You have to be realistic about these things.

Joe Abercrombie

A double whammy of a progress update today as I didn't write one for July. I haven't actually written a new blog post for ages as I was releasing my novella Imperial Gold. (Here, if you haven't checked it out yet).

Releasing IG gave me a bit of breather after what had become a bit of a relentless weekly release schedule, and missing out on a July update (which I had initially still wanted to do) is somewhat indicative of how I feel about the blog in general.

I really enjoyed doing this at the beginning, but time constraints are making it feel more like a chore and now I'm bordering on burnout. So, I've made some decisions.

I've been releasing a blog post every single week since the last week of March. Some of these have been mildly popular in the groups I've posted them in. The highlight being one I wrote early on about George R. R. Martin which had over 1,600 views in the first few days. Don't be fooled, though, this is very much the outlier.

I regret to say this will be the last blog post for a while. It was easier to keep up the pace during lockdown, and strangely I've since started writing even more per month than I ever have before (despite all the time I did have in lockdown over the past sixteen months.)

Since the point of this blog is to complement rather than hinder my writing aspirations, I'm putting it on a hiatus. But, I feel it would be unfair to just leave it at that.

The surprising July

In my last update, I boasted of having written 30,555 words in June - a feat I didn't imagine I would match very often. But... I did, in July. I wrote 30,357 words. This pushed me out of the first part of Shards of Lisgrimir, but not by much.

I'm expecting the next two parts (there are three in total) will be shorter in length, else I'm looking at 180,000 words rather than the 150,000 I'm planning. It ended up turning out this way for Pyres of Äpis, which had a first draft of around 186,000.

PoÄ is in serious need of an edit at some point as I haven't touched it in nearly seven months. It's also in serious need of being beta read, but that's a different matter.

Aside from my unreasonable writing progress, my writing itself surprised me too. Religion played a large role in PoÄ, and continues to do so in SoL, but I've written myself into a new place, exploring folk prophecies and how they might interact or conflict with secular motives.

I won't say any more than that for spoilery reasons, but it's given me a rigid place to hang my plot for the rest of the book (at least in one of my two storylines).

The relaxed August

August, in contrast, was slower. I got married (!!) and I went on holiday for a little while, so I wrote 14,681 words. Although barely any of this has been proofread, so who knows how much I'll keep.

It was nice to take a break from it all, and it did solidify my decision to pause the blog. I took some pictures I might use as writing prompts in the future, and helped reduce the burnout I was feeling.

I couldn't say goodbye to writing entirely, though. I fiddled around on my phone and discovery-wrote a short story involving a character I made up for a D&D one-shot earlier in the year. This is about 3,000 words and might make it's way on here at some point, but I think it's far too soon after Imperial Gold for any of that.

The Future

This isn't the end, and I don't want to give that impression. If there's a book I particularly like (or hate), or otherwise feel deserves a full review, I might give it one. I think I'll keep up on the updates, but they won't be monthly. It would relieve some pressure to make them goal-based rather than time-based.

See you soon, whenever that may be.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider following my blog, my Facebook or my Instagram. I think I'll likely use these platforms for more informal updates about things that I don't have to put too much thought into. So, there's still a reason to follow 😉

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