The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Volume 4, Issue 1 - Tuesday, January 1st, 2019

Howdy, patrons!

Happy New Year! I hope that your holiday season was filled with good cheer and great friends; if it was anything like mine, it certainly was. Here at the Den and Burrow, we hosted a small but warm Thanksgiving dinner; helped a few friends ring in Christmas with a series of three parties over that weekend; and had a really chill New Year's party with a few friends and our brand-new Nintendo Switch. Now that 2019 is upon us, I'm turning my attention to the kind of year I want to have. 

The theme for this year, at least for me, is consistency and focus. I've set the rather lofty goal of making sure I write and read every day this year! I have no illusions that I'll actually achieve these goals, of course -- but that's not the point. The point is to build the habit as much as I can, to keep writing and reading at the top of my mind this year. I realize that a lot of the promises I make around writing aren't kept, and I'm tired of doing that to people. This is the year that I'd really like to build my life around this. 

Of course there will be days where I make poor decisions. There will be days where other things simply have to take priority. There will be days where the systems I've developed to keep on track won't work out for me, and I'll need to go back to the drawing board to figure out why they didn't. And that's all a part of the journey, right? The aim is not perfection, but improvement. The goal isn't to achieve the goal, but to continue striving towards it consistently. 

There are over 35 of you contributing enough per episode that I should be putting out one per week, and I'm truly grateful for each of you. That being said, it's time to hold up my end of the bargain. One of my absolute top priorities is making sure that a new episode of "Crushing The Competition" is up each Thursday here at the patreon, and that I regularly have other stories up on SoFurry, Weasyl, and Furry Network. It'll take some work to figure out the best way to do this, but I'm committed. 

For the serial itself, I've tried to break down the major story beats I'm writing towards but I think I need to chill on actually 'guessing' how long it will take to get to them. My sense of pacing is still not where it needs to be, and it's really hard to figure out how long it should take for a plot point to happen organically. Looking back over my notes for the past year, it's pretty clear that I have no idea how to develop characters and situations in a fairly concise manner. Once I work on consistency, maybe that will be next!

This first month of the year will be challenging in a number of ways. In addition to making sure I'm consistent here at the Patreon, I'll be working to bring my blog at The Writing Desk back to life; I'm also preparing for a few panels at Further Confusion 2019; and I will certainly need to make sure I've got my shit together at the day job. Knowing that I was hired to be an 'elder statesman' of sorts for professional behavior has really put the spurs to me to make sure I'm on my game there. I'm getting there, but it takes a little time and effort to settle in. 

So that's the dream this month: make the best choices I can to make sure I do what I set out to do. That means five episodes of the serial here, twelve entries over at The Writing Desk, all due to consistent writing and working towards goals. Even if I don't hit the numbers, if I put in serious effort to achieving this goals I'll have considered the month a success.

How about all of you lovely folks? Have you made any New Year's Resolutions for 2019? If so, what do you hope to have achieved by this time next year?

I'll see you folks on Thursday, for Crushing The Competition #10. Until then!

• Jakebe