(Second Book Complete!) Runeblade: A Delving & Skill Merging LitRPG (Not a chapter) 2025 Retrospective:

What a year! My first rotation around the sun as a full ti writer, and it was a pretty good one! A few bumps along the road, but I think a few teething pains are to be expected.

First, my break. It was good, and very much needed. I spent ti with friends and family, played a good bit of Arc Raiders and Barotrauma over the last week, and read roughly half of Lord of the Mysteries (like 5k pages, wheew!). I’m feeling refreshed, and eager to get stuck into so writing. I did a full disconnect — no work, other than the couple of tis I edited and queued a few chapters.

Over the course of the year I’d let writing consu a little too much of everything possible. Effectively, I was either writing, thinking about what to write, editing, or procrastinating those three tasks. That was… silly, and it did have so negative outcos on the task itself, which is a little self defeating.

Writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum (goes for all creative endeavours really). Get too little sleep, and your cognition goes kaput, which makes the words gluggy and slow. Spend too much ti thinking and engaging in a single thing, and you start to miss the forest for the trees and pacing can get weird (crucible…). Even just the basic fact of not spending the ti to enjoy reading the genre I write in is detrintal — it ans a lack of interesting ideas, settings and systems to inspire .

Stress is the killer though, as it can create an unconscious aversion. That, plainly, makes everything above worse.

I think the biggest challenge of the year was just… fucking around. I’ve always struggled to work a normal 9-5, and tend to leave things to the last minute (thanks adhd), and this job has been a mixed blessing. I can do it whenever, but on the other hand, I can do it whenever. It led to a slow tendency to start writing later and later, until I’d spend most of the day doomscrolling or playing gas while constantly on edge about putting off work, which then led to stressed out writing between the hours of 4-11 pm.

Stressed out writing is rushed writing, and it also ant I got to spend less ti with my partner than I would like. Plus, late nights lead to staying up late to spend ti with my partner. That ant I normalised 2am bed ti, with waking up at 8ish. I cannot. My brain was the consistency of mashed potatoes for like 4 months. Adhd ds only mask fatigue. You feel alert, but the sleep debt is still effectively lobotomising you. (Thanks, psych degree. Laying awake at night stressing about the health impacts of sleep is my second favourite gift of yours, behind only stressing about the health impacts of stress.)

I attempted to give dictating a go, but despite the nominal increases in output, all it really did was make it easier for to go ‘oh I can bang that out in x ti’ and leave it till later. Plus, I would always discount the massive increase in editing ti. Silly, considering it's my least favourite part of writing (dev edits/rewrites are fun, but proof reading sothing I already know like the back of my hand leaves clawing at the walls).

I think dictating, in general, is a useful tool, and I don't regret giving it a full 4-5 month crack. I Definitely know heaps more about how to use it now. That said, for personally, it is really only useful in those flow monts where the words are racing to get out and I’m bottle necked by my janky two finger touch typing (using my left ring finger of all things. Thanks dian nerve damage). Outside of those, it enables a little too much waffling, makes blocking action scenes way harder, and makes my writing a little too…loose for lack of a better phrase.

For context, everything I wrote with dictation is from roughly the second trial of the crucible, through to a week or two ahead of where Patreon is now. Not terrible writing on the overall, and that chunk even has like 2-3 of my favourite monts in the series, but it's…loose. Sloppy. A little languid, even.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

That said, on the overall, I feel good about last year. I got approx 3.x books written, which i’m genuinely proud of, especially considering the shortest of them is 330k words. That's like 1m words! I’ve learnt a lot about writing, and managing myself (turns out I am much more functional with TurkeyBlocker removing my ability to do anything fun on my computer during work hours lol).

Plus, my favourite achievent, I am this close to finishing my outlined plans for B2! (I’m not kidding, the entirety of B2 B3 B4 was a 2 page outline for a three act structure of b2. Idk how I thought that would work when it took 330k words to do a bloody dungeon start opening. I bla reading Martial God Asura at a pivotal age.)

I think, overall (and aside from a few bumps along the way), the story is in a healthy state. I’m still trying to find that right balance of narrative where there’s a good blend of action, stakes, character, progression, and plot, but I think I've co a whole lot closer. Early B4 is a little too focused on low stakes character and narrative, and the crucible is way too deep in pure progression and lore/plot without engaging in enough action or character, but I’m very happy with how Strangspine and the imperial ruins turned out. A little slow on the set up, but hey, if this was a traditional job I'm still effectively in a graduate position. I got room to grow and learn. I do think, however, that future delves will need to be much more dynamic — other teams, competing parties, etc.

I’ve got so good ideas for b5 too. They’re still nucleating, but I'm excited to get to the Dukedoms, and play around with so new toys.

Editing B1 also turned out great, and I can't wait to show it to all of you — whenever that is. I’m still only 75% done with line edits for b2, which is then followed by rewrites, but balancing that with writing is a goal for this year. 100%, all three will be released this year — after which I’m aiming to do an ebook/audio every 6 months, if they stick around that 1200 page mark, at least.

I do want to get snappier with my plotting and arcs. While I don’t mind the overall pace of the series, nor the detail I put into things, but waffling is officially out for 2026. Gold star for if I finish a book in