The Risks of Writing a Novel Online

            Although I do not follow a strict update schedule (other than something has to be added daily), those of you who have noticed my writing patterns may have expected a Wind Town update today. I do try to update both novels weekly, but I also haven’t assigned days to update each one. And that was a very deliberate choice.
           You see, there are several major risks to posting a novel online as I write it. One of the major risks is getting pretty far into it and realizing that I’ve gone in the wrong direction. I’ve seen this problem with several online comics over the years. They get to a certain point, and then, they just stop. I understand time commitment changes and things like that, but sometimes, the authors just wrote themselves into a corner or realized that they didn’t like where the comic was going anymore. I really don’t want to do that to these books, and having been through the experience, I really don’t want to do that to you readers.
           I can promise that if I run into that problem (knock on wood), the story won’t just stop. Instead, I’d make the necessary revisions and update the changes. Unfortunately, that may not be too pleasant for readers either.
           The goal is to avoid those revisions altogether – either by planning ahead or by finding ways to make any issues that come up work anyway. To do that, I really need to know where the story is going. Usually, I’m more of a discovery writer following a loose outline. The further I get into these stories, the more dangerous that method is going to be.
           That’s the main reason I haven’t dedicated myself to specific posting days for the novels. If I start to work on one of them and feel like I need to do more worldbuilding and planning before I try to post anything, then I would rather delay the post than mess up the story. I may mess it up anyway (it’s a challenging experiment), but if I do, I’m going to go down fighting.
           Thank you for bearing with me while I do.