The Post-More Project

[Malkavia]

I see people say something like this all the time: "I need to post, but holy shit it's stressful and it's hard to make it happen." My gut response is people shouldn't feel pressure. Hobbies should be fun. But...you know what makes a story fun? Momentum! Action and drama charging headlong towards an actual god damn finish. Yeah, stress leads to burnout, but so does the slow death of neglect.

I'd know, since I'm presently sitting at 0.9 posts per day across a 3 year span. I have dozens of threads left sitting for months. Even the threads I prioritize at the absolute top of the heap don't get done on even a weekly basis.

So I created this thread with a few purposes in mind. First, I wanted to log my efforts to POST MORE. If I do this in public, I'll put in more thought; I'll feel more pressure to stick to it. Second, I figure I'm not the only person fighting this particular bugaboo, and you know. Community efforts are good, right? We learn from each other. It would be cool if other people chimed in with their experiences on how they manage a good post-rate. Feel free to track your own goals and strategies, to just share your thoughts on what works for you, or to just celebrate your wins.

(Thaaaaat said, I know some folks' reaction will be basically "you goal shouldn't be to post more." There are reasons for this view, but I just don't agree, and I don't want to have that conversation in this thread. Please stick to posts in the spirit of the thread—strategies for posting more consistently and at greater volume)

Anywho, to the main rodeo. Below are are my initial thoughts for the week of July 24 - July 31:

—

Step 1: Bring Together the Posts

...I don't even know 100% where I'm due. Subscriptions help, but there are starters I owe and starters to which I owe a followup. My first step should be to create a list for tracking all my current threads. I could create a Google Doc, find some todo-list software, or maybe use something like a GPT project. I suspect Google Docs will present the least friction.

Step 2: Timeblock a Process

I'd like to analyze posting in terms of specific steps. Something like "Spot / ideate => Draft => Edit." These should all be concrete steps where I know when I'm done and can time exactly how long they take from beginning to end. Then, I'd like to start blocking out how long I anticipate each step will take and to measure how long it actually takes. Over time, hopefully this can get me to a place where I have a solid sense of how long posting should take, which will help me plan better and also set (and keep) realistic targets.

Step 3: Set Goals and Track Progress

Once I have a sense for how long posting should take, I'd like to set realistic and concrete goals for weekly pen-to-page WRITING. This will probably be something like "21 posts a week," but it might get more granular if timeblocking works better with more granular blocks.

Step 4: Reflect and Revise

As I work across the week, I'd like to keep a log of distractions, stress points, and just generally—why isn't posting fun? And if it's fun, why isn't it happening? Then when I get to the end of the week, I can look back and determine how to remove distractions, resolve stress points, and just generally make this a more fun, more active hobby to pursue.

Goals for July 24 - July 25:

With this starter post down, I plan to try to knock out at least step 1. I anticipate that will take about half an hour. I'll be finished when I have a list of all posts I currently owe in some form or another. If that goes well, I'd love to get through steps 2 and 3 and maybe knock out 1-2 posts for today. I think step 2 will probably take around 15 minutes and will give me a sense for how long I think posts will take. I'll revisit steps 3 and 4 next week, but I can be contributing to step 4 throughout the week by keeping that distraction log.

I'll write a followup post later today tracking how all this went.

[Malkavia]

July 24 - 31

Step 1: Bring Together the Posts

Donezo. This ended up taking 30 minutes. It was annoying to set up, but hopefully now it'll be easy to maintain.

Step 2: Timeblock a Process

This week I'm going to try this process and see how things go:

Step 0: Clear your head and read (5 min)

Step 1: Read the post I'm responding to
How do I know I'm done — I've marked off each of the beats I'm meant to respond to
Estimated time: 5 min

Step 2: Ideate + Beat Sheet
How do I know I'm done? — I have the major action points of the post given in bullet-point form, and I feel excited about at least one part of the post.
Estimated time: 10 min

Step 3: Draft 1 beat at a time
How do I know I'm done? — The next beat on the beat sheet has been written in prose
Estimated time: 5min per beat. If I get to the end of 5 min and don't have a lead, start over and try again.

