2017 year in review

(this is a cross post from my Patreon page. Some of this information won’t be as applicable to general fans but I thought it good to share with everyone so you can know my plans going forward)

I just wanted to say thank you to what has been a tumultuous 2017 for me. Overall, a good year for me professionally but a tough one emotionally. As you may be aware, I lost some people close to me as the year went by and it did cause me to go into a shell at times.

I don’t want to make this a “woe is me” post because life happens and I’m a believer in positivity. But sometimes I think that positivity may get me to overstep my capabilities at times. When I get sad, I draw into myself and get a bit lazy even though, in my experience, creating content is one of the fastest ways to cheer me up! Then again we don’t behave rationally when we are feeling down.

This is one of the reasons I hired Stephanie to help me keep my sugar together and on schedule. In addition to Stephanie, I’ve been using my Audible account to get self-help books that have helped motivate me and see areas where I’m making mistakes. As a full result, 2018 is shaping up to be a good year as a result of my better handle of myself and Stephanie keeping me on an actual schedule.

One of the things the self-help books have helped me to understand is I’m a creature of momentum. If I want to succeed, I have to keep moving every day. To this end, I have started to wake up half-an-hour earlier than I would normally each weekday to get some sort of writing or website upkeep done. You’re about to see a flood of commissions come rolling in as a result.

One of the other effects of the self-help books is helping me realize where I’m maybe making promises that don’t push my “brand” in a direction. While I’m not as big on the buzzword of “brand”, it did make me realize something…

I was spending more time worried, avoiding, and writing in the Q&A than I should. The Q&A was a good idea I think but with the limited writing and bookkeeping I already do, it added to the pile in a way it shouldn’t. In addition, there wasn’t the interest in reading it that I had thought there might be. A lot of that was likely due to my own inconsistency but the more I thought about it, the more I figured, “They patronize me for my writing, not for my insight.” Plus, if I’m honest, I found myself over-analyzing how I answered questions and inadvertently caused myself some weird stress where I was happy someone would ask a question but agonize over how to best answer it. So for that reason, 2018 will not include Q&A as something I’m doing. Come 2019, I may revisit the idea.

What 2018 WILL be including is a healthy dose of MGP Fan Reels. I love the Fan Reels as I’m a huge fan of sarcastic, peanut gallery-style commentary… I mean, I write Cory & Eli into my story and that’s basically their job. Stephanie is a big fan of them as well and so we’re planning on posting one once every 2 weeks. That’s, I think, a slow enough pace that those at the Fan Reel level of rewards will have enough time to add their comments if they want to. Once every two weeks is NOT a schedule I would promise if it weren’t for Stephanie’s involvement.

Right now, we have 10 chapters of MGP Fan Reel up. I’m going to get this started up next week. By our count, that puts us at Chapter 38 at the end of 2018. I think that’s getting us a fair bit caught up! We’ll slow down in 2019 so we don’t overtake actual chapters (and I think it’s healthy to always be a few chapters behind anyway on snide commentary) so this is going to be good. It’s going to be good isn’t it Stephanie?

…

Stephanie gave me a thumbs up. So it’ll be good.

The last thing is I, frankly, am starting to run out of ideas for canon images and especially pin-up images. I want to get more community feedback to help me do that. I’m going to host some regular discussions (maybe once every 3-4 months) for people to proffer up ideas for both. This will be something I add to the $3 rewards in addition to access to commenting on the Fan Reels. I figure if you’re passionate enough to offer up snarky commentary you probably are willing to throw a few ideas out there.

So, the new rewards levels will be as such:
$1- Access to the MGP Vignettes
$2-Access to Villain-in-Distress 6 months before it goes public
$3-Access to the MGP Fan Reel and the Commission Brainstorming Meetings
$5-Become a member of the Pin-up Planning Committee (aka: Vote for which pin-ups go up, and occasionally which canon image we do)
$10- MGP Early Access- gain access to the Google-doc I use to write MGP

Okay, before I close up this post, here is the plan for this month. Normally this month would be a nightmare for me to write BUT it turns out my family isn’t coming up here for Christmas. Normally this would be a big sad face from me but I see it as a sign that I can get a lot done this month!

This is the plan. Not only are we getting two Fan Reels posted this month, but I will get one more chapter of MGP up before the year is done. Then, I’m going to try to tear through Villain-in-Distress. There were supposed to be 12 Villain-in-Distress chapters this year. There have been 6. By my count, Villain-in-Distress averages 2-3 pages. That comes out to around 15 pages I need to write there. MGP chapters are as long or as short as I feel they need to be. But that means I need to get somewhere between, likely, 20-30 pages written before the year is up. That is doable in a month that I’m planning and staying super engaged.

Now, I won’t commit to all 6 getting done. I already stated at the start of this post how I sometimes get overeager due to my positive nature. I will promise, however, to try my best and get multiple ViD’s out along with an MGP chapter. But whatever I don’t get done I’m going to chaulk up to being a “dead” month for ViD and just going to start over with a clean slate come 2018 so I don’t spend all my time playing catch-up the whole year. That big of a block of writing steals from MGP and while I’m comfortable doing that for a single month where I wasn’t expecting to write as much, I’m not willing to do that any further than this month.

In the effort of spacing things out better, coming 2018 I’ll be on a regular posting schedule for all this patreon stuff. My schedule has shifted in that Wednesday is now the best day for me to do stuff for the website. So this will be the schedule each month for Patreon stuff:

1st Wednesday- Post Pin-up picture
2nd Wednesday- Pin-up voting
3rd Wednesday- Canon image
4th Wednesday- Villain-in-Distress

That means I need to get some pin-up voting options up fast 🙂

Regardless, thanks for reading all this. You guys have seriously been amazing fans all year and incredibly patient with me thorugh the hard times. That patience is getting rewarding and why I’m now paying Stephanie to be my taskmaster XD. 2018 is going to be the best year for Taralynn’s Desk and more productive than ever before. Keep me in your prayers or whatever you do to get positive vibes from the universe to keep me on task this month so I can hit the ramp that is 2018 with lots of speed!

You’re the best!
Taralynn