State of the Webb Address (Patreon)

Hi folks, this is the more detailed update post I alluded to in my break announcement a week ago.  After a week of rest I have more spoons and have had time to gather and clarify my thoughts on my current issues and future plans.

Thanks, first and foremost, for supporting my writing.  I really hope I can continue to provide you all with some little measure of joy.  That’s what fantasy is for, after all.

So, to business.  This is gonna be a longish post (sorry) and  I’ve divided it into several categories for clarity, starting with…

OVDT Is Wrecking My Mental Health

When I announced I was planning to do a “therapy project” and then OVDT was what came out, I got a lot of confused responses.  And man, do I get it; this story is the last thing most people would think of when asked to envision a therapeutic story designed to aid in recovering from burnout and stress.  There honestly was a logic to this, which I believe is still valid and plan to execute on, but the nature of the situation as it has developed has nuances I failed to anticipate and I’m really feeling ‘em now.

My motivation spluttered out and my mental health collapsed completely toward the end of TGAB’s Book 16, and as with all mental health stuff the reasons were numerous and interconnected in complicated ways, but I can summarize them in two general categories: burnout on the story itself because I’d over-abused my creative faculties on it for years, and burnout with life in general due to…events.  Not personal events, mind, world events.  I won’t bother to remind y’all what’s been going on out there, you live on this planet too.  And if you don’t and somehow still have the wherewithal to follow web serials, I assume you’re aware of the broad strokes.

OVDT was originally conceived as a way to confront and defeat…well, Seiji.  Nihilism, bitterness, frustration, anger, apathy, a general rising misanthropy…  Seiji is not in any sense a self-insert, but most of what’s wrong with him is specifically the junk I was trying to excise from myself.  Because that’s the entire point of the character and the story.  Spoilers, but OVDT is ultimately going to end up being a positive and life-affirming tale, to an extent that I frankly doubt any of you would believe given where it’s at right now.  The goal, the entire point is Seiji’s rehabilitation.  It’s a way for me to wrestle with all this darkness and move past it, and I honestly do believe in the final analysis it will be immensely cathartic.  That’s why I’m absolutely committed to finishing this story: because I need that, for my sake and for that of anyone else who needs it.  Which I suspect is a lot of people right now.

The problem came in because I’m a detail-oriented, worldbuilding-focused writer, and I just plain do not write concise or fast stories.  I’ve tried.  OVDT is me trying, and look how that turned out.  The entire Lady Gray arc was meant to be the introductory mini-plot; before I started actually putting words down I was thinking I’d spend maybe twenty chapters on that.  Obviously I realized how overly optimistic that was before the end of the first chapter, but I wasn’t expecting it to be two books. This is altogether taking way longer than I planned or wanted, and in combination with the other matters I mentioned above, that has created what is now my biggest creative problem.

Dwelling in this, the first, darkest and ugliest part of this story instead of striding through it like I’d originally planned is sucking the life out of me.  Seiji’s head is an unpleasant, exhausting place to be, and now it seems I’m gonna have to spend several more years in there.  Worse, rather than addressing the matters I created this story to address, having to spend so much time and energy wallowing in it is…  I don’t want to say exacerbating the problem, because I don’t know if that’s the case, but it is definitely blocking me from moving on and dealing.  Even if it’s not harming me, in short, it precludes healing.

And as I’ve become aware of this and pondered what to do about it, I’ve come to another, even more unpleasant realization.

TGAB’s Continuation Is Getting Further Away, Not Closer

Yeah, this one hurt to realize.

The heart of TGAB is optimistic.  It is a core theme of the series that true malice is incredibly rare, that nearly everyone is trying as best they can to do what they think is the right thing from their own flawed and limited perspective – that truly evil people are only the tiniest minority, and those are always the most broken people.  It’s laid out most explicitly in Tellwyrn’s philosophy that ignorance is the root of all evil, but it is one of the most important unifying threads of the entire story, coming up over and over in countless aspects.

