Weekly Update #32

Stuff and things. Stuff, and, things. Oh, and rest of the chapters coming tonight! Just felt like doing this first.

Have a meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j9xw-D38cE

Weekly Worksheet: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1s7Lvy0AFQBYoMEAFBXD85hy1BNYS_JJq

An even 40 hours last week. While I didn't get as much done as I wanted to, I can be happy with myself as long as I get at least 40 hours done in a week. Also, if you actually look, it's obvious that my attempt at a new schedule wasn't very successful.

The True Endgame

Personally, the past week's worth of chapters have been my favorite to write in a while. Part of me keeps on thinking, "You know, if you were writing an actual book, any editor or publisher would tell you to cut all of this out because it's just senseless fluff and has no real meaning to the plot," but then I remember, "but I love senseless fluff" and continue writing it anyways. I mean, one of the story's tags is "slice of life." The problem is just that "slice of life" content is very frowned upon in Western literature. There isn't really a market for it outside of people who enjoy anime and the like. It's seen as bad storytelling and "you should always cut out anything that is not essential to moving the plot forward." But that's boring to me.

One major complaint I've always had, even as a kid, is that I want to see more of what happens after the story is over. I've always wanted to see what happens between all the battles and drama, and I've especially always wanted to know "BUT NOW WHAT?" after the end of movies. For example, I remember when I was younger, this was especially true with 2012. That movie gets shit on a lot, but I love it for being a disaster flick you don't really put much thought into. However, I have always wanted to just see a continuation of the movie where they're rebuilding and going about their lives after the world has effectively ended. I love that sort of stuff but it's frowned upon by most Western creators. Even the biggest, most famous authors are going to say stuff like to cut out anything non-essential and that stories without concrete plots are bad.

But, I'm just writing what I want to write. I'm not going to force myself to fit the established standard of writing stories. I'd rather read something with tons of fluff and slice of life than the best, most epic story of all time with none of that.

So yeah. I've been enjoying the story more this past week since I've put more of a focus on silly, slice of life things, and I hope that everybody else is enjoying it as well! I figure that my stories are going to reach more people as long as I'm honest with myself in regard to what I want rather than trying to force a story to be a certain way.

Ramble over!

Ero Dungeon Evolution

Same as above, kind of. While this does have more of a plot and serious story than TTE, the past few chapters have been pretty slice-of-life-y even if I was sprinkling in story and plot points. Because of that, I've been enjoying them more. However, it's kind of tricky here because I know people are reading the story for more than just slice of life. I want to write more slice of life, but I also know that I've already set forth expectations for the story, so I need to find a good balance between satisfying expectations while keeping it interesting for myself so that I don't drop it. So far, I have been doing that.

The real problem is tables. Dreaded, horrible tables.

It's no secret to anybody in the Discord that I am less than a fan when it comes to writing tables. However, I know that people love their tables, so I'll keep including them. I just made EDE's system too complicated. Despite how it may seem, there is a bunch of number crunching going on behind the scenes and a ton of tiny numbers to keep track of which make me groan and whine. When I inevitably get around to revising the story for self-publishing and the like, I'm almost certainly going to tone the system down to make it more simple. Woof's system so far is much easier for me to manage and actually fun to write whereas EDE's system makes me go "why did I do this to myself?" Alas, people love the tables and celebrate whenever a chapter has more of them and are less than happy during streaks without them.

For now, you can expect a frequency of tables and stats similar to what there has been. Bursts of tables for a few chapters and then streaks without them. I think that's the best way for me to retain my sanity while dealing with the system I've subjected myself to.

I'm making it sound worse than it actually is. I don't hate the tables that much. They're just a minor annoyance and interrupt my flow when it comes to writing the story since they require more care and details than Woof's.

Steel Glory

This story will be eligible for Trending on Royal Road in a few days. Anybody else who wants to leave a review or rating is more than welcome to since I know a few of you have been putting it off until the story is older to assist with Trending.

However, I will admit that the story has gained less traction than I thought it would. I was hoping for maybe 300 followers or so minimum by the end of the month (compared to TTE's 700 followers at the end of the first month and EDE's 2000), and right now it's only at 122. That number is even lower when I take into consideration that probably half of those (at least) are from my other stories. Not a single person has commented on the story so far that has not already commented on my other stories.

Personally, I'm still happy with the way the story is going. I'm not going to drop it either, so no worries about that. However, seeing as how I think the story has only brought in a single new patron specifically (and I'm not even sure about that), I'm going to have to see after Trending (if it even makes it onto Trending) where on my priority list it falls. I know this might make me sound like I only care about money, but this is my job. I've got to focus on the stories that are actually making me money and introduce new projects to bring in more money.

So, it's still going to continue, but we'll see next week what sort of schedule the story is going to have for the long-term. I may just do less chapters but longer ones.

Woof (Name still pending)

Blegh. I really wanted to try and get up to chapter 20 done during the weekend, but I ended sleeping almost all weekend instead. I slept for 12 hours Saturday and 14 hours Sunday. I effectively slept for more than half the weekend. I hate that. So, I got none of it done over the weekend. I actually relaxed on the weekend like I'm supposed to instead of working. Boo!