Step 4 (Optional): Take a break to work on something else (another post perhaps).

Step 5: Reread and rewrite.
How do I know I'm done? — I've read the post at least once, and I've rewritten any sections that feel "ick."
Estimated time: 10 min

Step 6: Post

Anticipated distractions and roadblocks: Discord, YouTube, other social media. These are easy enough to block out if I'm disciplined. What's trickier is DMing with partners. Partner-planning is important sometimes, but sometimes it becomes a time and focus sinkhole that can eat up hours without anything getting done. In anticipation of this, I'm going to minimize partner planning while posting for now and limit it to ~5 min per post. I'll try to get planning done outside of posting-time.

Posts per Day

July 24: 1 post, ~45 minutes. I encountered a lot of distractions discussing details of the post over Discord and also found that writing a beat takes closer to 10 minutes than 5 minutes, although this depends on the beat. The *starting* beat was the hardest.

July 25: I got kind of a late start, largely because I decided to take a walk before writing. The walk took longer than expected; then, when I got home, I was hot and tired, which made it harder to focus in on posting. In the future, I think I'll want to keep exercise before writing light.

I wound up writing 1 (long) post. This post took a long time to write, and I'm still not fully happy with it; it needs editing. But at some point we need to push forward for the sake of pushing forward.

Still, I think the biggest issue was choosing a time to write when I was exhausted and it was time for bed. Better timeblocking in the future might make things go better.

July 26: I'm getting started at 11am between an 8:30 - 10am student and a 1pm - 3pm student. I'm a 20 min drift from the student, so I basically have 90 minutes to write. I feel pretty fresh! I'm writing at the office, which is a very quiet environment. My sleep is a 6/10 (had to get up early for the student), and my breakfast was a 4/10 (I only had time for coffee + sardines + fruit). Hopefully this will go well.

11:36 — I got a bit distracted by email. In the future, I might want to block access, but on the other hand emails can be important and urgent, so. Not sure. I'm finding that timeblocking beats is hard because some beats are very fast to write, while others take a paragraph or more.

11:56: I also find I'm not actually leaving much time for editing. Anywho, I finished, but it took an hour. I think part of why I post so little is that each post takes an hour. I think to improve, I need to figure out how to reduce posts to about half an hour apiece.

12:30: Got my second post out pretty quick! Took me almost exactly half an hour. I didn't beat sheet this one as thoroughly — just kind of followed where I knew things were headed. It's possible that one way to go faster is to figure out better pre-writing strategies.

July 27: Absolutely awful mood today — and for no particular reason. I just have no energy to do anything and feel no sense of pleasure at the idea of doing anything, but posting especially feels a bit like trying to lift a few plates more than my max.

I'm trying to get past it through exercises like walking, reading, and breathing. We'll see how it goes!

July 28: Did not end up succeeding yesterday. Today is better from a mood standpoint, but I was busy with work and cooking and errands until 8:45 and now I'm very tired. We'll see how it goes. I think I also struggle with writing Dot compared to Mads and Shim

I got going to some extent by giving myself permission to try bizarre/stupid ideas and then backpedaling to something reasonable. However, then my shift key broke, and I was distracted by that for half an hour and my mood is ruined. Going to keep trying.

July 29: I fell asleep and wasn't able to finish a post last night But! I woke up early (6am) and pushed through two posts before work.

[ThurmanMermanPlx]

This is probably a good idea for myself, tbh. When I finally got back into working I knew my free time would be limited, but I had hoped that with the stress of, y'know, not having income to pay my bills off my shoulders, I'd be able to increase my posting back to at least once every two weeks, if not back to once a week as it had been... and I just haven't been able to.