I didn’t realize it at the time, and haven’t really come to understand it until very recently, but a major reason I found myself unable to keep working on that story is that I no longer believe that.

To be clear, I still think it.  Intellectually, it’s the only way of reconciling everything I understand about human psychology, sociology, and history that makes any sense.  People are trying, and they’re flawed, and all of everything going wrong out there comes down to things people did that made sense to them at the time because they were working with a stacked deck of normal biases and missing information.  But that’s reason, and it’s possible to fully know something on a cognitive level and not be able to believe it emotionally.  Possible, and painful.  That contradiction, as much as mental and creative fatigue, was what was truly grinding me down at the end.

It was starting to peek through in Book 16 with Ravana’s increasing prominence and elevation to protagonist status.  I’ve said before that she’s my favorite character, but that was when I conceptualized her as a side part in the ensemble, not someone driving the main plot.  You can see a lot of her in Seiji and vice versa: that misdirected sense of justice and righteous anger twisted into cruelty is at the heart of both of them, and a manifestation of what I’ve been struggling with.  Ravana’s mental gymnastics as she tries to reconcile this with her innate desire to be a good person are a lot more reflective of myself than Seiji’s theatrics and general douchebaggery.

I’ve been trying to re-read TGAB over the last year and I just keep bouncing off it.  It’s a fun read, if I do say so myself, and I’m proud of what I created.  I love it and always will.  But trying to actually read it now, I’m finding the heart and soul of this story at odds with something deep inside myself.  This thing I created, my magnum opus, is not for me anymore.

And…man.  That’s just a hell of a thing.  What am I supposed to do with that?

When I started writing The Gods are Bastards I was working a miserable retail job full-time and my inner monologue was just wall-to-wall misanthropy.  It’s taken me coming to this point to realize it but working on that story was what helped me stay sane, cling to both my values and my rationality under pressure.  It’s all really come into perspective when I think about how doing the opposite, writing a story that luridly indulges all the worst ideas and feelings I get just from living on this hell planet, is keeping me mentally trapped in a state that’s making me miserable and preventing me from moving forward the way I’ll need to in order to finish this project.

I am not sure just yet what I should do about this, or can, but I clearly need to do something.  Even if it means switching to another main writing project chosen on the basis of good vibes and healing.  Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Unfortunately, It’s Not That Simple

Whenever I take a break, planned or not, or anything else happens to interrupt my publication schedule, I always receive well-wishes from Patrons and readers.  You’re all very encouraging and I deeply appreciate everyone’s expressions of support.  It’s comforting when folks tell me to take my time and take care of myself.

That said…

Taking breaks gives me diminishing returns.  In terms of just how much I should’ve rested after my big breakdown…  Probably a lot longer than I did.  I never have fully recovered from that burnout and likely needed at least a year or so off.  But the complicating factor is that not working on my stories is stressful,and that stress builds.  Too much time off eventually becomes more stressful than any stress I’m suffering from working too much – so much so that getting the reset I need is the opposite of restful.  It’s a very hard balance to strike and I never have entirely managed it.

The problem here is another one like that.  I have plenty of stories I could switch to, including several that are kind of aggressively wholesome to the point of being a sort of inverse-OVDT which I’m sure would be very healing for me to work on and for you to read.  But,I cannot become that author who keeps starting and dropping serials and never finishes anything.  I absolutely intend to finish everything I’ve started, both TGAB and OVDT and even Netherstar (most of you probably don’t even remember that’s a thing), but right now, nobody has anything but my say-so to back that up.  Dropping OVDT to pivot to a third (fourth, if we’re counting Netherstar, which was always stated to be a side project with irregular updates) serial would place a psychological burden on me that would just never go away until I finished another story.

The fact that I may have to do that in order to finish another story is…a problem.