Anyways, to build off of points I made above:

There is going to be slice of life moments in this later on once more characters are introduced, and I plan on the solitude ending soon so that it's not just "lonely monster in a dungeon by itself" the entire story. I like many characters and character interactions, not solitude. If anything, these chapters are actually challenging to write because writing a character on their own is so much more difficult for me to do, but I don't want to force in new characters before the story is ready for them. Soon, though.

As for tables, the tables in this are so much easier to handle. Like, seriously. However, something I've realized is that the high numbers shown in the very first chapter might end up being too high over time, or not high enough. We'll see. Fortunately, seeing as how this is a rough draft essentially, I can always go back and fix them if I ever need to.

Other than that, hopefully I'll be able to get up to chapter 20 done sometime this week, and then post the first chapter to RR next week!

Also, I've already seen a sketch for how a certain vampire queen looks, and damn is she fine. Can't wait for everybody else to see the final product!

In Closing

As mentioned after the worksheet, my attempt at switching to a new schedule was basically a complete failure.

You see, I have this problem. I've been like this my whole life and it's a horrible problem to have, but it's one that's extremely hard to kick no matter how hard I try. I'm a major procrastinator. Throughout the 5 years in college, I never once worked on projects or assignments before the day that they were due. I typed up a 25 page creative writing assignment 3 hours before it was due. I did every single research essay about 4 hours before they were due and so on. Major test? Did at the final minute. It's a miracle that my power never went out when doing any of these because it would have been entirely on me for fucking up if it did.

Anyways, this problem now extends to writing. I can hardly bring myself to write more than I need to ahead of time. Writing a chapter of each story, switching between them, is difficult but not impossible. Forcing myself to write 4 chapters ahead of time after finishing the day's "required" chapter is next to impossible for me. I know it'd be more efficient if I could actually manage to bring myself to do it... but yeah. At least I still have some outlines thanks to taking that one day for them.

This is also why TTE is almost always the only chapter with a consistent release time. Because I've given myself a deadline on it by trying to release it at 6pm every single day, I'm able to motivate myself to do it before then.

Basically, here's how last week went:

Monday: "Okay, I typed up TTE, and now to type the rest... oh, it's the end of the day already and I haven't done anything I wanted to because I kept on telling myself all day I still need to write 4 more TTE chapters. Well, I'll just write 4 more tomorrow and do the 5 EDE tomorrow, too."
Tuesday: "Alright, I did one of both, now for the rest... oh, it's the end of the day already. I guess I'll just do 3 TTE tomorrow and a couple of EDE in addition to all of SG's."

and repeat for the rest of the week.

See? Procrastinator. It's honestly my worst trait and has been a battle for as long as I can remember, especially because my mind is stupid and like "oh, you shouldn't do anything fun while you're procrastinating because you still have work to do." Instead of actually making use of the time I'm procrastinating with, I just waste it because I feel guilty for procrastinating and not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's a cruel cycle.

Anyways, while last week's attempt at a new schedule might have been a complete failure, I'm going to do something else which has already been proven to be much more successful.

That's right. I'm going to try to maintain a good sleeping schedule.

I know, I know. Some of you who are in the Discord are probably laughing from reading that since I manage to absolutely screw up my schedule every other week. I'm seriously going to try this time, though. No more staying up past midnight and no sleeping in past 7am, even on the weekends. I'm much more motivated, energized, and far less stressed out this way.

On top of that, I'm also going to force myself to feel less stressed out over not releasing things early on in the day or sometimes not on time such as with TTE. My goal is just going to be daily releases regardless of what time they come out at. As long as both TTE and EDE (just these two for now) release at least one chapter a day Mon-Fri, I'm going to make myself be happy even if they release at 11:59pm. The same amount of chapters are going to be coming out every week, still, so that should be enough.

One final thing! Some of you might have already noticed, but I've stopped forcing myself to reach a certain word limit for stories. This is something I've been doing with TTE for - well, pretty much since I ever started writing on RR. Even the-story-which-must-not-be-named was written in its entirely like that. I always, always forced myself to write 1,500 word minimum chapters. If a chapter reached a perfectly good stopping point, I forced myself to either add more or to fluff it up. This is a really bad writing practice and detrimental to overall quality. So, some people might be disappointed that some chapters might be shorter now, but every chapter will still be at least 1,000 words long. I'm going to continue aiming for 1,500 words, but if I feel like a good stopping point comes up before that, then I'm going to be happy. Furthermore, some chapters will still go over that. EDE had a couple of chapters go over 1,500 recently without me forcing them to be that long. But yeah, seeing as how I'm now writing more stories and wanting to increase the quality of my writing, I'm going to stop being so obsessed with word count and just end it where it feels right to end it as long as it's over 1,000 words. It'd be hard to write something under 1,000 words, so pushing myself to always be above that isn't difficult in the slightest.

Alright, now that was a weekly update.

I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend, and I hope that the week ahead is even better!

Also, new month, so thanks to all of you who are still with me<3.