Patreon Update/Changes and "A Bargain at Twice the Price" Ch2

This is way too long, so here's a quick version:

 TL;DR: No more commissions, I'm gonna actually aim to get ACoT finished, rather than dragging on forever. Higher/Highest tier Patreons will be able to see my stories as I work on them instead. I passed the latest chapter to the commissioner, and just need to fix a few things before I upload it, you can see a sneak preview below. 

Hi all,

So, this is a very difficult decision, and one I've been stewing on for a long time, probably something I've put off longer than I should have. 

The long and the short of it is, that I need to make changes to my current Patreon model and the model for the stories/chapters I write moving forwards. Simply put, I don't think it's working, and at the very least, it's not making me happy. 

So, to put it plainly: I'm not going to be doing anymore commissions, at least not regularly, until I've finally finished A Change of Tactics. I've already stopped taking any outside commissions for months now, and I'm going to remove them as Patreon incentives going forwards.

I'll make sure to honour any obligations, if I owe you something, I'll cover that, no-one's going to be missing out. However, after that, I want to focus on actually getting ACoT finished, rather than having it sitting incomplete forever. Plus, I can't really do a "monthly poll" when I'm not working on the story for 3 months...

I expect I'll lose a few supporters for this, and I can understand why; commissions are half the reason a lot of people want to engage with an author, and if you don't have the time to write, or you're not confident in your abilities, having someone else make your story come to life is great. But ultimately, as sorry as I am about that, it felt like the alternative was closing this completely, so I'm going to take the risk.

The problem is it's gotten to the point where it feels like that's all I ever write these days. How can I call A Change of Tactics my main story when I only get out a handful of chapters for it over the course of an entire year? 

That's not to say that I don't enjoy commissions, I've loved them. They've been some of the most fun stories I've written, they're usually really interesting ideas, and the people who I've worked with for them have been great.

In many cases they've even been my most highly regarded stories! They're the ones everyone loves, that get the most reviews!

The issue is simply a matter of time. And it comes back to myself, I'm ultimately not very good at working on them.

When I first planned them out, I was thinking of doing 5k or 10k commissions, working on them quickly, it felt like I could easily churn out at least one or two a month as well as work on my main projects. After all, if you do a little over 1k words a day, a 10k commission should only take about a week.

Anyone who's followed me for any length of time will be able to tell you how that works out! I get very emotionally invested in the stories I'm writing, I go back and forth on scenes and words to make sure it fits, and I wind up turning a 10k commission into 15k+ words that takes a month to complete!

That's a lot of words to say something very simple: I'm not aiming to leave my works undone, I want to get ACoT finished, and have the vision I have for it realised. I'm going to focus on that moving forwards. No more commissions.

So, what are those tiers going to get instead? Transparency! Transparency on a level I was too cautious to offer when I began this crazy endevour, but something I now think should be fun.

From now on, I'm going to keep a Google Docs file for any chapter I'm working on, and then, with my weekly updates, I'll also copy in all the progress I've made over that week. So it'll be a constant Work in Progress as the story gets completed, everything from the current writing, to notes, and outline.

The higher and highest tiers respectively will be given the ability to view and to edit/comment on this Work in Progress as it goes (please keep edits in a different text colour, so I can see them).

Edits won't be added into the final work, of course, but if you want to make suggestions, corrections, comment on how I've done something, or make fun of a scene that just doesn't work- that'll be available. It's a way to influence the chapter as it's written, or to simply get a look at it, as well as the process that goes into it.

Generally I write on Pen and Paper to avoid distractions and then transcribe into Word at the end, but this simply means I'll transcribe my week's work every week, so it shouldn't cause my any disruption.

Which, at long last, brings us to the story I've been working on these last few weeks, that's finally, finally (almost) done. The sequel chapter to A Bargain at Twice the Price, this time focusing on Robin and Tiki! Hopefully something that's appealing for a lot of you, I know many are eager for Tiki to appear in ACoT!

I've passed it to the commissioner for approval, and he's asked me to just make a few changes. Which should be hopefully done tomorrow to get uploaded.

Which will work perfectly as an example for what I'm intending to use this new format for. Here's a Patreon Only, Sneak Peek, at the current version of that story! That is, before I make a few changes/fixes and upload the final version... No-one else will get to see this. Exciting?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dpm0sVJAVxxMtQRuNJ1jXuigPW2pSHEnTctW_cdLrxA/

Again, if you edit instead of comment, please do so in a different colour. And obviously if you just delete everything I'll revert it and sigh, probably while rolling my eyes, I'm trusting you guys not to pointlessly vandalise things.

Sorry that got so long, I get a little wordy sometimes.

-J