(Personal) Accounting for January

At the beginning of the year I mentioned how I’d like to hit a few specific goals with my writing: 100 posts here at The Writing Desk, 50 episodes posted to The Jackalope Serial Company Patreon, and 10 stories submitted to various publications throughout the year. In an effort to hold myself to that goal, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back on what I’ve done over the month previous, figure out what went right, what went wrong, and how I can adjust to make next month even better. So how did I do in January?

The first month of the year was fairly busy right up through Further Confusion: in addition to coming down from the holidays, I put a little elbow grease into preparing for panels at the convention. The highlight, for me, was the “Afrofuturism and Furry” panel — it was pretty well attended and I got a lot of great, thoughtful questions from the folks who showed up. After that, it was mostly a matter of settling in to the new routine: there aren’t any really big events until May (when My Husband, the Dragon and I will be going to England for Confuzzled! Hooray!) so for a few months there shouldn’t be any disruptions. That…didn’t go as well as I’d like.

The Writing Desk
Number of Posts: 11
Most Popular Post: What I Want From White People

If I had kept a full post schedule I would have had 14 posts this month, but still…not bad. I really fell down on Fiction Friday, though; I think the trick is to make sure that those posts are written well ahead of time, so I can tighten them up and make the stories a lot more engaging. Veniamin Kovalenko will have to wait until March to continue his adventures, as it stands — but that’s not a bad thing. He’s a wonderful character and he deserves more respect from me than he’s been getting. I’m committed to having him come back strong next month.

I’ve noticed a trend with my posts: the ones discussing current events in the fandom and the political arena almost always do much better. Not gonna lie, it’s really tempting to shift towards those subjects more often but I know that’s a fool’s errand. Political and fandom posts are the hardest for me to write because I sweat the language in them so hard; I want to make sure I’m clear in what I’m saying and that I’m writing in a way that doesn’t alienate the people I most want to reach. It feels like the effort pays off, even if it takes a lot out of me.

In February I’m definitely going to focus a lot more on reading and writing. You might have heard that Black History Month is starting up tomorrow, and I’ll be joining the #ReadingBlackout then. It’s a lot less confrontational than it sounds — it’s just a project to center black authors as much as possible. It’s an excellent excuse to catch up on a lot of the books on my to-read shelf! I’ll be starting with Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke, a crime novel set along a stretch of highway in east Texas that connects so many small towns where people of color have put down roots. It’s really great so far, and I’m looking forward to talking about it. After that, I’m dipping back into a classic: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It was the best book I ever read in high school, and it’s high past time I give it another look.

For Fiction Friday in February, I’m writing bits of fiction in the Br’er setting. I wrote about my designs for it here, and now that I’ve gotten much more experience with talking about where I fit in to my community I think it’s time to give it another shot. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m excited to plunge in.

The goal for February is twelve posts — three every week.

The Jackalope Serial Company
Current Serial: Boundaries (Episode One)
Episodes This Month: 3

The Jackalope Serial Company hit the same roadblock it usually does: I get to a place where I feel I can really dive in and take off with it, and then end up burning out. After two revised episodes put up for free at the Patreon, I managed just one additional episode before promising another one and…never releasing it. The pressure of deadlines hasn’t been the incentive towards completion that I had hoped.

There are a few reasons for this. I couldn’t get ahead as much as I had wanted before Further Confusion, and after that much of the free time I had was taken up with a few other things. There are so many projects I’ve fallen behind on, and collective guilt over each of them makes it harder for me to move forward on any of them.

One of the big issues with the JSC, however, is the lack of engagement. I should be grateful that there are a couple dozen people out there willing to give me money to write erotic serialized fiction for them — that’s a niche offering if ever there was one. But it’s also really difficult to get folks to open up about the stories I’ve been posting, and at this point I wonder if folks are supporting me financially but not reading the stories themselves. There’s been no feedback on most of the stuff I’ve published so far, so I can’t even tell what’s working and what’s not — what people would like to see more of, and what experiments aren’t really panning out.

At some point I’m going to have to muscle past that expectation for feedback and just write what I’m passionate about. I’ll also need to work on being a lot more consistent with releasing episodes; one of the things that drives me crazy with web-based creatives is the stutter-start nature of the release schedule, with no strong idea of when new stories come out. Either they promise updates and don’t deliver, or drop off the radar entirely. Over the course of the JSC Patreon, I’ve done both. It’s not a great feeling.

In February, I’m implementing a new rule: the Marshmallow Ranch Gazette goes up every Tuesday, but if I don’t have the next episode of the serial completed by the previous weekend I won’t say that it’ll be posted on Thursday. I’ll use the JSC Twitter to keep patrons appraised of progress. I’ll also shorten the release window to the general public for stories; I wanted to have the serials Patreon-only until they were all finished, but now I’m thinking a month-long lag is plenty of time. I’ll also double back and edit previous serials so they can go up on SoFurry, but ONLY once I’ve written ahead for the current one.

Next month, my goal is to post five new episodes — that’ll finish off Boundaries and free me up a bit to work on a couple of short stories before I dive into what comes next.

Other Projects
I had hoped to finish Bluebird, Bluebird this month, but alas it did not come to pass. I did get a lot of reading done, however, as a slush-pile judge of sorts. That totally counts, right? One of the things I really liked about the project was getting to think critically about why a story did or didn’t work for me and how I can transfer discoveries that stemmed from that into my own writing. All that advice about writers needing to read in order to become better writers? Totally true, you guys.

I’ve also been serving as the editor of another project that’s finally, hopefully getting off the ground again. If momentum holds, I’ll be able to talk about it in a few months and you’ll be able to read it by the summer. Fingers crossed!

Ultimately, getting better about time management and managing stress so I can avoid burn-out are the things I should be doing for the next month or two. I could always be making better choices about how I spend my time, but I also really need to set aside time for relaxation and decompression; life is incredibly stressful even without the ambitious goals I’ve set, and making time to rest is essential in replenishing energy. In the scramble to get things done, it’s all too easy to forget that.

I hope all of you have a wonderful February! What are you plans for the next month? What was your biggest success from this month?