Pausing the Patreon for April (Patreon)

Hey! Hello, everyone! Well, the title puts it pretty plainly. The Curse Crazy patreon is taking a one month pause. What does that mean?

Patrons will not be charged for the billing cycle of April~ In addition, there will not be any new story uploads for April -- the next upload of anything will be early May.

And to break it down tier-by-tier, ier, sort of:

Jinxed and Hexed tier patrons: You won't be charged for the month, but your access to patron-only stories will still be enabled! At least, that's what this FAQ is telling me! If you have any trouble accessing a story, let me know and I'll look into figuring it out~

Cursed and Spellbound tier patrons: You won't be charged for the month, and your usual 2k words will not be written. Similarly as above, you should still retain access to patron-only stories! I may pop in our documents and do some editing throughout the month, but there won't be any major additions -- not including if I'm catching up with March's words in early April~

Clients with unfinished emergency commissions: Good news! One reason for pausing the patreon is to catch up on these exact projects, most of which have fallen far in progress from what any of us would like. My intent is to budget out (most of) my usual writing time for the month on purely these commissions; most of these stories have some amount of drafted progress, but a couple are still just outlines. Basically I hope to give every story a meaningful boost, including getting a few fully finished.

... That's about it! The May billing cycle is expected to proceed as normal, so expect to be charged again by patreon when you normally would. For most of you, that's the start of the month, but some of you make payments in the middle, so plan accordingly~ As said before, the next upload, whatever it might be, will be in early May, so please look forward to it! You can take a guess at what it might be perhaps by looking at my pipeline on Discord, a place I'll still be hovering around throughout this pause~

Formally, thank you all for your patience and support! Some of you especially are sages of generosity in some form or another.

... Well, that's about it! Of the important stuff -- the stuff you really need to know. Everything from this point is something of an explanation for the pause, which isn't very exciting.

Pretty clearly, I've fallen behind far more than I'd like. In the past, "falling behind" with projects usually meant that a cursed-tier patron would have to wait until early next month for their words. But more frequently it's become normal for the first week of the month to be a catch-up week, with two or sometimes three cursed-tier stories still getting their 2k words. That bled time then crunches my schedule, which has become especially full with the emergency commissions all sort of sandwiched between the various patreon projects -- I either have to cram a lot of work in that time, or I have to push things back, of which the emergency commissions are.... unfortunately the most flexible to maneuver. So the emergency comms keep getting just bits of progress, some more than others, with a couple outstanding with really nothing more than outlines.

And that's just disappointing, huh. No one wants to wait half a year before the service you paid for even begins. I'm sorry about all this. I bit off more than I could chew, and my output these months isn't at all what I've planned for. The disappointments continue: hexed tier patrons and higher haven't been given a poll in a long time, and the last poll to be cast... hasn't seen the promised results of a story about the winning option. In addition, fan-favorite projects have been left untouched, namely Discovery -- a beloved story, yet I have only just notes regarding the next chapter. For quite some time, I haven't uploaded anything that wasn't a commission, no projects that are entirely of my own thoughts or direction.

What's gone wrong? I think a decline in my mental health has left me drained of energy in a lot of ways, and certainly with regards to my writing output. I just don't write as many words at a time as I used to, so, that math is pretty straightforward. I still have as many dedicated writing sessions as before, but they're less productive; where I used to write 2k words in a sitting, and effectively hammer out an entire patron reward in a day, I now often feel exhausted after just writing 1k words, if I get away with that. If it's time to upload a story, I spend far too long doing edits and arranging the upload, taking up an entire day of what could have been writing. To that point, I've at least decided to have dedicated days for JUST editing and preparing uploads... but that's a very small minor efficiency boost. Other solutions haven't worked out nearly as well: trying to just write miraculously more in one sitting, or commit to writing on my usual days off, just don't stick when it matters.

Then, the quality of the writing itself. Hahh, I'm never a fair judge of my own writing, but I can't help but feel a certain soullessness in my recent stuff. A spark is missing, or something. Maybe I've been too immersed in the fetish, or maybe depression has dulled my passions, but I look back on my writing and see... missed opportunities, or obvious oversights. Oh the typos, they've begun to stack up... Editing in general isnt what it used to be, hardly do I make major changes to the initial draft anymore, I just stick largely to what's written first and fix up from there, so often I feel my stories have these glaring pacing flaws, so many things that shouldve been filtered out by a better editor. So much of my writing is just a major drag, soooo wordy, so many cuts needed. I see it, I know it, but I just don't have the stamina for doing what it deserves, so I give myself the accomplishment boost of just uploading it with only the most needed adjustments. Perhaps that comes with the business, that I can't give as much time and love when I'm also working on a schedule -- and then I fear that this can be read in the writing, that my fatigue is clearly noticeable in the text, and that it might be interpreted as me caring less and less...

I've got stuff on my mind! A lot of anxieties lately. As I fall behind from where I'd like to be, I gradually dread writing a little more, so that when I do write, I lack the inspiration to get a lot done. Snowball effect and such.

One area I've improved in is outlining, a process I've taken to better organizing so that I can draft more effectively. My outlines before used to be loose summaries, basically like I was writing the whole story in a total rush. Lately, I've put more effort in arranging thoughts so that I can piece and puzzle them around more fluidly, so that I get distracted less. But this process thus became a bigger addition to any given project, an increase in the workload. And it's so worth it, but often times these outlines are... short stories in themselves! Very detailed and, you know me, wordy. And I've been conflicted how to account for this, whether that's just on me to optimize appropriately, or if that should be counted to some fraction of the words being paid for... Business things, bleh, it's not something I'm good at.

Not all my woes are just from the patreon, of course, but my broader woes do indeed have an effect on that output. Lately, I've been very empty. The quality of my Real Work -- which is very unimportant to keeping the world spinning -- has pretty sharply decreased, an environment that just isn't a place to flourish, but I'm not in the best position to just change that up. It's hard to find joy in things, so I lack motivation to even do leisurely things, like playing video games or chatting with friends. A lot of free time feels like recovery, or really, preparation for the next shift of the routine. This is a huge bummer with regards to my vtubing endeavors, a field that sounds fun and exciting, that I've made big plans for, and yet I find myself never energized enough to want to stream or study up on the technicalities. It doesn't help that there's always that nagging voice in my head, telling me of the unfinished commissions, the stuff I'm behind in... Can you believe that somehow with all this going on, I still manage to lose sleep some days? I'm awake more often than I should, and still getting less accomplished.

I need a refresher~ Just a little break from some things so I can catch up. Make the big wave a little smaller, get in a good position to get running again. It's my birthday month too, so I can excuse it to myself as a little self-treat or something. Any other time, and I may not give myself this excuse... I hope that by the end of this, I'll come out feeling lighter and more able to appreciate what I have going on here. Maybe even I can dedicate some time to fixing up the patreon itself, clean up and dust off a bit, hm.

Thanks again for all of your support~ I'll be around the Discord still, so feel free to reach out to me there!