Wiping the Slate Clean

Wiping the Slate Clean banner
By Dustin Tigner
Announcements
Too Long; Didn't Read

Everything I have announced, promised, hinted at, etc. on my old website, books, newsletters, and social media is being wiped clean. The launch of this website marks a new era.

See all current projects here.

While attempting to port over the various blog articles I wrote last year to this new site, I realized—again—that I have a problem.

This isn’t some “secret” I’ve been keeping from you. No, I didn’t write five novels over the pandemic (go Sanderson!).

My problem is the struggle of what to share.

I’m always excited about what I am working on, and I want to tell people. But what I am working on often changes. Priorities swap places, projects come and go, and deadlines are always sliding closer or further away based on whatever daily word count I can manage.

I try new techniques almost weekly. My schedule changes monthly. But my goal is always the same: to tell the best story possible for you. These constant adjustments and trials and errors are my way of figuring out how to provide you with more content, better content.

Sometimes a new technique works very well for a week. My output is amazing, and I start giving time to more projects. This is when I open my big mouth and start making promises of a new Dungeon Runner, or a short story of some favorite character, or one of my 30 plus series I would love to write.

But then the technique peters out. I slam into a wall and find that the technique only looks like it’s working, but my quality has dropped significantly. Or the magic of the story isn’t there. This often leaves me with a week or more of excruciating rewrites.

“Changing the words on the page won’t work. We authors are wedded to our words. Our instinct is to preserve them.”
—Donald Maass, The Fire in Fiction

When you have ten thousand words—40 pages—that almost work, it can be very difficult to kill some words so others can shine brighter. I end up rewriting some paragraphs dozens of times, which affects the flow of the whole piece, requiring other additions and subtractions.

So what’s new?

I’m going to do my absolute best not to announce projects until I know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they will be completed. I shall also not give specific deadlines until such deadlines are guaranteed.

And what about this slate?

Everything I have announced, promised, hinted at, etc. on my old website, books, newsletters, and social media is being wiped clean. The launch of this website marks a new era.

You can see all of my projects here, organized by priority. If the project doesn’t exist on this page—such as Dungeon Runner (Dungeon Runner Dilemma)—it does not exist on my roadmap and will not receive any of my time.

For all future projects, I will make an announcement and send a newsletter.

That’s it! I’m excited to have a clear list of projects to work on. I’ll be sharing my progress here on the site, so come back often! See you around. :)