Venting, Honesty, and Moving Forward (Patreon)

I need to talk about the way I've been feeling and some of my bad habits that I'm going to try and avoid from now on.

At this point, it's safe to say that this year has been messy for me. I ended Coye because I had to come to terms with it not been profitable, I tried making three different stories with ghostwriting partners and then dropped them after going so far as getting character art and covers made for characters that I'll now never use, I started a down to earth romcom in WWYK only to drop it because of Amazon issues, then started work on a cultivation webnovel.

I feel like to an outsider's perspective that my behavior throughout all of this might come off as manic, to an extent I'd agree, but I think it's all rooted in the fact that Coye meant a lot to me and I've been flailing ever since. Yeah, I started a few of those ghostwriting projects while I was still working on Coye, but those fell apart not long after. I have a tendency to try and do too much because I really want to succeed and I'm worried about the perception so I make it sound like I'm in control of myself when what I should be doing is not overly committing to anything until I'm sure about what's going on with me.

WWYK was the easiest time I had writing this year, and I felt like it could've kept going if not for the Amazon stuff. With the stuff my author friends taught me in the aftermath, I had a clear path forward and I weirdly swerved and got to where I am right now. Anyone who's been reading my updates knows that working on Clouded Soul has been a mental drag for me. All the world building stuff and pre-production was all super fun, but actually writing it has not helped my mood because it's a very depressing story at the start. I quite like the quality of the twenty-five chapters I've done for it, but I overcommitted and hyped it up and thought it would be my new focus when the reality is that I don't really feel like working on it.

Not only does it have a lot of sad subject material but I find myself wondering if I'll even want to write it when we get to the 'fun' parts. Coye had action, but it was probably only like thirty percent of the story. The emphasis was on the slice of life, romance, and sex. Even after Clouded Soul gets going it's not going to suddenly become a romantic comedy, which seems to be what I'm more interested in than anything else. What happened with WWYK scared me and made me think I needed to swerve and not do something similar, but all that's led to is 52k words of depressing set up and like a month where I've struggled to break 2k words on most days and even 1k words during really bad days whereas 3k used to be my definition of a bad day.

I wrote that lighthearted short story idea the other day just to get it out of my system, and I thought it genuinely helped first since it loosened me up and helped to complete the Clouded Soul chapter I was stuck on. But then I got stuck on the next one again which has caused me to get all introspective like this. The words were coming to me easier than they had in weeks- writing the two follow-up documents in particular made me break 4k for the first time in a long time- and I don't think I should ignore that.

I thought okay I'll just try and do them both but when I sat down to work on Clouded Soul I locked up again and ended up doing the aforementioned two follow-up documents instead. The reason I'm so sensitive about all of this is because of the bad year, because I've come off as manic and desperate to find something that sticks. WWYK almost did, and yet I swerved from what I'm good at because I was afraid.

I'm at the point where I don't think Clouded Soul is working and admitting that feels much worse than it should because of my bad habits. I tried to sound like I knew for certain it was going to work so that people wouldn't perceive me as how I'm afraid they might, I overhyped it, and I got ahead of myself and restructured the Patreon to support it.

My goal is to stop doing all of those things and to accept that I've been in a weird place ever since I stopped working on Coye, being honest that yes, I am throwing a bunch of things at the wall hoping that something sticks, I did bite off more than I can chew multiple times this year, and I need to stop worrying about how I'm perceived. Ending Coye depressed me. WWYK helped a lot and was the most productive I've been this year since, and my take away his I need to work on a fun lighthearted story along those lines for my mental health while being honest that it might not work out and that I'm experimenting until I find something I'm comfortable with committing to.

My fear is that will think I abandon projects when truthfully the only reason I've ever done so is because of intense personal issues with the project (MHFAP! and RotGM), or them simply not being profitable, (Coye and WWYK). MHFAP! was my brand for four years, and I was committed to RotGM and Coye for a little over a year on both projects. It's irrational for me to worry about whether or not I can commit to something- I've proven that I can multiple times throughout my career- it's just that this year I was very sad because I ended a story I love working on and made a bunch of confusing decisions in the aftermath.

Right now, I want to develop the ideas I have for the lighthearted romantic comedy dating sim-inspired gamelit story I recently posted three documents about. I'm not going to pretend like I know for sure that it will stick. I don't, and being honest about that should help me. I think it will stick, but I'm not going to try and convince myself of that and risk getting ahead of myself again.

If you raised your Patreon tier to read Clouded Soul chapters in advance then consider this my warning to lower it. I personally hope you won't, as living expenses have been rough as I've been struggling to find something that works for me, but I'm also not going to ask people to give me money for nothing when my results have been all over the place as of late. I'll restructure the Patreon soon, just don't feel like it rn after writing all this.

I'm going to relax for the rest of today, but I've already started work on another document of preproduction and I might play around in Koikatsu to design some of the girls I have in mind for this next series since it's a fun way to chill out while still being vaguely productive. Writing this was hard, but I do feel good about it. I'm sorry if you're disappointed that I won't be working on Clouded Soul, but I'm thankful if you understand why. I know how to not make the same mistakes again and we'll see where this next idea goes and if it ends up not working out then that's fine and I'll just have to figure something else out that does.