Well, I've finally come to the realization that I bit off way more than I could chew.
This year has been a rough one. I keep feeling like everything is rushing past me and I'm racing to keep up, but I'm out of breath. I'm running behind on the Wounds of Wisdom sequel. I'm broke. I've been burned out for most of the year. In the brief moments where I felt more energized, I took on more work, which made it worse when I inevitably returned to burnoutsville. Four TTRPG games, two high demand works in progress, plus work, plus trying to spend time with friends. It's been...a lot.
I was so excited to get out Seven Nights at the Afterlight this year. I'd been planning to do so since, well, last year. My goal was to work on it throughout the year, and then by October when I released it, I would have multiple chapters ready to go, effortless. I started an outline...and determined that the outline was garbage. I started a new outline, and a third one, and then life continued to happen and Seven Nights planning fell by the wayside, forgotten.
It wasn't until I released my newsletter last month that I realized, "Oh, fuck. It's already October. I need to write the first chapter by Halloween." But also do a bunch of promo to build up hype. And also get ready for a virtual writing retreat I needed to run in a Discord group all through November. And I'm still falling behind on Time's Sacrifice Book 2 when I promised a friend that I would do a book package with her for our co-releases and...
I managed to get the first chapter out on time, just barely. 11pm CST on the night that I said it would release. Then I was about 11 days late with chapter 2, which I owed to my paid subscribers on Ko-fi. I finally got that out and congratulated myself that for November, I would only have to write one chapter. And, well, the virtual writing retreat. And Book 2, will it ever be finished? And and and...
My mental health started to really suffer. Seven Nights at the Afterlight, this project I was so excited for - that I now had people waiting to read and some even paying to read, was the straw that broke the camel's back. Every little thing felt like too much for me. I was fighting with Cressida, breaking down to friends, and volleying between two very different projects with no time to really focus on one or the other.
I've always said that I work best with a healthy dose of panic. It's fun for me. It makes it sort of a game where there are stakes. But this one was maybe a little too high level for me.
Finally, after a long talk with Cressida about my tendency to overpromise and overcommit, I reflected on why I had rushed to get Seven Nights started before it was, quite frankly, ready. Before I was ready. My immediate answer was that I didn't want to wait until next October. And this had to start in October. It's just an October story, inherently. I don't know why, but I felt strongly about that.
I was excited for it. But there was also a part of me that wanted to start Seven Nights as soon as possible because after a year and a half of working on a sequel that still isn't even ready to go to beta readers, a serial sounded a lot more gratifying. With a serial, I would get instant feedback. I would have people telling me what they thought as I was writing, instead of the lonely, long process of drafting a sequel. I had been staring down this sequel for so long that I had started to wonder if I would ever see the finish line. I needed encouragement, and posting Seven Nights and getting some interest in that encouraged me.
And that encouragement has been so helpful for me, in both my writing for Seven Nights and my sequel writing. I'm so grateful for that. The problem is that as much as I wanted Seven Nights, I don't have time for it right now. Wanting and whining for more time just won't make it so.
So what happens now? Well, chapter 2 is already written so that will go out at the end of this month as promised. But after that, there will be a hiatus for a while. I'm not going to drop this project. I still love it and feel excited for where it's going to go. What I will do is give myself some much needed time. This winter, I will focus on taking finishing Time's Sacrifice Book 2 and getting it to beta readers/ready for publication. While it's with beta readers, I can write a bit more of Seven Nights so that I'll have a little backlog when I come back.
My plan is to release Seven Nights chapter 3 to Ko-fi members on March 1, 2025 and newsletter subscribers on March 31, 2025. Obviously, if you were paying for Ko-fi membership, feel free to pause your memberships until that time. I'll send out a reminder through Kit shortly before I come back so you can resubscribe.
And to everyone, thanks for hanging in there with me. I know there's been a lot of waiting. I'll try to make it up to you with some really good stories.
โ