Happy New Year! + Update Blog

From my end of the world to wherever you guys are, happy new year! Here's hoping that things start to pick up in the world, it's been a long two years and we could really use some positives.

Thank you all for being here, especially those of you who have supported me here on Patreon throughout the past couple of years - you don't know how much it's helped me out while I haven't been able to work!!

And with the end of the year, it's time for my annual word count breakdown!

This year my goal was to hit 520k words by the end of the year, but it was clear by about March that it wasn't going to happen, so my back-up goal so to speak was just to surpass what I wrote in 2020, i.e. around 302k words. While I didn't get close to my 520k, I did manage to beat the 302k, with a final total of 326,829 words!

This was spread across 65 (!!!) different fics, 37 of which are completed and posted, 28 of which are works in progress that are either not published yet at all, or have some chapters posted. 

The fics I wrote the most new words for included an unpublished WIP called Incomplete, with 30,304 new words; Deku's Extraordinary Playlist, with 25,802 words; and the currently-ongoing After The Rain, with 21,341 words (and counting). 

Also an honorary mention for The Two Types of Wingmen with 18,775 new words all written in the space of like a week, and my Christmas Fic for this year The Finest KFC Money Can Buy which unexpectedly ended up topping out at 18,775 words!!

And for anyone who happens to be curious on the least updated, there are a couple of answers: Purrfect Companion, Happiest Day of my Life, and Housemate Wanted are all on the list as ongoing WIPs but I didn't actually add any new words to them this year, so I can't decide if that counts or not.

In terms of actually-wrote-but-not-much, I did 87 words on a fic about a bird before I got bored; 246 words of a Fantasy AU thing that I never went back to because I lost steam on it, 397 on a Pride Month fic that I decided to keep for 2022 instead, and 536 on a WIP currently just known as "Dreams" that I really liked but then couldn't figure out how to continue it. Hopefully most of them will one day see the light of day, but this year was not their year haha.

And now for the goals for this year

Ideally I would like to go for 520k again, but I definitely struggled with that in 2021 - if you fall behind for a week it feels impossible to catch up. And especially with a new job just starting, I'm not sure exactly how much time/energy I'll have to try to maintain it. So for that reason I'm going to pare it down a little and aim for 365k words -  an average of 1k a day instead of around 1.5k. 

As a whole it seems like a huge difference (135k over the course of the year) while at a daily level it seems like nothing at all (500 words), but in general it means if I don't write for a week I only need to fit another 7k in later, instead of another 10k, which feels much more doable.

If I'm exceeding this goal by a ton then obviously I'll start fighting for that 520, but I'm hoping setting it a little lower will be less stressful!

And of course, you folks will still get a ton of new content at 365k words - we had 37 completed fics + some WIPs in 2021, meaning an average of 3+ fics a month (and that's not even accounting for extra posts for chapters) which feels like a pretty steady stream of content on my end!!

As an aside, my following here on Patreon has reached a pretty steady number, I've been within 1-2 people of the same number of Patrons for over a year now. So if you guys have any ideas on exciting new things I could do to give you guys more value in your membership, or for ways to draw in some more people to keep us growing, I would love to hear them!! I can't guarantee I'll implement them all, but I 100% want to hear what you think. Feel free to comment here, DM, tweet at me, mention it in my Discord server, or send me a carrier pigeon!

And to the people still waiting on their anniversary gifts, I'm sorry!! The postal system has been a mess all pandemic so it's kind of a nightmare right now. I have them packed and ready, they're just waiting for a chance to send them!! 

On that note, if you reached your one- or two-year anniversary of being a patron recently, or if your address has changed since last giving it to me, and you'd like one of my little gifts, the post about addresses etc is here!