May the muffins be forever in your favour.3 Months of Weekly Updates: How did that plan go? + A new type of Release Pattern for my Chapter Updates · 1:09am Apr 25th, 2021
When the year had just started, in the middle of January, I made a plan for chapter releases of "Dreamwalker Dash" and "Letters to Cozy Glow". During the years from 2017 - 2019, my writing skill, as well as my discipline with updating multi-chapter stories, have declined a lot in the aftermath of a mentally stressful event at the beginning of 2017 whose effects on my mind and life lasted for about two and a half years.
As a result of that, after returning to writing proper at the end of 2019, I made a plan to update both "Dreamwalker Dash" and "Letters to Cozy Glow" with a chapter each week, no matter how much writing time I'd have to pour into the chapters to meet the plan. This plan didn't work very well at the beginning of 2020, I wasn't yet used to regular writing again and then the corona virus distracted me while I was in that undisciplined state, but I devised the same plan for this year. And now, in the first few months of 2021, this plan finally worked and had results that I can be satisfied with.
The goal with this plan of strict, weekly updating of two of my multi-chapter stories that are currently actively being written was, after long periods of not updating stories I've started that happened in 2018 and 2019, to show that I have recovered from the things that caused that and that I am reliable with updating again. As well as to give myself the discipline needed to meet a set deadline back.
This plan began for "Letters to Cozy Glow" on January 14th and for "Dreamwalker Dash" a week later, on January 20th. Since then, I aimed for it to update both stories weekly, "Dreamwalker Dash" on Wednesdays and "Letters to Cozy Glow" on Thursdays. For about three months, I wanted to monitor how this goes and, once the three months are over, look at the results and see how much I met this goal.
The deadline for this was set to be April 17th when I started it all, which I then extended by a week, as I had to deal with one week of burnout that saw no updates. The new deadline was therefore April 24th. Now that deadline is here, so it's time to look at the results. How well did updating "Letters to Cozy Glow" and "Dreamwalker Dash" on a weekly basis go?
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Letters to Cozy Glow
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.................................Update.........................No Update
Week 1.........................✔......................................
Week 2.........................✔......................................
Week 3..................................................................❌
Week 4.........................✔......................................
Week 5.........................✔......................................
Week 6.........................✔......................................
Week 7..................................................................❌
Week 8..................................................................❌
Week 9.........................✔......................................
Week 10................................................................❌
Week 11.......................✔✔......................................
Week 12.......................✔......................................
Week 13.......................✔......................................
Week 14................................................................❌
"Letters to Cozy Glow" received updates in Week 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12 and 13. Week 3, 7, 8, 10 and 14 are weeks in which I failed to update. This makes nine weeks with updates and only five weeks without an update. However, I updated the story with two chapters in Week 11 to compensate for the lack of a chapter in Week 10. This effectively nullifies Week 10 as a week without update.
The final number of updates is therefore ten updates, the final number of missed updates four, from fourteen planned updates in total. More than two thirds of the planned updates were met!
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Dreamwalker Dash
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.................................Update.........................No Update
Week 1.........................✔......................................
Week 2.........................✔......................................
Week 3..................................................................❌
Week 4.........................✔......................................
Week 5.........................✔......................................
Week 6..................................................................❌
Week 7.........................✔.........................................
Week 8.........................✔.........................................
Week 9.........................✔......................................
Week 10.......................✔.........................................
Week 11.......................✔......................................
Week 12.......................✔......................................
Week 13................................................................❌
"Dreamwalker Dash" had thirteen planned updates in total. Weeks with updates are 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, weeks without updates are 3, 6 and 13. This brings, albeit only slightly, an even better result than "Letters to Cozy Glow" did! For "Dreamwalker Dash", it's again more than two thirds of planned updates that were met, as well as ten updates in total (of thirteen planned updates), just like with "Letters to Cozy Glow"! However, "Dreamwalker Dash" has one failed update less than "Letters to Cozy Glow", which makes it perform slightly better!
And these are the results of three months in which I attempted to update every week! The only thing here that casts a small shadow on these great results is that both stories have a few weeks when I released the new chapter on a different day than the intended ones; "Letters to Cozy Glow" has four of nine chapters that were supposed to be released on Thursday only gotten released on a Friday, a Saturday and two Sundays (the extra chapter in Week 11 was an intentional Saturday release) and "Dreamwalker Dash" has five of ten chapters that got released on a Thursday, a Friday, two Saturdays and a Sunday instead of on Wednesday. Especially towards the end of the three months, I lost some steam there and the releases happened later and later in the week.
But this is really just a small shadow, I succeeded with releasing a chapter nearly each week during these three months and that is a result I'm more than satisfied with! What didn't work last year, finally came to a rousing success this year! 
And because all of this worked so well, I am making a small change to my writing schedule now. One of the goals with this strict updating was to regain the discipline to meet a deadline if I have one. This works again now, I have pushed myself hard during these three months and I'm disciplined enough again to sit down and write when I have to. The other goal was to leave an impression by demonstrating and proving that I can deliver reliable updates as I announced them again. With more than two thirds of planned updates met for each story, I'd say this goal is reached, too. 
Now that this discipline with writing is back, I can allow myself to set my sight more firmly on quality rather than quantity again. Which means that, going forward, I will not strictly force myself to a weekly update anymore.
I will still write for five hours each day, as I am practicing it since 2016 with varying results. The release days during a week, Wednesday for "Dreamwalker Dash" and Thursday for "Letters to Cozy Glow", as well as the first Sunday in the month for "A Storm on the Horizon of the Arcane World", will remain the same. And a new chapter might still be released a week after the previous one (and for "Letters to Cozy Glow", this is more than likely and almost guaranteed). But weekly updates are optional now and will only happen anymore when they are possible and make sense to pursue.
Since last year, I still ensured a good level of quality for each chapter update, but I sometimes had to put in extra writing time to meet the weekly release if a chapter was longer or if something happened that prevented writing on a certain day. This will change now and I might not release a chapter in a week when either something gets in the way of writing, such as a sudden illness, when a chapter is significantly longer than the average chapter of a story or when I simply feel that a chapter needs more work to really shine and to be ready for release.
This change will bring a lot more flexibility in my writing schedule, which comes with several benefits, inside and outside of writing. For example, I could forego writing for "Dreamwalker Dash" on a Monday and instead invest more time into a chapter of "A Storm on the Horizon of the Arcane World" if I had to miss writing for that story on a certain day. Or work on an entirely new story, if I need a change of atmosphere.
I can schedule a day of writing break much easier, without having to catch up on the missed hours during the rest of the week and wearing myself out again almost immediately. I can spontaneously spend more time with my friend in the afternoon if she needs me (and is already awake, our timezones differ greatly) or I can spend the five hours on any given day with working on my drawing skills, which is also something I intend to do for years now, but writing always had a higher priority, so far.
Most importantly, though, it will allow me to work on new chapters more than I currently do and, perhaps, find ways to improve that I couldn't see before, increase my writing skill further and produce better content. I write for a little more than seven years now, since 2016 regularly and daily, but there is still a lot I can and have to learn before I can join the ranks of the greatest authors.
The switch to a more flexible writing schedule, now that both my writing skill and my writing discipline are back to where they were when I wrote "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" and "Aunt Millie", is another step on the writing career ladder and I look eagerly forward to return to this healthier writing approach that I had in 2016 and the first months of 2017!
I feel that the future looks great and that I will see some serious and significant growth as an author in 2021. 
The year has only just started.
Stay easy as a filly!
~ Fluttercheer
i agree, this is the only the begining. let's hope things go up again