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afreakingdork · 3 days ago

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Memo From Dork HQ (Thoughts and Probable Posting Change)

TO: The Void, All Encompassing

FROM: Afreaking Dork, Writer

DATE: 6 February 2025

SUBJECT: Thoughts and Probably Posting Change

It's becoming a bit obvious that I might not be able to keep up the posting schedule. As far as check-ins are concerned, I am not seeing obvious signs of burn out. Instead, there an ever present feeling of stress. Everyday I wake up and think: I need to do x, y, and z to get to a, b, and c, and if I don't do that then I will fall behind and have to push d and maybe e, and what will become of f amongst the changes? It's exhausting and that's just from my hobby. My real jobs require the same mental juggling and I often feel like I am one tossed 'ball' away from having the entire circus come down.

My thoughts and theories on the matter are ones I try to approach scientifically. One may think: Dork wrote two stories simultaneously before, what's the difference? Well, when I wrote Sunshine Moonshine, I foresaw that back to back publishing might not be feasible. I wanted the story to exist and, by nature, I am a person who must write when they want to write. I gave myself no deadline and wrote whenever I felt like it. This worked for a long time, but as the story grew, I began to feel restless for it's existence to come to fruition. I had been commissioning chapter art for it and the artists were asking me when they could share their pieces. I told myself that once a certain point was achieved, I would go ahead and release.

That goal ended up occurring around the time I finished chapter 18 and saw that the fic would end at 20. I premiered the story and came across a new problem I couldn't forsee: I didn't remember what I wrote. I knew the broad strokes, but not the finer details. I like to edit before publishing, but it had been months since I had written some of those chapters. References I made were lost on me and some context had completely evaporated because the origin was gone. It was annoying and ate up more time when I still needed to write two more chapters. The groundwork had been laid, but I didn't have the blueprints.

All while this was happening, the first idea of kenkey popped into my head on January 10, 2024. These ideas would continue to pop and through July, as which time I was refining the outline for what I knew was going to be my next story. By September, the first chapters were opened up to my betas. I had a choice right then of how that would happen and chose to do it on the same weekly basis as Villain's Mark because I didn't want a repeat of forgetting. Remembering what I'm doing and executing it how I want is one of my greatest triumphs as a writer. I hold my words to extremely high regard. I knew it would be tough, but it wasn't like I wasn't already writing multiple stories at once. I figured I could get a few chapters in, maybe six, as a good buffer and that wouldn't be too many that I wouldn't remember.

AENEM was began publishing in November and here we are.

My six chapter buffer has dwindled to one.

(That's three less than Soft Spot)

I have the same desire/drive to write it, but Soft Spot is my baby.

It comes first and has come first for literal years now.

I'm tired of being anxious.

I want to write when I want to write.

I like minimal deadlines, but I feel like I need space.

My brightest idea is moving AENEM to a biweekly publishing, but I don't know.

i have commitments with the chapter artists.

I need time for the betas to edit.

I have to get new commissions done.

It's hard to say what to do next, but something needs to be done.

The only certainty is there will be no change to Soft Spot.

If you are willing, your thoughts are appreciated.

Another Donnie pin-up goes live tonight as your thanks for reading.

#me #housekeeping

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