My original plan to remedy this was to set a dedicated day of the week to posting, but I've found in practice it just doesn't work this way. Usually this is because of my mood; if I'm not feeling up for posting, even if I'm enjoying the thread, the posts themselves are a struggle to write and not up to my standards, which just leads to disappointment on both ends. The reason could be anything from a rough day at work, a lack of sleep, someone wanting me to do something else that night with them, or simply not being in the mood.

The other big issue for me is that I have a roommate and I would rather not have to answer questions about what I'm doing here if I can avoid it, which means I can only post on days when they're not home or after they've gone to bed - and if they stay up later than normal for whatever reason, that only makes it more difficult. This applies to discord, too, which means I'm also active there far less than I would prefer. Usually, by the time they head to bed, I've found something else to do and thus am in the middle of that for the rest of my evening.

Frankly I'm not sure what I can do to combat any of this other than make a more concentrated effort to post on days I know he will not be home.

As far as tracking threads... I keep open tabs in my browser for all of my 'active' (meaning: incomplete) threads, even if they haven't been posted to in months. Takes up a lot of processing power, but it's the only way for me to truly keep track of them all. I link all of mine on my character's profile pages, and for each one note whether it's completed or ongoing, so that's an option too, but having to check each page is less efficient than simply refreshing my tabs and seeing which ones are awaiting responses.

[DSX93]

And me, I've still got an issue with taking on a bunch of threads when I already have plenty going on. But it's been helpful to focus on my mains for the time being. It's why you guys are seeing threads mainly about Severin, Alix, Sybil (and her various personalities), and Elvira from me at the moment. I had a bunch of ideas for a bunch of different characters, but focusing on those few has allowed me to better focus on things, because that's less energy devoted to figuring out a new voice for another character. And from there, I just post to what I can to try to build momentum to get to everything else. Some days, I just find it easier to post to this particular thread, or that one over there. And on some days, I manage to finally get a groove going with another. It's chaotic. Random. But I'm moving.

I'd like to think that I'm making some progress: I wanna get to back to how I was when I first joined this site. And I intend to get things going for each and every single one of my characters...at some point in the future. Maybe when things start calming down a bit in my mains' journeys, I'll be branching out more.

But for now, I feel pride in being able to consistently keep a spot on the Top Posters board. I aim to be somewhere in the middle, at least.

[Malkavia]

July 24 - 31 In Review

I ended up writing 6 posts in 7 days, so 6/7ths posts per day. The most I wrote was 2 in one day, while I missed two days completely for posts.

The biggest large-scale obstacles to posting were mood and time. Work and exercise and sleep conflicted with posting. I can do better on this by cutting out some movies during the week and using that time to get more on top of both work and posts.

When it came to actually posting, Discord was definitely a big distraction, and I found that posts didn't lend themselves to easy time-blocking. Sometimes the majority of my time went to planning a post; other times, I got stuck on the actual wordsmithing. Posts almost never fit neat blocks for ideating, drafting, and editing. However, I do think it's helpful to have "active" and "rest" phases with drafting that are delimited by specific timers.

The other big piece was mood. There was one day where posting -- or really doing much of anything -- felt like pulling teeth. I'm not sure why. I tried to cope with it by reading, doing active rest, getting small chores done to get energy up. Not sure why it didn't work.

July 31 - August 7

My goal this week is to write 9 posts for 9/7ths posts per day. This week, I'm going to try to block every day's posting time the day before instead of allocating it during the day. Additionally, I'm going to not see any movies except for the one I'm already scheduled for on Tuesday. If I get depressed again, I'll plan to cope with it by putting on music and doing a little dance and writing absolute (fun) crap. I'm going to aim to exercise *after* writing so I don't get too tired.

In terms of time-blocking chunks of posts, I'll try a new way of approaching posts: 5 min rest => 5 min ideating => 20 minutes drafting => 5 min ideating => 20 min drafting, etc. The idea is to incorporate rest and ideation into my routine but in a way that's less prone to going off-schedule than my previous attempts.

