The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Volume 4, Issue 6 -- Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 

Howdy, patrons!

There's no other way to say this: last week sucked. I've been placed on a performance improvement plan at the day job for a few weeks, and the first check-in was scheduled for Thursday. While I was hoping for a coveted "Green" rating, it soon became obvious that "Yellow" was the best I could hope for and "Orange" was most likely. The trouble is, anything other than Yellow or Green would mean I've failed the plan and would be fired immediately. I spent most of last week in emergency mode with my husband, trying to figure out how best to tighten our belts while I looked for work elsewhere. 

Thankfully my manager went to bat for me and worked out a plan to withhold final judgement until the end of the plan on June 17th. Unfortunately, that also means that if I don't have a spotless record with tickets between now and then that will be my last day. It's not a comfortable time at the Ranch, I can tell you that. But I've made as much peace with it as I can, accepted how my own shortcomings have lead to this, and started pumping my network and putting in applications elsewhere. I'll do all I can for that perfect rating, but I also have to make sure I can land on my feet as soon as possible. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Either way, the Business Writing Course I've been taking has been exceedingly helpful with gaining a better perspective on my writing. It's all basic stuff -- you know, speaking plainly, outlining ahead of time to make sure your message is focused and concise, making sure the effect of your tone and style is considered -- but it frames it in a way that helps me understand exactly why my approach hasn't been working up until now. It's honestly quite humbling to realize how much I can still improve in this area, but also kind of exciting to have a direction for improvement. The instructor's lessons on how structure and tone can influence how a message is received are revelatory, and bound to help me in my fiction as well.

Another thing helping me through this is the Critical Role podcast. I've been slowly catching up on it in fits and starts during my commute, but just four episodes in I've learned a lot about how to put together a fun game. Matthew Mercer is an excellent DM who makes games that truly feel collaborative, and provides ample opportunities for player characters to shine through. How he doesn't isn't through any one mechanism; it's a bunch of small things that all point to making sure the players are getting what they want out of the game. Whether that's feeling like a bad ass, or being a trash fire, or indulging in mystery and wonder -- the world feels designed towards making the character feel as cool as possible. When I think about my games that way, a new world of possibilities open up and I feel excited about running Pathfinder instead of petrified. It's a really good feeling, I must say.

That feeling has extended to "Crushing The Competition", which I'm still working to ensure updates on the regular. The crisis last week blew my push to release an episode last week, but there will be one this week. Sitting down to focus on who these characters are and how they would likely relate to one another based on that, combined with putting more of myself into the narrative, has given me a new perspective on the story. It feels like there's momentum to it for the first time now, and I'd like to think that's because the focus is on the characters now instead of the world. Ralph has been a low-key unpleasant cipher for this first little bit, so I'm looking to rehabilitate him into someone who is still flawed in consistent ways but might end up being someone who comes across more active, someone you can root for. We'll see how that goes in episode 15 on Thursday.

The renewed character focus is also helping me break through the block with "Boundaries," the 'gourmet' serial I'd like to release to you $5 and $10 patrons once it's been written. Like "CTC", I'd focused so much on the plot and world-building that the characters felt unformed and unlikeable to me; working with who the crew of the SUAS Boundary actually are helps me to structure the plot and build the world in a much more organic way. The outline for the first story is still forming in my head, and I think the trick to writing it successfully is to set up the peaks where each episode breaks and write towards that without worrying about tying it down to a specific length just yet. Once I've gained more practice, I can work on pacing to get the stories under a specific word count.

That's the news for now, buckaroos. If you know of an administrative or IT-focused job in the San Jose region, please send me a private message; I'll be forever in your debt. Until then, I'll see you on Thursday!

• Jakebe