It's The End of the World as We Know It · 11:36am Jul 3rd, 2015
What great calamity is this? Paul forgot to post on Thursday! Believe it or not, the world has not been destroyed, pigs aren't flying, we aren't in an alternate universe and I'm reasonably sure it's still Friday. Hell might have frozen over, though.
After my first attempt to run through the shorter days of insurance work, I've come to realize that my old guess about how much time I'll be working a week were a bit off. I'll definitely be pulling 60+ hours a week from now on, which makes my at-home time all the more precious. This realization is precisely what made me forget about yesterday, as I came in and immediately set to work on my stories instead of updating you peplz on my statuseses. Thank goodness I'm single or you'd probably not see me at all anymore.
Not having much to say helps out. I mean really, nothing noteworthy happened this week. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't make for an interesting blog, now does it? Makes me wish I were more like RainbowBob or maybe the Parasprite and could show off more... er... 'personality' in my blogs, but nah, I'm just boring little me.
One thing of note for those of you hoping for reviews from me: my review schedule has changed. In the past, I would read six stories a week, but only review five. This allowed me to gradually build up a lead so that if ever something happens and I can't read I at least have an extra week of reviews (hopefully). That, however, would sometimes lead to some intense reading sessions as I'd come across big stories that I'd have to somehow squeeze into my time. Though not a problem before, but now that I'm working a week-and-a-half hours, it's become a bit of a problem.
So, from now on if I get a story set of six that has a combined total of 105,000 words or less (15,000 per day), I'll maintain my usual methods, but if it goes above that then I'll be limiting my reading to just 15,000 a day regardless of how much longer it takes. I just don't have time to read 30-40,000 words a day and keep up with my publishing schedule. Hopefully this won't lead to me having to skip a week of reviews, but it's entirely possible.
Alright, I'm done. You can go read more interesting people's blogs now.
Order of Shadows Book I – Chapter 5: Saturday, July 4 or Sunday, July 5
Shadow Pony: Wednesday, July 29 (Tentative)
Special Project: Tuesday, July 14 (Tentative)
Stats
Total Word Count: 1,292,000 over 29 stories (+12,000)
Average Words Written Per Week: 9,200
Total Words Read This Week: 18,361
Follower Rank: 322nd (+2)
Overall Ratings Average: 93.71% (+0.07%)
Highest-Rated Story (Not Counting Stories at 100%): The Gentle Nights @ 98.48% (10 Weeks)
Story with the Most Votes: Tyrant @ 1986/56 (29 Weeks)
Story with the Fewest Votes: Paul's Peculiarly Puny Practice Pieces @ 10/0 (1 Week)
Longest Story: Trixie vs. Equestria @ 144,000
I'm not gonna be seeing much of you anymore huh
Sorry about the 60+ hours work week. That royally sucks, and it's hard to sustain indefinitely.
Out of curiosity, what does your process look like for selecting works to review?
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Especially considering I'm back to my 'bed by 9:30' schedule.
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Simple answer: if I read it, I review it.
Long answer: For the most part, if something piques my interest, I'll add it to my RiL. I only read stories in the order they are added though, so a story added to my RiL today might not be read/reviewed for months. To speed up the process, I allow people to request reviews, but I only do one request per week and those requests are on a first-come-first-serve basis. At the moment I'm also trying to clean up my collection; those stories I've already rated without reviewing (because I read them prior to when I started my reviews) are going to be re-read and given a proper review (which may change their rating). I haven't started that yet, but I aim to do one a week until I've got them all done.
Also, I try to have no more than one story by any given author in my RiL at a time (although I've messed this up a few times). This is meant to keep the reviews fairly distributed and keep my RiL from growing outrageously big.
Lastly, whenever I finish reading a story by an author, I go through that author's list of stories and pick another one for my RiL... if I think it's warranted.
There could be a few workarounds to your predicament. For example, if you have a particularly long story to read and review, say ... Fallout Equestria, you could just do a special review just for that story. Paul Reviews Fallout Equestria!
I know a lot of the other reviewers do similar things, like Present Perfect vs a story and Chris vs the SixStar stories and so on. Single story reviews for larger stories and group reviews for chubbies. Just a thought.
EDIT: and seriously!? You're. Not updating Order until the 4th or 5th! You know it's summer right? Argh! I don't want to wait that long!
Sounds like you might want to cut down to just three reviews at a time instead of five.
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This. You don't want to burn out, man.
Was definitely having a nightmare that the world was ending because you didn't post yesterday.
Your blog is the only one I actually read, too. Much more personable and down to earth.
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Actually, what I considered doing was taking any time I had a big story like that (and FallOut Equestria is going to pop up eventually) is dividing it up into parts and reviewing the sections over a long time. This would do several things, including letting me get my thoughts down about early topics while my thoughts are still fresh and letting my audience know what my progress is. I'm stillworking out the kinks on the idea, though.
And what does it being summer have to do with anything? I'm getting my ass kicked working 10-12 hours Saturdays now (although I'm off today, for obvious reasons).
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I'm considering that as a last resort.
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Why thank you! That makes me feel much better about my blogs.