Weekly Update — 6 (And 2017 in Review) (Patreon)

But enough with the obvious. I won’t have time for this next week, so let’s look back over 2017 — in prose!

2017 Review

James woke up. It was 2017! He threw off his blanket, ran outside, and spread his arms to a brand new year. In the following twelve months he would strive hard to become a professional writer! He shivered. But first he would quickly go back inside to get dressed before his nads froze off or someone called the police — not that either were actually likely where he lived. This was Cyprus after all.

After a breakfast of greek yogurt mixed with liberal amounts of jam, James sat down at his writing desk with his trusty MacBook Air. It was time to write some stuff!

And write some stuff he did. By the end of January he had written the first novella in the Richard Struggle series, whacked it up on Amazon, and blasted his fast growing mailing list that there was something they needed to buy right now — possibly even read, if they felt so inclined.

“Hey look at that,” James said out loud, despite there being no one else to hear. “People seemed to like that one. Better get on with the next one.”

So he sat down at his writing desk with his trusty MacBook Air and banged out the first draft of the second novella. He read the draft through.

“Mmmmm…. Something’s not quite right here.”

He read it through again. 

“Oh!” He leaned closer to the paper. “Now I know!”

James pulled back, jumped up in his chair, held the print out above his head, and used his ultra functional pec deck training to rip the paper clean in two.

“IT’S SHIT!!!” he screamed to the roof.

March, April, and May passed in a haze of writing books, lecture courses, writing podcasts, and the ever calming voice of Brandon Sanderson — our lord and saviour.

“Opps!” James said, “Just look at the time. Better get back on with my other project.”

Two of the next three chapters were fast paced, action packed, whirlwinds — and if you’ve ever been in a whirlwind, I’m guessing you can appreciate how this can sometimes not be a good thing.

“What is the problem here?” James asked, after realising that he did in fact have a problem. “I’m using the exact same strategy I was using at the end of the last book, so why can’t I make it work now?”

Lounging in the compound swimming pool, he took a lazy sip of fizzy drink, looked out across the calm waters of the Mediterranean, and marvelled at how agile and graceful swimsuit wearing women could still be in their late eighties.

Sometimes inspiration needs an unusual frame of mind.

“Oh, right,” James said slowly, as the answer came to him. “The writing strategy I was using for the climax probably doesn’t work so well at the start of a book.”

And so it was back to scouring the internet and staring at beach rocks until he knew what the hell he was doing — then going back at it with a vengeance born from great personal frustration. 

“Hey, James!” sfu shouted all the way from Germany. “Mind if I set up some fan stuff?”

“What’s that?” James looked up from where he’d been rolling his face on his keyboard. “Oh, yeah, sure, go ahead.” He went back to face rolling on his faithful MacBook Air.

“Hey, James! We’ve set up a discord thing!”

James came up for air again. “Sounds great. I’ll announce it on the mailing list when I send some other stuff out.” He pounded out his announcement and hit the send button.

“Hey James! HOLY CRAP!”

James looked up again. “What?” He opened discord. “HOLY CRAP!” He stared. “I guess I’ll be announcing this in the author notes of my next chapter.

After next chapter release.

“Wow…”

“Hey James, did you know you can link discord with Patreon?”

“…I did not know that.”

One week later.

“HOLY CRAP!”

Two weeks after that.

“Yeah… this is definitely the way to go.” 

James then got down to some serious face rolling, pumped out two new chapters for the next Richard Struggle book, and capped off the year with another new chapter of his other project.

He sat on his balcony and raised a glass of filtered water to the winter sunset. “Here’s to you, 2017. An action packed start and an amazing climax.” He took a sip. “Saggy middle though.” He put his glass down. “But to be fair, it is kinda hard to get middles right.”

Thank you to all my wonderful Patrons! Merry Christmas, happy holidays, or whatever excuse you use to justify all this mid-winter feasting in a society that long ago invented food preservatives. 

See you next week for the last week of 2017!