I’m working on the climax of the third main-series entry in the Legend of Jerry, my online story. It’s the end of all the story arcs that began in the first book, Jerry and the Goddesses.
I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this.
This isn’t the end of Jerry’s stories, of course. But it is the end of his story, if you know what I mean. This is the conclusion of the epic. From here on out, all I have planned are monster-of-the-week shorter entries. And take “shorter” with a grain of salt. Jerry and the Apocalypse is sitting at about 330,000 words, and it’s not even finished yet. I think it might reach 350k or higher before it is.
So as I mentioned before I got distracted by the word count, I’m kinda conflicted. I’m a little sad to see this part of the journey come to an end. Jerry will be permanently changed by what he’s been through, which means the end of the loveable, dorky, insecure little guy who somehow found himself filling shoes he thinks he could use as a canoe.
I’m also a little leery of what the future holds for the world I’ve built with these stories. How am I going to challenge a hero who’s faced down gods and glimpsed a future where he’s even slain them all? Hokey ideas about stripping his power away from him occur to me, but I don’t really believe anyone will want to read yet another progression fantasy starring him. And I know myself well enough to know that’s what I’ll do with him.
I will be doing more of the spin-offs, featuring other characters from this world. Are people going to like those? Are these characters even capable of holding their own like that? I know it’s fine when everyone knows it’s just 50 or 60k words until the next 250k+ word Jerry story, what about when Jerry’s stories are only 50-60k words themselves, and only coming every 3-4 entries?
At the same time, I’m excited to see what happens next. What kinds of heroes and conflicts will there be in the future, in the world that’s been changed by the events so far?
I’m also looking forward to being able to get back to work on some of my other projects. The third entry in the Operational Realities series is still in the editing phase, and I’m about 2/3 of the way through the fourth entry. (Still no ground broken on Hot Lips’ Hard Times, though. I’ll get there.)
I have two “secret” projects that I’ve been hinting about and… Well, breaking down and telling people about because, damnit, this shit gets me excited. Then there’s also Sanctuary, my post apocalyptic series. The first book is written and almost done being edited. I’ve written the opening lines of the second, but not much past that.
And Eater of Snakes, my precious little baby who wants so badly to be a romantic military sci-fi, but which I don’t have the skills to bring to life without making it a creepy beast. You deserve attention, too, you little cupcake. I promise you haven’t been forgotten.
All of those took a backburner for Jerry and the Apocalypse. Which is the first time I’ve done anything like that. I normally have multiple projects going at any given time. Even during the earliest days of writing Operational Realities, I had r/WritingPrompts submissions and shorts I was doing offline…
In case you didn’t catch it from the paragraphs above, I’ve also got some trepidation about the sheer number of projects I have set aside, and what coming back to them will require of me. There are editing tasks for Operational Considerations that will take me days to finish. Days of carefully re-reading my work while keeping an eye out for certain things to change, and during which I must fight the urge to get distracted by punching up prose or changing plot elements.
There’s more to it, too. I recently launched a Patreon and a Ko-Fi for those who want to support me as an author. And the thing is… Those people came for the Jerry stories. My rewards are kind of a joke: there’s a Patreon-exclusive text and voice chat channel on the Discord and I’ve promised to name drop patrons in future works, as major or minor characters. Nobody signed up for the chat (the last message is 11 days old, and it’s from me), and nobody signed up to get their name in one of the stories (at least one person has explicitly demanded I not deliver on that). They did it for Jerry and his adventures. And now, while I’m not exactly taking that away, I’m seriously cutting down and changing it.
But there’s more good stuff, too. Because I absolutely adore the ending I came up with for this one. And we’re just now getting to the good parts of it.
So yeah.
I’ve also been having a rough time of late on a personal level. It’s not something I really want to get into here, but I haven’t really been feeling myself recently. Getting lost in the worlds that I’ve made helps, but it’s not a solution.
I’m actually scared I might lose the motivation to write. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t think it will happen, but I’ve been known to drop hobbies before. Anyone who’s seen any recent artwork of mine can see that I haven’t really progressed much in skill since I was a teenager, and that’s because I stopped making a lot of artwork back then.
In that kind of headspace, you can understand, maybe, why any kind of change might seem ominous to me. I’m worried that I won’t be able to adapt. That it will turn into the stumbling block that finally runs me off the road I’ve been gleefully racing down.
I really don’t know how all of this is going to turn out. What I do know, however, is that I’m going to find out.