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Originally posted on October 29, 2018

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Hello guys and gals, readers and voters who had followed Gunslinger Mage for the past week.

The Writing Prompts Contests #26 and #27 have closed. I humbly thank you for your votes, reviews, comments and views. They have greatly motivated me as a newbie author to keep writing.

The votes are now being tallied, and results will be announced in a day or two. I'm hoping to make it to top 5. Just top 5, there are some heavyweights in this week's contest :)

Now for the less happy part.

I'm not sure how many of you guys know how Writing Prompt Contest works, so I'm explaining it briefly.

On Friday (Oct 19), the prompts for #26 and #27 were announced. The contest actually started on Monday (Oct 22). So, Friday was when I began preparing. I came up with the concept, drafted a synopsis, hastily slapped together the cover, and wrote a few chapters. In the end I was able to write the first 3 chapters over the weekend.

During the last week, I frantically tried to keep writing and posting twice a day to maximize the novel's visibility and draw in readers.

The good news is that it worked. Gunslinger Mage is my third work, and it has outperformed my previous two by a large margin. I was also told that it is doing reasonably well for a 1-week old, non-featured novel.

The bad news is that I was incapable of keeping up the pace. The 3 chapters buffer was gone after 2 days, chapters were released in halves, schedules were slipping, and it looks like I will miss the Monday (today) release entirely. I'm physically and mentally drained. Worst of all, I'm dangerously close to just making stuff up as I go along.

Why does this happen?

I'll be frank with you guys. I'm a new writer, and I write as a hobby. I'm nowhere skilled enough to juggle a full time job, a family and crank out 2 chapters every day :) . Even 1 chapter is already a stretch.

So, what am I gonna do about it?

I regret to announce that I will be reducing release rate to 5 chapters a week. Tentative schedule is Tuesday to Saturday. This serves several purposes.

The first is that I can take a breather and recharge.

The second is I can plan the story properly. I have the large plot points already mapped out, but the smaller stuffs need to be filled in. If I'm not careful I might end up writing myself into a corner and have to either do a rewrite, or annoy you guys with the plot holes. I've got plenty of cool ideas about characters, encounters, etc that I hope to share with you, but I need a little time to organize them.

The third purpose (also similar to the second) is so I can write chapters ahead of schedule, and before posting I can check for typos, inconsistencies, etc. At the current rate, I just posted them immediately after finishing writing and briefly running them through Grammarly for the most glaring errors.

TL;DR

1. New release rate: 5 chaps / week (Tue to Sat)

2. Voting is closed. So if you guys wanna spend your stones on your regular novels, I understand :) . In a week or two, I will build up a reserve to release bonus chapters based on the novel's ranking.

Once again, thank you all for your support. I apologize for not being able to keep up this pace. I don't want to do this, but it's for the sake of your enjoyment and my own SAN score :).

That is all. Have a nice day, guys.