Posts Log

August 3: I got up early enough (6:30am) and finished breakfast around 9am. That means it took me 2.5 hours to do breakfast...not ideal! I should look to reduce breakfast to around 90 min. Edit: I realized I unfairly forgot to factor in a shower for this mix. Still!

Anyway, I have half an hour to write a post before work starts. I'll give it a crack.

I did not end up having time to write much that morning. However! I did have time to write in the evening. I knuckled down and got 3 posts done in the evening. I was a little angry with myself for not posting earlier in the day, and that pushed me through. However, that kind of anger-driven motivation wasn't fun to feel; it's probably not a sustainable strategy.

August 4: Today, I unfortunately didn't even get to LAW until around 8pm. This was partly because I got wrapped up in work concerns, partly because I prioritized other good habits (reading, meditation, exercise), and partly because I got overly wrapped up online during critical breaks. Cutting out online distractions continues to be a major step forward.

I have a few hours before bed now (it's 8pm); I need to eat dinner and spend time with my wife. I will likely have something on the order of 30 to 90 minutes to write. To make use of this, I need to choose a relatively straightforward post and focus on getting quick, good-enough word. One thought I've been having is how to make posting less like work and more like play. I think this could reduce time to post, potentially, because it would give me permission to be done before I've written something optimal. It might be worth trying it tonight.

[Malkavia]

So far it seems like my approach hasn't succeeded; I've gone one week without posting.

Why? Well, let's start with my choices: I prioritized a few other things over writing — work, exercise, reading, sleeping, time with my wife, and applications for school. I also fell into a few attention traps, spending large chunks of my time watching YouTube or talking on Discord.

I also think some of the motivation underlying this project has been counter-productive. Much of this is extrinsic: I'm trying to motivate myself to write because I want to achieve big numbers, and I value those numbers for a variety of reasons — because they mean my stories are moving quickly, because they represent social value (people are more likely to respect and desire me as a partner if I'm quick), and because they represent a reflection of my capacity to set and achieve goals.

I now think this kind of extrinsic motivation is counter-productive. As an example, early on I was motivated to try to get and stay on the "top 10" board. But as soon as that goal became unattainable because I missed 1 or 2 days of posting, that became extremely demotivating. This makes sense: Socially-mediated extrinsic rewards have a known demotivational effect along these lines. It's very hard both to appreciate an activity for its own sake while also looking for extrinsic and especially social rewards. This reflects my past experience with the board; unfortunately, as much as that kind of approach can motivate bursts of productivity, I think it's toxic for longterm steadiness.

So how should I adjust my approach this week? Well, one approach would be to try to focus less on "let's get X number of posts in Y period of time" and to focus instead on fostering strategies known to encourage intrinsic motivation. But how do you actually *do* that? From reading more about intrinsic motivation, it seems like there are three core mechanisms that researchers have proposed for facilitating high-quality motivation: Autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

Autonomy is the sense that you are the origin of your choices: You have control of what you do. For autonomy, I can focus on thinking through rp posts and choosing what I want to do based on what pulls me. If I try to prioritize what seems meaningful and enjoyable to me, I can increase a sense that rp is something I choose to do rather than something other people or things — partners, deadlines, social expectations — control. Additionally, I think I'll start off writing sessions by reflecting for a few minutes on why I want to rp at all.

Relatedness is the sense that you are acting in a social context, with other people in a way that's meaningful. To build a sense of relatedness, I can engage with other people in the parts of rp I find fun. I can, for example, note to partners parts of their posts that I particularly enjoyed.

Competence: This is a tough one to set up concretely, since it can easily set up extrinsic goals that become punishing or that prioritize performance over mastery. My solution for this week is to try to set up process goals rather than outcome goals. Specifically, I want to target some aspect of my writing where I need improvement — say imagery, voice, conciseness, etc — and to try to improve each post during editing with respect to that skill. If I can make each post better along at least one axis on a second-draft than it was on its first-draft, then I can probably give myself signals of competence without making a performance goal too controlling.