Feeding the Buffer

Filed: Blog @ 6:22am on August 4, 2010 No comments yet! :(   Word Count: 339

I announced on July 10th that I would no longer publish in real time and that instead, I would follow a schedule.

Since then, writing became much easier. I added new “Next Day” marker in my Microsoft OneNote section which simply tells me what is the next day I need to write for. This allowed me to create a strict writing schedule which greatly increased my productivity, while creating a buffer.

By forcing me to take notes instead of writing in real time, I discovered new ideas which I wouldn’t have thought of. Chapters 11 to 15 of Sylvana came from that new schedule. Most of my alternates saw the light of day thanks to the new schedule.

For example, when my buffer first reached 2 weeks, I was ecstatic! It meant that even if I stopped writing completely, I would have 2 full weeks of regular updates.

This is when I started taking risks and finally wrote the first few chapters for my alternate stories, allowing me to create an alternate story for each of my main ones.

On July 29th, I realized that I was missing only 3 chapters to have a full month of scheduled articles. With a little additional work, I was able to write them and the next day I announced that all of August was already programmed.

I am quite proud now of having switched to a schedule format. I have written more consistently and regularly than any other time in my life and I have managed to publish with a regularity my bowels envy.

I will not longer try to increase the buffer. From now on, I will have 2 modes of operations :

  • Writing new chapters, when the buffer is low
  • Planning new chapters, when the buffer is high

I have spend the last few days planning new chapters as well as doing some CSS changes on the site which I hope you like, but rest assured that new chapters are coming to feed the buffer.

Next up : Chapter 14 of Sylvana, which you may have already guessed, will be called “Depression”.

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