Update

This one's really taken a while, and I'm sorry about that. It's probably pretty obvious, and I've seen where this was going for a while now, but actually writing these words turned out to be a pretty daunting task, something I kept re-thinking and going back on.

Either way:

The long and the short of it is that right now what I've been doing hasn't been working and it's not getting any better, rather the lockdowns and COVID and everything that's been such a mess lately have thrown out any schedule I've tried to keep and just made it worse. 

I've never been one to work based on motivation, and have always relied on discipline instead, but after long enough of working without motivation, and working with a constant dealine of "This is overdue, I need to get these finished and out and..." the stories I've been writing have become closer to a job than a hobby, and the thought of writing isn't something I look forward to but a chore I force myself through to get them done. And it's worn me out.

So I'm gonna give up for now. Which sounds pretty funny given that I haven't actually been able to publish something in far too long already, but I'm going to give up forcing out any of the stories I've been working on (I have been working despite the lack of progress).

I do still want to write, and I do still want to finish things off properly, or at least, more properly. So there'll be more from me on ACoT and the other works, and probably some other stories on different topics (and hopefully a lot smaller scale). But I'll put this Patreon down for now.

Originally I intended it as a way of supporting myself with the idea of either working less hours/days per week, or stopping my normal work entirely and putting that time towards writing. That hasn't happened, and I've been working more overall, so I'll give it a rest for a while.

I dithered on closing this page down or leaving it open, I think I'll leave it open for now simply because I would like to come back to it when I've got a better rhythm, and because I do use it to talk to people. 

Sorry for the delays in saying this and in needing to say it in the first place, I do really appreciate the support I've had all this time and I've loved getting my stories up and out. But I haven't been able to get anything published in a long while now, and the act of writing them has become so akin to pulling teeth, it's not looking like it'll get any better.

TL;DR: I'm still writing. I'll still do more for ACoT and do right by it. I'm stopping with this Patreon for now, and I'm gonna try write a bit more based on motivation than with staying up late nights, enforcing deadlines on myself.

Thanks again,

-J