State of the Patreon Q1 + Poll

Heya everyone. This one isn't an update, so sorry about that, but please read until the end.

After doing some thinking, I think I should be keeping you guys better informed as to what is going on with the patreon, my life, and anything that might come between you and what you're paying for. That in mind, I've decided to start these roughly quarterly updates on what is going on. This plan came a little late here in March, until the next one will be at the end of June - early July.

Moving on, we come to a Band-Aid off moment. I haven't been keeping up on my end of our relationship.

When I decided to become a full-time writer, I did a lot of soul searching and decided that one update every 10 or so days is plenty manageable, and for a while I was able to keep to that. Overtime though, things started to fall apart a bit, and it's been taking me longer and longer to output for you all. Some of it is bad luck and real life events, but if I'm being honest with myself, there is still a fair amount of delay caused by things I can prevent. Most of it boils down to me writing when I'm feeling most inspired.

That, unfortunately, can be anytime, and if it strikes when I'm in the middle of something I can't put down, then there is a little I can do. More than a few chapters have been written in 30 sleepless hour bursts, and I'm not sure how much longer I can sustain that.

Compounding the issue, with patreon as my primary income, I effectively don't have a rigid work schedule. As a consequence, My sleep schedule is completely trashed, and has been for the past year and some change. I know that's beginning to negatively affect me.

With all of that in mind, I've made some significant changes to my workflow starting today. Going forward, I'm going to start treating this like the job that it is and actually use rigid work days. Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. until I've hit a daily quota, I'll be sitting down and doing nothing but writing. I'll also be treating the weekends as actual weekends, and not be working on them.

I've started that this morning, and was able to hit a 1000 word quota before 5:00 p.m., so that was heartening. I've already got a bit written from before this change, and I'm hoping the next chapter will before the end of March.

Moving on, against the wishes of my financial advisor, I'll be restoring the visibility of how much I make on Patreon here soon, so that newcomers can make an informed decision on whether or not they want to support me. At the time of writing this, I make about $4,600 a month before taxes, or about $2,900 after tax. (Taxes in the USA are not kind to the self-employed). I said before that $5,000 a month was the minimum I wanted to remain full-time, but I'm fine cutting back each month if it means I can keep doing what I love, which is writing. That being said, there is some uncertainty on the horizon I'm my life, and I'd rather be north of that $5k figure just in case. I'm hoping that getting my workflow together and being closer to that 10 update cycle helps, but I want to get some input on a possible change.

I know I said I wanted to keep my current system of "give what you want, but everyone gets the same access", but in order to try and jump that $5k hump, I might start giving patrons an advance chapter that is withheld from the public until the next one is done. (Basically, how every other writer does it.) I've included a poll on this post to get your feedback (Note that the most popular choice isn't necessarily what I'm going to go with.) If you have any comments, please let me know. The poll will be open until Wednesday night.

That's all for this one. If I don't read your comments either here or in discord tonight, then I'll read them tomorrow morning. I'm getting ready to head to bed in the next hour or two.

Thankee much,

Fuggmann.