alexandraerin

So it's been almost a year since I posted new material for Star Harbor Nights. While my other story sites have been a similar length of time since I've had any sustained output on many of my other story sites. In the case of Star Harbor and Void Dogs, the story universes lost a big chunk of their charm for me for personal reasons quite a while ago, and I've tried to get past that and sort of fake it and push through but it's just never caught fire for me the way they did at the beginning. And 3 Seas never caught fire for me, despite the enthusiasm I have for the concepts at an intellectual level.

It's sad to admit that, especially since Star Harbor was the start of my e writing career dot com, but it's the truth and it's better to admit it. The effort I've been putting into trying to dwell in these worlds that are no longer welcoming for me... it's just not worth it. It's been diffusing me. Any day I spend working, I'm spending a lot of time trying to push myself in directions that I don't want to go and ignoring more fruitful directions. When I put these things on my task lists I end up pushing and straining and getting dispirited. I leave them off my task lists and I feel like I'm avoiding them. So then I start dreading the task list. The bottom line is it's just not going to work out.

Or rather, it isn't working out. It's been not working out for a long time. I wish I'd realized sooner, but I'm stubborn like that. And more than a little bit oblivious. It took that post I made the other day of instructions for myself and the bolded one about not trying to do what doesn't workI'm grateful to the groups of people who supported these stories, and I wish that I could produce the works that such support deserves, but creativity is not guided by desert.

I'm sure that a small number of the people who follow my work are reading this and rolling their eyes at the idea that I can't just write the stories anyway without them "catching fire", or at the notion that not writing them could be eating into my time and life, but... well, I just spent more words than such thoughts merit so I'll say nothing more about that. Suffice it to say that spinning your wheels gets you nowhere but it still costs gas. There are other, more fruitful ideas I've been neglecting... more fertile grounds with seeds falling all over them. It's time to explore other pastures.

So, I'm going to be converting the Void Dogs, 3 Seas, and Star Harbor Nights sites into "archive format". I might work to fill in the gaps in the Star Harbor archive once I feel a little more distance from the project. I might (might, might, might... there is no "will" here, no ETA, no promises) write some stand-alone stories in the Harborverse in the future, as I think I generally preferred those to the serial. I might (see same caveats) write non-serialized extensions or conclusions of the other stories at some point. But maintaining the blog-style sites for them and accepting paid support for them is just becoming increasingly hollow and disingenuous.

I'm going to continue Tribe for the time being, because I think once I shed the encumberance of the other sites I'll be able to regain some momentum there, but I'm going to ditch the illusion of it as an ongoing story. It'll be sporadic. Or rather, it'll have steady updates when I have a story for it, and I won't try to force it when I don't.

If you've been supporting any of those stories, thank you. I hope you'll consider continuing your support for Tales of MU or for my writing in general, which in the future might be a little more diverse and less "universe-specific", though for the next little bit it's going to be focused laser-like on the MUniverse. There are a lot of stories I want to tell in that world, and a lot of stories people have asked to hear. It's always been the crowd pleaser and the money maker, and if I'm honest... and I should be honest... it's my favorite, too. It's time to acknowledge that and give it its due.

On that subject: the next update for MU has been inching its way towards completion. Having come to this decision and written this post, I feel like I could probably press on and finish it pretty quickly now, but I've also been awake all night and was getting ready to collapse when the need to write this post overtook me. So... I don't think the results would necessarily be good if I pushed on now.

To sum up: Tales of MU is going to continue. Tribe will continue sporadically. Star Harbor Nights, Void Dogs, and The 3 Seas are going to be officially dropped. I might write stuff in those worlds in the future, but assume they won't. I'll be canceling the sponsorships that are explicitly tied to those stories, though I'll leave all the names up on the archive sites.

As a corollary to my post last night about boosting readership, I've started advertising again after having been mostly absent for a few months.

My experience is that you see the best results if your ads are up in the same place for a while - not everybody will click on them the first time they see them, but if they're a regular presence curiosity might strike or you might get someone who just read their favorite webcomic's latest update and then they go, "Okay, what do I read next?" But if you're too much of a presence, you see diminishing returns as your ads fade into the background and a lot of your potential clickers from the targeted audience have already clicked.

I'm advertising Tales of MU, because, of course, that's the big story with the most readers, but I'm also running a small ad for The 3 Seas in a few places. The story's taking off, Iskondra and Tauri are turning into breakout characters among the people who are reading it... the small and initially erratic updates might have made it hard for people to get into, but now that it's flowing steadily I think it's time it came into its own.

In a happy chain of coincidence, just after I threw some MU ads up on Khaos Komix (one of my favorite webcomics), popelizbet told me that the author had just posted a rec for another writer, and scrolling down through the comments there was somebody throwing in a plug for me. Whee!