see what people think. My decision is not going to be based on the results, but it is a factor that I will take into consideration.

Just as a snapshot of what my life looks like at the moment, it's 11am and I didn't go to sleep last night. What I did do was edit book nine for fifteen hours, and I haven't yet started writing the chapter that will be posted on Patreon twenty-two hours from now. I did just try poutine for the first time. It was okay.