There is also a more prosaic concern for me, here.  Every time there’s an unplanned break or interruption or something canceled, the people who reach out to me area always incredibly nice and supportive, and the ones who don’t just quietly drop their pledges.  I lose income on these, measurably, every time.  And to be clear I do not for one second blame the people who drop pledges over such things.  That is the objectively reasonable thing to do, in my opinion; continuing to support me through these rough patches shows exceptional patience and kindness and I do not dare expect it from the majority of readers.

I have to consider the financial impact it’ll have on me if I start building a reputation as That Author Who Never Finishes Anything.  I don’t have any way of guessing what that impact would be, but I’m certain it would occur and not be good.

Which leads me to my last and most awkward point…

I’m Struggling Financially

I don’t want to bring everybody down with details, save to say that I’m not in any near danger of becoming homeless or hungry, so please don’t worry about my safety.  I currently don’t have health insurance, but hey, welcome to America.  The issues I’m having are the sort that will lead to long-term financial and possibly legal burdens if I can’t resolve them.  Basically, just like everybody else these days, I need to be making more money for the amount of work I’m doing.

This is not me asking for more pledges.  I’m only still here because of your generosity and because you believe in my work.  What each of you has pledged is what you judged appropriate for your situation and how much you like my writing and to me, that makes it the correct amount.  Even if what you’re paying me is nothing, I still appreciate you.  I know I say it a lot, but it always bears repeating: I’m grateful to have readers.  It means a lot to me that people like my work, and I put it online for free for a reason.  It’s rough out there for us all.

Which makes this awkward to bring up, but I’ve been mulling it for a while, so here goes: I am considering changing my base subscription tear, the one that gets an early chapter access, to $5 a month.  I’m considering this because $5 seems to be the nigh-universal standard for serialists and in fact content creators in general for the basic tier; it’s what Patreon initially prompted me to do when I was first setting up the tier system.  People even told me at the time I should set it at $5.  I made it $3 instead because…

Well, this may sound silly in hindsight, but I just wanted to be generous with my backers.  Y’all are the reason I have food and a roof and any security at all and I liked feeling like I was doing something a little extra compared to my colleagues.  I still feel like that and I really hate the idea of changing it now – especially now, after everybody’s gotten use to the old way.  But I gotta do something, and this is one thing I can do.  It’s not the only thing I can do, but none of my options are sure things and it’s something I have to at least consider.

But, don’t worry!

Nothing’s Going to Change Immediately

Any changes, to ongoing projects or Patreon tiers or anything else, will come at the absolute earliest after OVDT’s Book 3 finishes and then after I’ve taken my month-long between-books break.  I need time both to mull my options and reach decisions, and then time to make sure everybody has a minimum of a billing cycle’s warning of any changes.

I also intend to put out some polls for Patreon backers to gather opinions about the options I have brought up; that’ll happen within the next few days.  Sorry in advance for the email spam, Patrons, I’m only planning on two.  In addition to polls, I also welcome input of any kind.  Feel free to post comments here (or in the comment sections of the polls in question when they’re up) with your thoughts if you have any you wish to share.  This will be a public post, so if you don’t have a Patreon account you can always talk on my discord server.  In fact, if you don’t have a Patreon account that’s almost certainly where you learned about this post from.

Meanwhile, things will continue as they have.  I’ll be stressed and poor, but frankly, that’s just life these days and in many ways I’m one of the luckiest bastards in the world, thanks entirely to the support of all of you.  None of the stress I’m under is immediately threatening, to either life or limb or probably to the risk of another mental breakdown.  I felt kinda close to one a week ago, but then I took my monthly break and I’m doing much better; I reckon as long as I stay consistent with my break schedule, I’ll be okay at least long enough to finish this book.  That should give me enough time to come to the necessary decisions and notify everybody with sufficient warning.

So for now, we press on as before.  Please take care of yourselves and stay safe out there.  You’re appreciated and I believe in you.