Not A Chapter: Some Introspection After A Year of Full-time Writing

Sup y’all,

The chapter will be up later, but I just wanted to take this time to do some introspection after a year of being a full-time author. If you don’t care about me, the author, you should probably just ignore this and come back 6 hours from now when the chapter is likely going to be up– no promises though, cause I am bad at sticking to schedules. This is also going to be a bit of a ramble so bear with me.

Anyway, if you don’t know me, I am obviously the author of Salvos, but I am also the author of quite a few fics too like Melas and Tian and Trace and Violet and whatever else I decide to write. I started full-time writing on the 1st of July 2021 after graduating from UCLA with a pre-law degree, making this my 1-year anniversary of full-time writing. My online username is currently MelasD, however it used to be delta201, and I changed it to promote my first ever fiction Melas. I write under the pen name of V.A. Lewis, and I turned 22 years old just three months ago on March 1st, making me one of the younger “big” authors on this website. Seriously, did you guys know that most of your favorite authors here are over 30 years old? Boomers, I tell ya.

I started writing Melas in November of 2019, inspired by my forever idol, pirateaba of The Wandering Inn. I barely even knew what a web serial was at that point, and I’m not gonna lie, I barely even read any other web serials before being too engrossed with writing my own. The few I did read though, I really loved. Worm, Azarinth Healer, Void Domain… they were fucking awesome.

When I started writing, I wanted to create an expansive world with a compelling story that I know my readers would love, one that went on for at least three million words (because that’s the word count TWI was at the time I discovered it). I wish that Melas could’ve been this story since it’s my first ever story and I have a fondness for it, but I’m really glad that Salvos took off too because I absolutely adore the character, the world, and the story. And considering that I just recently passed a million words for Salvos and we’re not even at the halfway point, I’m glad to say that I’m getting to where I wanted to be as an author when I first started.

I definitely am pretty good at the output side of things, but I do feel like I failed at other aspects of writing at times. For example, creating compelling side characters. And I don’t mean characters like Daniel or Edithe who are practically main characters. By side characters, I mean those like Sal the Devil. Where they appear briefly for a few dozen chapters and disappear for a hundred or more, but their appearances always leave a mark in the story or to the readers. I think I succeeded a handful of times like with Mori Gladius, and obviously Sal himself. But characters like Lily, Jaakko, and even Rachel? I wish I could’ve done better– and I’m still striving to do them justice. Even if they’re not really popular (as seen by the popularity polls).

I also feel like I’ve failed time and time again in terms of pacing, where the story just drags on over minor plotpoints which should honestly just be resolved in a chapter or two. But I have a weird tendency to hyperfocus on the importance of even minor plot threads during my planning stage (whenever I’m outlining) and thus allocate an entire ten chapters on an arc that could’ve been done in half the time or less.

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Hell, my pacing is so bad that what I intended to be a single Volume 4 has gone on from Volume 4, to Volume 5 Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and currently Part 4 on patreon. What I initially projected to be roughly 200-300k words is now nearly 600k words and still going. To you guys, it’s more content and it’s cool and super special awesome, but to me, I see it as a failure of either improper planning or bad pacing. Whichever one fits the bill better depends on how you look at it.