Closing Patreon (For Now)

I say “for now” because while I don’t intend to go back to Patreon again, I have been known to change my mind once or twice (or thrice…).

But yes, it’s true. I’m closing my Patreon page.

I wrote a much longer note to my subscribers about it, but I know some folks here have been watching/following along even if they weren’t members, so I thought I should mention it in case you suddenly became aware of a lack of links and buttons that used to be everywhere in my writing-related posts.

Patreon the platform did nothing wrong. I think it’s a fantastic site, and a wonderful way for artists and creators to make money. I’d highly recommend people START a Patreon if they’re interested in offering content.

So, if the platform is still good, why am I leaving?

Well…to write.

Um, Colette, I thought that’s why you HAD a Patreon.

It was! But, really, it didn’t work. See, I started my Patreon as a way to force myself into the habit of writing and producing written content every month. And, yeah, it did work for that. Which is great.

But, the whole purpose of developing the habit was so that I could get more work done on my novel (my light, my love, my true reason for writing) and on other big projects.

Problem was, I was spending ALL MY TIME banging my head against the wall to create Patreon content every month, by the time I was done I was so completely spent that I didn’t want to work on my “real” projects at all. Which isn’t good.

So, I finished my September sonnet collections (the ones that won’t be published here on this blog, like these ones and these ones), wrote my subscribers a good-bye letter, and suddenly felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

I felt so light, so alive, in fact, that I sat down and started working on my novel again. I went through and slashed up the 30+ page prologue (no, I’m not kidding — man, it was such a mess), wrote a detailed chapter outline, named all my main characters, and started shaping what was left of the initial mess into a usable set of introductory chapters.

Now I’m writing Chapter 5, and I’m almost 20% done with my word count goal.

Since Monday.

So, see, closing my Patreon isn’t a bad thing for me. If anything, this week has shown me how much mental, time, and energetic space it really was taking up, and now I can give that space to my novel and other big projects instead. That feels like the absolute right choice for me right now.

So, for now — and probably forever, but also, maybe in a couple of years I’ll have different mental/energetic/time space to work with — it’s closed. Thank you for following along thus far, and I look forward to bringing you different types of content here.