July Report
Added 2018-08-14 03:00:01 +0000 UTCThe last chapter of July was published on the 12th of August, so the July period covers all writing done July 2nd to August 12th, a period of 41 days. In that time, 9 chapters totaling 55,157 words were posted. The average was 1,345 words per day, with an average chapter length of 6,128 words.
Sub-optimal time between publication, unfortunately, which I'll try to be better about in the future.
I took a brief trip to San Francisco in July, which had more of an impact on writing than I'd hoped it would. In the thirteen months that I've been writing this particular story, there have been ~5 family vacations, with little impact to scheduling. The biggest difference this time was either the jet lag or the lack of downtime.
Work on the worldbuilding doc is slow but steady. I've nailed the outline to the wall and have promised myself that I'm not going to fall victim to scope creep. We'll see how that goes. I'm prioritizing writing the actual story, naturally.
(I was/am suffering from some depression too, probably just because my brain isn't all that great at regulating dopamine and/or serotonin. Not much to be done about that, unless the depression gets worse to the point where it makes sense to take the hits that come with being on antidepressants. Diet and exercise are the go-tos for me, but they're both harder when depressed. I'm working on it. Don't worry about me. I'm mostly trying to be more communicative about these things so that I'm not bottling them up and making them worse.)
Comments
please edit you comment to add a big *SPOILER ALERT* notice
Oren Milman
2018-08-14 08:16:09 +0000 UTCAlexander, as always I really enjoy your writing. The amount of work you put into understanding the motivations of your characters, as well as your world-building (which I'm sure uses similar skills) really shows in how "alive" the characters feel. I'm going to echo Gheorghe in saying that simply publishing chapters as they come out is not a bad idea. Wildbow [1] has some good (imo) thoughts on writing serials -- consistency is one of them. While publishing on a schedule is not your style (no need to change that), you can better emulate that by publishing chapters as they come out (or perhaps with a few chapters' latency). Who cares if you leave your readership on a cliffhanger! Obviously, this has the added challenge of having to commit to each chapter as you are done with it- you would know better than I. I recently wrapped up a PhD! The most important lesson I learned is that life is a marathon, not a sprint. If you're not feeling 100%, be sure to focus on yourself -- surely more important than any story :-) [1] <a href="https://wildbow.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/thoughts-on-writing-serials/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://wildbow.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/thoughts-on-writing-serials/</a>
Ryan
2018-08-14 08:02:33 +0000 UTCGreat job on the recent chapters. About the words per day metrics, I would suggest not just dividing chapter length by days between releases. You are not a full-time writer as you have other large commitments. You are more like a part-time employee with a flexible schedule. Stop beating yourself up with that number. If I really cared so much about volume in my reading I would read one of those mass produced low effort Chinese cultivation novels. In my oppinion you are one of the most prolific writers in your quality bracket. Keep up the amazing work!
Phnglui mglw'nafh R'lyeh
2018-08-14 05:31:17 +0000 UTC
