December status report (Patreon)

As laid out in my previous update post, I'm in the midst of a big experiment seeking to reconcile my need to put out content with my ongoing mental health struggles.  This post is to bring everybody up to speed on my discoveries halfway through, and to solicit some feedback.

The short version is my results have been very mixed.  The good news is that this has been fantastic for my mental health.  I'm under substantially less stress, my depressive episodes have mostly tapered off, and I feel overall much better.  The bad news is my productivity has been completely kneecapped.  I've suffered a complete lack of focus and haven't actually written anywhere near as much as I would need to for this to be sustainable over the long term.

I suspect I do need some degree of pressure to meet regular writing goals, so my current challenge is to figure out how to thread that needle.  I need to devise some kind of system that's less harsh on me than my previous one, because that one was slowly killing me, but more harsh than my current one is.  I need stress for motivation, just...less stress, apparently.  I'm having a really hard time coming up with ideas for this, and am open to suggestion.

The experiment will continue for the remainder of the year; I chose to run it for the last two months of 2023 because I have enough chapters, between Hoard and Dysland, to produce updates for that period even if I didn't write a word.  That, by the way, is why I didn't take my regular monthly writing break last month, and won't this month either.  The monthly week off will return once I'm out of buffer and producing content as I go, but for now, enjoy the extra posts.

The other point about which I wished to solicit opinions is how this new schedule has been received by you, the readers.  I think only patrons are allowed to comment here, but feel free to post in my discord server if you have thoughts to share; I value all my readers whether or not they're giving me money directly.  

Personally, I'm not very happy with the output...  As much as I like the two stories I've been updating, I feel that dividing my focus means neither of them gets put out at what seems to me an acceptable rate.  Of course, I knew that would be the case going in, so no surprises there.  But now that we've all seen it, I'm interested in opinions.

Thanks for hanging in there, everybody.  I appreciate you all, and I hope you're enjoying the stories.