Hey everyone! As always, I want to start off by thanking you reading and enjoying all of the strange, crazy stuff I post! It’s hard to believe, but this winter marks ten years since I put up my first story on MC Stories and the NCMC. For quite a few months now, I’ve been trying to figure out how to chat a course, going forward, trying to figure out how to balance providing all of you with as much content as I can, while making sure I am still able to devote time and energy to the sorts of projects I want to write, and that I know all of you want to read. I want to take a moment to lay out, first, some of my frustrations and my goals going forward with my writing, second, some changes that I’ll be making to by posting on tumblr to help make those goals a reality, and third, some changes and updates to my Patreon Goals and Rewards to bring it in line with my focus. This might be a bit long, but stick with me! It’s important things!
One: Frustrations and Goals
While I love the content that I post on tumblr every day, on both of my blogs, it’s been hard to deny that I often feel like the stories I’m telling disappoint me in several ways, and much of this has to do with the fact that tumblr is both 1) oriented towards pictures and other visual content, and 2) encourages a short attention span. While I do enjoy shorter stories and captions, over the last year in particular, I’ve felt myself beginning to chafe a bit at the fact that this platform just isn’t suited towards the longer works I want to publish. The other factor in this frustration is that such a large chunk of my time is devoted to keeping up with my tumblr posts that I often don’t get the chance to give the stories here the level of depth and detail that I want them to have. I decided that I needed to figure out a way to re-balance my workload, so that I could have more time and energy to devote to those longer pieces, like City of Bears, which have been on the back-burner for far too long.
That said, there are other projects that I’m desperate to tackle, which already require time and energy which I don’t have. At the top of the list, is a frustration that I have written so much content, and yet all of it is massively disorganized, spread across various sites and archives. This also isn’t helped by the fact that, on tumblr, most of my longer stories are nearly always chopped up into bits, making them difficult to read and find. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best (well, really only) solution is to create my own website where I can then archive all of my stories and ensure that they are easily searchable and readable. However, that project would require a sizable amount of work, both setting up the site as well as going through my heaps and heaps of badly organized documents to format and edit everything I’ve put out over the years.
So that brings us to my goals for 2017. First, I’d very, very much like to finally have several long pieces I’ve been writing in fits and starts published and available for purchase, and I’d also like to have made headway on establishing a permanent home for all of my content. But in order to do that…well, something has to give.
Two: A New Schedule for Tumblr Content
Starting next week, I’m going to be slightly scaling back the content I post on tumblr. Instead of posting content seven days a week across two blogs, with long stories on my main blog and captions on my side blog, I’m going to begin posting a mix of both kinds of content, five days a week, on my main blog. My side blog, then, is going to become a bit more personal, focusing on commentary, reblogged stories and pictures, and asks. This restructure will bring the content I’m delivering more in line with the goals I outlined on Patreon at the beginning.
There are other reasons for making this change beyond helping me balance my time better between long and short content. I haven’t been happy with posting content in two different places, partly because it’s confusing, but also because it means people might miss something. It also confuses people, when they’re trying to find a particular story or caption, and end up searching for it on the wrong blog. I’ve also found that the posting schedule on each blog has been limiting the sorts of content I could post. the M-T-Th-F scheudle on my main blog has been too disruptive to the flow the stories I post, and moving away from the W-Sat-Sun schedule for captions will also allow me the flexibility to write longer caption and image stories than the one or two parters I usually post. This also means that I can devote my side blog to better engaging with readers and promoting other authors around tumblr and elsewhere.
That said, if this slight drop in content upsets you, I am happy to say that there’s at least something you can do about that, which brings us to the third topic.
Three: Updated Patreon Goals and Reward Tiers
Thank you again to everyone who helps support me over on Patreon, I can’t tell you how amazing it is that I can actually get paid for writing this crazy shit each month. I started my Patreon two years ago, and as I’ve been thinking about my goals over the past year, I’ve been feeling that my goals could use updating. I also felt like I could do more to reward backers, especially those of you contributing at the one dollar level.
First, the goals. I hit the 500 dollar goal last year, which was the level that I felt I needed to begin publishing collections and longer works independently through gumroad, and, as stated above, I definitely want to make 2017 the year that this happens–this goal isn’t changing, and I’m actually well on my way to having a short novel ready for you all in the next few months. The goals beyond that have gotten a bit of a face lift, however.
If all of you readers get me up to the 600 dollar level, then I’ll take some time off from work this spring or summer and devote it to getting a website up and running, where I’ll begin the process of uploading my substantial backlog of work for you all.
At 700 dollars, I’ll go back to posting content seven days a week, as I have been doing for the last few months. So if you want that content back, don’t whine! Put your money where your mouth is!
Lastly, at 800 dollars, I’ll be able to use some of this revenue to commission artists to provide illustrations for selected stories, as well as devote more time away from the day job towards other projects, including things like interactive twine games and novels.
All that said, the reward tiers got a bit of a rework as well, the most notable being at the one dollar level, where I’ve added two new perks for everyone contributing at least that amount. In addition to getting access to my Patreon archive, you’ll now also have early access to commission slots whenever I open them up, and each month, I’ll start crowdsourcing requests from Patreon backers for flash fiction stories on a theme of their choice, and writing three or four of them a month, to post on tumblr. I’ll have more details on this to come early next month, but it should be fun!
The one last change I made to the reward tiers, is that while all patrons giving five dollars or more will still have access to the patreon exclusive story I publish each month, they won’t receive free copies of any longer works I publish independently. For that, you’ll need to upgrade to the ten dollar level, which will, as before, also get you access to all of my current drafts and works in progress.
So, if you haven’t wanted to contribute to my Patreon in the past, I hope you’ll take another look at it. Even one dollar a month helps, if a bunch of you do it, and hopefully these new perks can sweeten the pot a bit.
Alright! That was a lot of info, and I’m sure ya’ll have some questions. I’ll be here to answer them for the rest of the week, either by putting them in my ask box,
messaging me, or
sending me an email if you prefer.
Here’s hoping 2017 will be a good year for writing! It sure as hell won’t be a good year for anything else, but at this point, I’ll take what I can fucking get.
Bracken's Corner 