December/January - Pausing Billing

Hey friends,

I didn't really want to do this but I don't seem to be getting better.

Honestly, I think I massively overestimated my capacity to do so much - I had been doing two paid releases (9-12k words), a free release (6.5-11k) words, 1-2 commission pieces (10k+ words x2), and an extra however many words towards monthly things, "backburner releases", etc, each week. Plus editing time!

And it's honestly fucked my head. All I want to do, lately, is play video games. And it fucking sucks, because I want to get my stories done and I want to entertain and I want to make money, but over the past week, again, I've managed 2k or so words per day. Right now, I cannot comprehend how I was doing 10-12k, honestly. It seems an impossible, untouchable figure.

It doesn't help that I'm having IRL issues, I'm going to therapy now (not related to work, but I am having to reorganise my lunatic head!), and my partner is struggling with her own difficulties. But that's neither here nor there.

The crux is this: I need a break. I hate how little work I get done and attempting to "maintain routine" as I've done lately basically leads to days of procrastination and fantasising about some game or other to distract myself.

For instance: "My Hung Futa Boss... Is a Horse-Girl MILF." Genuinely, love it. Like writing it. But it's taken me what, more than a month? I'm almost there, and I really hope I can get it out this weekend, but honestly I'm not sure even that's bloody likely! I used to finish something like this in two days! But lately I'm lucky if I manage 2k words on it, man.

Before I started this I used to write sci-fi and fantasy stories, novels, "proper" shit. I wasn't getting paid (incredibly difficult to make a living off of fiction, by comparison to smut, for good or ill, hahaha), I had lived off of savings for ages, ran out, needed money, decided to turn my smut stories I wrote for myself (the main series, basically!) into things for public consumption. But back then - when I was effectively writing for myself, with no "deadlines" of any sort - I might do a chapter per day, 5k words, or 10k if I was really inspired. And if I had a bad day, so what? It's just me, nobody's waiting, nobody's paying! But here, I've made no accommodations for the possibility of "bad days" or anything like that. I've treated myself like a fucking robot.

I just think I've done way, way too much, and I haven't eased in, I've just gone full-throttle and with ADHD (despite the pills) it's like trying to squeeze a stone through a metal mould. It can be done, but the stone is infinitely long, and it takes a lot of force to push it through. And I'm just a wee bit exhausted from pushing.

BUT!

This isn't the end. I am going to take December off, and restart in January. I'm not going to restart billing straight away, just in case I'm not ready to achieve anything by that point. So billing - for those who can forgive this self-inflicted wound, haha - will begin again in February.

I am going to cut my release schedule down to one paid release per week, one release a month, plus the monthly exclusive, backburner ting, whatever. Sometimes, I might manage more! But if I set a new baseline that I can comfortably achieve - without working evenings, as I've done, and weekends, as I've done (no bloody wonder I've knackered myself) - then I'll be able to get back to consistency and produce the stories that I love writing and you, my beloved patrons, love reading!

I am going to get as many releases out as I can manage - free ones, after the final Horse-Girl part I am done with paid things until the new year, unless they're commission pieces or the like - and I'll do the monthly as a result, but then it'll be silence until January.

Thank you all for your generosity and support, it's been wonderful! (And hopefully will continue to be, haha!)

Sephalla will be out next week, unfortunately! But I think I've got no "what next" story so I'll run a poll on Monday. Anyway, such is life.

Have a great day,

Big love,

xoxox