Clearly this whole "Thing A Week" thing isn't working right. One of the side-effects of converting from MovableType to WordPress has been that I've been reading through old posts as Google or Yahoo or whoever crawls the old links. I'd like to direct your attention to my analysis of posting the original Captain Arcolier story. Specifically there I talk about how the weekly deadline didn't improve the serial format. All of that is still true, but I'd add that in Shore Leave there are pieces that needed to be in earlier section, but because I was publishing as I went I couldn't fix that.
My original Thing a Week idea was very simple, post a whole story every week. The problem became almost immediately clear: I don't always write an entire story in a week. I modified the plan for Welcome to Gameworld and I think it worked OK there, but the trap was that I had backslid into the serial model.
What I'm dancing around is this: I don't actually write a complete story every week. Don't have the time, don't have the energy. While I like the serial posting for some things, my original assessment was correct: I need to write the entire story before posting any part of it.
So my goal, moving forward is going to be a story a month. If the story is short I'll post it in one chunk, and there will be three weeks with no story. If it naturally falls into four chunks then I'll post one chunk a week. If it falls in more chunks … I'm not sure. Maybe it will take more than a month to post and I'll build up a backlog. Maybe I'll post more frequently. We'll see.
This starts now, so my goal is to have a story ready for the beginning of March. Wish me luck!
My original Thing a Week idea was very simple, post a whole story every week. The problem became almost immediately clear: I don't always write an entire story in a week. I modified the plan for Welcome to Gameworld and I think it worked OK there, but the trap was that I had backslid into the serial model.
What I'm dancing around is this: I don't actually write a complete story every week. Don't have the time, don't have the energy. While I like the serial posting for some things, my original assessment was correct: I need to write the entire story before posting any part of it.
So my goal, moving forward is going to be a story a month. If the story is short I'll post it in one chunk, and there will be three weeks with no story. If it naturally falls into four chunks then I'll post one chunk a week. If it falls in more chunks … I'm not sure. Maybe it will take more than a month to post and I'll build up a backlog. Maybe I'll post more frequently. We'll see.
This starts now, so my goal is to have a story ready for the beginning of March. Wish me luck!