The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Volume 4, Issue 20 - Wednesday, October 23rd, 2019

Howdy, patrons!

I'm slowly but steadily chipping away at the writer's block I've been suffering, and I sincerely hope to have new episodes of "Crushing The Competition" available within the next week or two. I won't go into too much detail here, but I think ultimately sorting out my feelings in a journal helped to unstick a few things. I'm still not sure if things are 'resolved', as much as they ever are, but for the first time I feel like I can sit down at the desk and not just stare at the screen in bewilderment.

I've spoken a bit about the problems I've had with the serial up until now, and what I wanted to change. The quarterly mixer is a perfect chance to do just that -- including (finally) introducing more sex into the series. After all, this whole thing was meant to be a light-hearted romp through the world of dangerous wealth inequality...and when I say it that way, it becomes a little more obvious why that didn't work out.

But I am hoping that focusing on building the characters in the story instead of the setting, instead of the plot, will give it the feel I want and make it easier to maintain momentum. I think, after setting down a few chapters ahead, I'd love to double back and edit the last 20 episodes so they'll go up on SoFurry and other sites. Once I have a better handle on that, I can start in on a bunch of OTHER projects that have been backed up for months...even years now.

I'm getting ahead of myself. First things first: write consistently, post an episode here once a week. That'll do for a start.

The day job has suddenly and unexpectedly become a lot more chill. We've worked through the backlog that seemed insurmountable when I started, and tickets have become...fairly chill. I've actually trained a contractor over two weeks, but I barely had to do anything. She actually read our documentation, asked questions when she didn't know something, and has been rocking tickets all on her own for about a week now! Right now we're both just finding ways to pass the time between tickets, which is a pretty big deal to be honest.

I'm looking forward to the chance to straighten out both our internal and customer-facing documentation, freshen up the email templates we use for common questions, and start setting a more established set of processes for onboarding new customers, keeping records, updating workflows, the whole kit and kaboodle. It's pretty exciting, I'm not going to lie.

Within the burrow, I've been doing my best to get back in touch with the things that excite me. I think, over time, I've learned to hide my passions because I was so afraid of the possibility of rejection. Writing CTC became so hard because I didn't want to personally connect with it, but...if I'm not putting myself into a story what's the point of writing it? All of this to say sorry in advance if things go in a direction that feels a bit too out of left field or different for your tastes. I'd love to get feedback on things so I can discuss them in a future issue of the Gazette or riff on them within the story itself!

I think that's it for now. Again, thanks to all of you for being so patient with me, and I sincerely hope you're having a lovely autumn!

-Jakebe