Gotta change things up, change things up · 11:02pm Jan 7th, 2022
Let's be honest.
The huge in-story time gap between where I'm writing and where I'm publishing (in Accidental Invasion) has been... Defeating, to say the least.
As a result, I've chosen to adjust the benefits to my Patrons. Before, it was specifically weeks of Early Access. Now, it's chapters... and only one per tier, rather than two per. Also, Platinum- which used to be "all that's cleared the editors"- is now just five chapters.
This eliminates the push to produce and "publish" a very large number of chapters that nobody's going to comment on for months. That pressure has resulted in a number of fan-suggested events simply not happening, when they very much could have. There's still some danger of that, but that's par for the course- admittedly, I'm afraid of taking away the main benefit my patrons have, the early access; my Patreon earnings aren't all that significant right now, but they're significant enough to be helpful. I mean, they cover about 10% of my current monthly expenses- and if I'm to free myself from the clutches of employment (and the family home), Patreon covers about 4% of the minimum to rent a decent apartment in a decent area.
So the question comes.
Would you prefer I maintain the current weekly schedule (after a temporary biweekly schedule on AI to get things caught up a little closer- at the moment, my buffer goes through Chap. 53, totaling 8 unpublished out of the 5 necessary to keep the schedule for patrons), or switch to a daily "when finished" schedule (releasing first to patrons, then to the public, "when ready" but no more than one chapter per day- essentially, the "old schedule" I used on the ancient stories)? If I switch, you'd get faster chapter updates, but they wouldn't be regular- and whereas AI has had a fair few instances of writer's block that you guys simply didn't notice because the buffer was large enough, that kind of schedule would very much follow my muse, and could result in the story hanging for weeks on end while I figured out what's coming next.
Admittedly, AI has yet to have long-lasting writer's block that wasn't sourced in work-related stress, but who knows, it could happen!
In other news, I'm currently working on a full rewrite of Just Like Magic of Old. It's a wealthy 31 chapters in right now, and will be an in-place edit- but much of it hasn't been published, and I'm no longer sure just how much of it has been published versus hasn't. I know the parts that have are really just present-to-past translation, but it quickly gets deeper than that as the plot rolls forwards. I don't intend to delete any chapters (and so lose the comments from them)... but I also have really no choice but to edit in place. The early changes (first 10-15 chapters) aren't large enough to clear FimFiction's rewrite policy.
They are for Patreon. The current story, as it is right now, will remain on Patreon for possibly a good while. I'll be adjusting the tags on the existing posts in order to archive them, keep them from coming up on a search for the new JLMoO's posts. This'll be another thing I'm wondering about the "one a day" vs "weekly" schedule on- though it'll definitely be sitting on the accelerated "one a day" (except days where AI has a chapter) until it gets reasonably close to the current (re)writing position.
So what do you think?
Perhaps...Weekly