Friday, April 5th

The Daily Report

Yesterday, I decided not to mention or push "I Do Not Fight Monsters" at all, because I was curious how much of its sales bump was me actively pushing and how much was just sort of happening. Turns out it was pretty much all me. But... oh well. I kind of figured that. At the risk of being repetitive, I'll say again that the single best and most cost-effective way anyone can help me out right now is to buy this story and then rate it.

And, at the risk of getting really repetitive, today's another threshold day for me, another important test for my work processes. Right now, I have next Tuesday's chapter already written. Today I'll be writing for next Thursday, which is almost a week away. Unless today is the first writing day since I got back where I fail to produce a chapter, I'll be a week ahead.

And if I power on through next week in the same fashion, I'll end it a week and a half ahead. I have never been three chapters ahead of the schedule before. Before, all the pressure to keep to a writing schedule came from the publishing schedule. The further they drifted apart, the less it worked.

Even if there are some weeks between now and the end of May where I stumble or have a dead day or whatever, I think it's safe to say that I've got WisCon and my traveling covered. It's less certain that I'll have enough of a cushion for it to make it through the summer heat and my busier social schedule when I'm in Maryland, but I'm confident that my process will hold up well enough for me to produce two updates a week most weeks even under the most adverse conditions.

The State of the Me

I'm using valerian to sleep pretty much every night, and it's giving me decent sleep but I'm waking up slower than I like.

Plans For Today

The main thing is to put another chapter in the hopper. I'm also working on the cover image for the Tales of MU ebook.

Progress!

So, I'm basically done with next week's chapters now.

I say basically because my definition of "finished" right now means that I'm confident I'd be able to post the chapter on its due date with no more than an hour of work. Ideally it'll be in such a state that if I didn't have that hour I could post it anyway, but it would be rare to have a chapter that can't be improved by coming back to it after sleeping on it and giving it another look.

Even knowing that these two chapters will need that pass, it feels good to be so prepared for the week before it even gets here. And knowing I'll have another chapter in the hopper before I need to post either of these feels even better.

I haven't fumbled a day since I got back. I've stumbled, I've had slow days and foggy days, I've had days where I accomplished less than I set out to do, but I haven't completely missed one yet... and as great as that is, it's even better to know that I'm getting to the point where it won't matter if I do.