manasong
patreon
An Update on the State of Things
🕑 Added 2024-07-08 18:17:35 +0000 UTCWow, it's been seven months... time to get my shit together. Also, I'm really sorry for no releases last month.
Tl;dr: Lost inspiration, trying to find it again, need to write less details and less sex scenes for details for faster release and plot, need to focus on early chapter review, maybe one release a week, will remove chapters and sell as book in the future, will one day find a normal job, want to focus more on Heretical Magus for a while.
It's obvious now, I lost the inspiration to write. I started writing as a way to deal with my loneliness; that's why the beginning of the story is so much more intimate and focused on love, but it didn't last. As time passed my desires changed, and I used them to power my writing, so you can see how the stories morphs along the way. But now I'm… not depressed anymore, and starting streaming has put the final nail on my loneliness, so I've been struggling to continue writing since then.
Whenever I force myself to work, I start to feel my mind fog up. I believed this was related to covid's mental fogginess, but I'm not sure if I actually had it once, and I can still play difficult strategy games just fine, so could it really be that? It can also be that the story is just too full of details as I need to remember them all at once to continue writing. That feels more likely, but it's a hard thing to "fix" since I love to write things in high detail.
I'll try to be more brief and focus on plot progression, though. I like having characters interact but the talking can get in the way. I'll have to reduce the sex scenes even further though, as coming up with new or interesting ones has become quite the challenge, and it also slows things down. I've already changed my style a lot along he way, so this won't be much different from before.
Anyway, the last couple of months I've been doing some soul searching and trying to find inspiration. I believe I found a bit of it, but a problem keeps bothering my mind: the early chapters. It has always annoyed me that my early writing was so bad, and I think it's a massive hurdle to getting new readers, so I believe it's time to truly focus on reviewing it.
This also brings the point of monetization. Patrons for a while now, and without a steady source of new readers, the patreon has become unsustainable to me, so I'll eventually have to find a normal job. Having to rely on subscriptions just isn't viable long-term as I'd have to hit massive success, and this type of story will never break into the mainstream, so I'll be changing focus. It's time to sell this story as a book.
Yes, this means that I'll have to remove chapters from the public, but it'll take a while as I have to review many, many, many chapters. This way I could hopefully gain some passive income and never have to think about fixing the early chapters ever again. And then we'll see how life goes from there.
I'll try to continue writing chapters while I do the review, and I think something like one a week will give me enough time to actually do significant progress on the early chapter review. I always hated doing early chapter review, so I'm dreading having low productivity and finishing the review…
I'm only having problems with Rupegia, though. I still feel inspired to write Heretical Magus, but I was trying to focus on Rupegia lately, so I left this second story on the side for a bit. It was just starting to get to the interesting part though, so I'll give it a little bit more energy for a while and see where it goes.
Thanks for supporting me for so long. Still trying to organize this mess.
Comments
Manasong
Yeah, I'll make all revised chapters public like I've been doing so far until I have to release the book, then I'll take it down. I don't know if the TOS of online stores allows me to keep the chapters up here behind becoming a Patron, but I'd like to have that if I could.
Tauritec
Hey, haven’t really commented using Patreon but I’ve enjoyed your stories & writing for a while now. Bummer to hear you’ve lost inspiration but also glad to hear you’re doing better now. Can’t speak for others but take your time getting back into a groove. I’ll enjoy your stories nonetheless. Will you also be posting revised chapters here on Patreon? Or at least announce when the book is done. Don’t really mind reading from the start since it has been a while haha
