I seem to be in a long-term slump when it comes to creative effort. For a couple of months now, progress has been slow and rather scattered on all of my outstanding projects – I’ve made some progress in several areas, but no one item has moved forward enough to generate a significant milestone. Neither have I generated any new content in a big enough block to justify issuing a charged release for my patrons. About the only real milestone I hit was to publish this month’s book review.

Hard to say what’s behind this. It’s probably some mix of needing to spend most of my creative spoons on my day job, getting distracted by day-to-day concerns, and some mild dysphoria that’s making it hard to focus. The upshot is that October, like September, was something of a wash.

Yet hope springs eternal, and part of my creative discipline involves at least taking stock and laying out a plan at the beginning of each month. So here’s the plan for November.

Not much change from last month, except that I think I’m going to move a new Human Destiny short story up on the priority list – I have a concept that seems to be pushing its way to the front of my mind. Also with respect to Human Destiny, I’ve been doing a lot of research and prep work to develop a timeline for the terraforming of Mars – I think several stories in that setting will eventually be tied to that piece of it. I might push that subproject forward this month.

• Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
  • Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
  • Human Destiny: Research and produce a timeline for the terraforming of Mars in this universe.
  • Human Destiny: Write a new short story for eventual collection and publication.
• Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
  • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
  • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
  • Human Destiny: Write a few thousand more words of the Cortex Prime sourcebook and setting bible.
  • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
• Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
  • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release. This work may involve updating all of the worked examples, and making mathematical notation more consistent.
  • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
  • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller.

If I can produce enough new prose between The Sunlit Lands and a Human Destiny story, that will likely be a charged release for my patrons this month. If some of the Second Priority material makes progress, I’ll likely post that to my blog and share it with my patrons for free as well. I also have a couple of good candidates for book reviews for the month of November.