So I've been going to therapy for a while... (Patreon)

And I'm going to TMI a little bit now.  I've long made a habit of being open about my mental health struggles, despite the fact that I generally prefer to be a private person.  I began this out of professionalism; since my brain problems were causing the stories to be interrupted and delayed, I felt my readers deserved to know what was happening and why.  That's still my main motivation, but over the years I've also learned that a lot of people struggle with similar problems, and quite a few have said that an author being frank and willing to confront this stuff publicly has helped them deal.  So I'm gonna go over what I've learned about the ongoing problems I'm having with burnout, and then explain what it means for my writing going forward.  

This is still a post about what I'm up to and what to expect, so if you're not particularly interested in the psychological nitty-gritty, feel free to skip ahead a bit.  Action plan begins after the Star Wars reference.

Here are some crucial things I have recently come to understand about my burnout problem in the course of introspection and working with my therapist:

- Burnout is story-specific.  Even when I'm too burned out to keep working on whichever story has been my main one at the time, I'm still able to do other creative projects, and write other stories.

- It is not the writing which burns me out, but the pressure to post.  

- Taking writing breaks only alleviates the symptoms of burnout, it does not address the root cause.  For a long time I've thought I just got too burned out that first time and have never properly taken the time to recover, but I've come to realize that since it's the pressure to keep posting the stories I'm committed to that actually causes it...  Well, that pressure never goes away when I'm not working on them.  It only moves away from the forefront of my mind.

- Dividing my focus is helpful.  Doesn't seem like it should be the case, but I have observed that when the pressure to keep cranking out a given story mounts, working on something else for a while not only alleviates my stress but improves my results when I move back to the initial story.

- Ultimately, my problem is too much structure.  The basic, and frankly minimal, requirements of doing X number of words by X deadline on X project is what's ultimately causing my brain to build up stress until it misfires and I can't work anymore.

When I put all these things together, in context, a solution comes to mind.  Well, not a solution maybe, but a direction in which to move.  Let's call it an experiment: a new system I'm going to try to see if it gets me better results.  I just...I really, really hate the thought of doing it.

Insert Kylo Ren meme here.

So, in short, I am going to resume work in November, and I'm moving to an "unstructured" approach.  I cannot do completely unstructured, because I rely on the motivation of some external structure for motivation, but...it's going to be less structured.  This experiment will run for the last two months of this year, November and December, and first thing in 2024 I will assess my results, see how well it's working, and what I might need to change.

In practical terms, there are two structural hurdles I am doing away with: specific deadlines, and a singular story commitment.

First, there will no longer be designated update days.  I'm going to aim for two chapters a week, because that's what I've been doing for the last few years and it's a pace I can more or less keep up with.  But the chapters are going to go up when they're done, whenever that is.  This will either help alleviate the burnout-inducing stress of deadlines, or backfire completely and make it harder to hit my flow without that pressure.  Finding out which will enable me to decide how to go forward when the experimental period is over.

Second, I am not going to concentrate on one story at a time.  First thing in November I will be launching two new stories, simultaneously.  I will work continuously on whatever I feel like writing on a given day, and twice a week I will put out chapters of whatever that is.  That will make five potential stories that might update: The Gods are Bastards, Only Villains Do That, Netherstar, Hoard and Dysland.  I currently still have bad burnout specifically on TGAB and OVDT, so those are likely to remain quiet for a while, but I'm hoping this will alleviate that and let me get back to them soon.

Of the two new stories I'm launching, one I've been developing very openly for the last year or so; anybody who's been active in my discord server pretty much knows what to expect from Hoard.  In contrast, Dysland is something I've been working on entirely in secret, in fact since before I even started considering OVDT. 

I...hate this.  I don't like anything about it.  It's not an approach I would personally like to see as a reader; people like stability and schedules, and rightly so.  I hate what this is going to do to the rate at which my stories come out; being worked on simultaneously will slow all of them.  Honestly, for that reason alone, I wouldn't be bothering with this if I thought I had a choice.  But unless I make some kind of accommodation with the realities of my unwell mental state, I'm just going to keep coming up against this wall and having to stop work entirely.  If this enables me to keep working, better than I have been...well, whatever it takes.

That's kinda something that's come up in therapy, too; I seem to be pretty disinterested in my well-being apart from how it impacts my work.  My therapist is concerned about that, but to be completely honest, I'm kind of okay with it.  I lived for a long time basically just surviving; now that I have a career doing something I love and which matters to me, and adds happiness to the lives of others...well, that deserves all my focus.  I don't really have anything else going that I care about all that much.  I'd absolutely work myself down to a wreck if it got more of my stories out faster and I don't see the problem with that.  Unfortunately, that's not how it works.  The stories suffer if the author doesn't stay in good condition, so I have to take better care of myself.

I don't have to like it, though.

I'm sorry for what this is going to do to the update schedule, I really, really hope you all enjoy the new stories; I hope that proves to be worth it.  I know things seem like a constant mess around here, but I promise I'm trying.  Doing creative work while mentally ill is just way more complicated than it deserves to be.

Rest assured, whatever I start I am committed to finishing.  I know that's big talk from somebody who hasn't actually brought a story to a conclusion yet (though TGAB is getting close!) but I view these as moral responsibilities; I never launch a story without knowing how it ends, and we'll get there together.  Short of author existence failure, nothing's going to stop me from finishing what I start.  No matter how many times I've gotten knocked down, I've always gotten back up and gone back to work, and I mean to keep on that way.

Thanks for coming on the ride with me.

P.S. I wrote this post while severely sleep-deprived and in a significant amount of pain; I hope it's coherent, but if anything requires clarification I'll be available here and on discord for questions.