State of the Author 1/20/23 (Patreon)
Content
This isn't really a chapter, sorry! But I thought I would write to you all just for a bit of a chat and update on myself, the patreon, and ShipCore!
So far, I've been able to meet all my writing goals that I've set myself. We had a chapter everyday posted in November for Writathon, and I've been writing at least 1 chapter every other day, and usually more often than that! The pace has been a bit high. I'm not really feeling burned out or anything but my writing speed has slowed a bit.
When I first started writing ShipCore again, I was writing about 5000 words a day, easily 1500-2000 words an hour. Since then I've implemented and found new methods of outlining chapters, ways to brainstorm ideas faster, and generally come up with ways to be more efficient than ever. But my writing output has still dropped anyway, all the way down to 500-700 words an hour, placing more time and demand on me to keep up the pace.
Why is that? I'm pretty sure it is mainly because the story has grown more complex, I have to keep in mind multiple plotlines and keep the story going. ShipCore is a rough draft, and I don't write detailed outlines of everything. My outlining method is to have important plot points/climax scenes for each ARC then write toward them.
There's a second type of outline I do and that is when I reach a chapter. Before writing the chapter I have learned to write all the action beats/important points I want to hit during that chapter. This is the point where the story is generated in detail, and I figure out where and when things are happening. I have to keep a map in my mind of all the major events going on, who is doing what, and then orchestrate the scenes and timings.
I know other writers have scene cards, detailed outlines of everything made before writing anything at all, and a lot of other methods to help them do all this without having to keep a clear picture of it all in their head.
I just haven't learned to work that way, and changing how I do things rapidly is going to throw me completely off the rails. I really love the characters, I like to see Alex slowly overcoming the obstacles in her way. I really enjoy the setting and there are so many lore bits that you all haven't seen yet that I think will really be cool. There are some huge events and I have a lot for Alex to do still.
Some of the criticism on RoyalRoad has been hitting me hard, I ended up disabling the rating system there because of it. I went to a pretty low state early this month from all of that, but I've pretty much recovered although I really don't read the comments or reviews like I did previously. I really enjoy talking with readers about the story, and I don't mind some criticism, but a lot of people seem to think that it's open season to hammer in all the points they don't like as if they were personal attacks they need me to answer for.
Those negative bits aside, the Patreon has been helping me and my father out a lot. Some of you might already know that my mother and grandparents passed away and that is the big reason for ShipCore's Hiatus almost 2 years ago. I now live my father who had a heart attack, and he doesn't have the best health. He's disabled and on a fixed income now, while I work a part time service job. I fully devote 2-3 hours every day to writing ShipCore now and some days even more than that.
We were doing alright on that income making things meet, but the money from Patreon has really made our budget much more comfortable and I've actually been saving money every month instead of breaking even. That's including the ShipCore commissions I did that weren't super cheap and buying some of the ShipCore merchandise. (I bought an Alex CIC blanket, sue me. LOL.)
So far my long term goals for ShipCore haven't changed. I've been slowly (VERY SLOWLY) working on trying to plot out and outline new chapters in A1 to build it up a bit into a full novel. Currently it is only 50k words and that feels like it is too short. I also want to see if I can add more content showing interactions between Alex and Elis there to help make their friendship not so sudden. That includes some near death experiences with drones hunting them and even boarding the shrike.
A2 would be about 150k words or so which is about right. I am not really sure what needs to be done with it, I think there are some scenes and ideas that get dropped and not revisited. While some things are important maybe some others could be cut out. I'm leery on cutting too much however, but I know to make a tight fast paced *novel* version of the story the fat has to be trimmed. I want to try avoiding just releasing the webserial directly 1:1 to the novel, but I might end up doing that after doing line/copy edits instead of a full dev edit.
Mainly because I find it pretty difficult to do editing. I've never done much of it other than spell/grammar checking after finishing a chapter and before releasing it. Editing costs also get pretty big the longer things get for hiring a professional editor, but I haven't found one I fully trust to work with yet.
A3 wise, the story is near the 1/3rd mark so far and it's just about to hit 100k words. That probably means A3 will be twice as long as A2 which will probably be twice as long as A1. Once A3 is done, I am not sure I will immediately start writing A4. I have another story in the ShipCore universe that I have been thinking about, and slowly building up an outline for. (Yes, I know I said I don't make outlines, but this will be a standalone novel and its for me learning new things... heck maybe I'll find out that detailed outlines for things actually help more than I thought! Although in previous experience I ended up getting choked on it, maybe it'll work better this time.)
Okay, this note is getting a bit long. I hope you enjoyed my little talk about how things are going. Have a wonderful day/night!
P.S. Have some art!
Thea:
Tia:
Alex before haircut!
Alex with recruit outfit, yeah she's wearing it lazyily and would get yelled at + haircut:
Alex with officer uniform + haircut (soon):
Elis's pose from the A3 cover: