{"id":218,"date":"2020-09-18T23:48:50","date_gmt":"2020-09-19T06:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/herofalls.com\/?p=218"},"modified":"2020-10-24T22:48:09","modified_gmt":"2020-10-25T05:48:09","slug":"state-of-hero-falls-september-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/18\/state-of-hero-falls-september-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"State of Hero Falls, September 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>August came and went without a track being released, which broke my streak. It&#8217;s not the end of the world, but you know, it kind of feels like the world is ending, and that&#8217;s part of the reason I&#8217;ve slowed down considerably on Hero Falls output. <br><br>Actually, let me break this down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1. As I&#8217;ve been working from home, I have seen a sharp decline in my creativity and interest; it&#8217;s been difficult to remain productive, even though I have ideas for more songs and more characters. As COVID-19 drags on and the world feels very different from just nine months ago when I started releasing tracks, I have not taken refuge in this project. I would rather just spend my time doing other stuff, like playing games. My daily commute was actually a great time to work on lyrics or listen to snippets of songs and refine ideas. As soon as I lost that compartmentalized space, I lost momentum <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2. My collaborators are dealing with the same pandemic issues in their own lives, which affects their speed and interest as well. Things that I thought would be quick turnarounds have dragged on weeks and months instead. There&#8217;s been some hurry-up-and-wait to this, because I am relying on their kindness. This stuff takes time and energy; I&#8217;m not going to demand either from my friends.  <br><br>3. I can&#8217;t lie that I had also hoped more people would be listening to and talking about the songs by now, so the soft reaction hasn&#8217;t helped my motivation either. Original music is always a tough sell, but I&#8217;m giving it away for free, you know? I really thought the comic-book hook would help it stand out, but when I post about it, those posts are rarely shared. I appreciate the few bucks here and there, but I actually want to be paid in exposure. (I am considering buying some Facebook ads &#8212; just as friends are leaving the platform in droves!)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, it&#8217;s been easy to back-burner this. I was mixing the next track tonight, so something will appear before too long, and I have another song partially written that I would like to invite several friends to play on. After that, I&#8217;m thinking I might revisit some of the characters I&#8217;ve introduced and tell a standalone story with them. So far all the songs have been origin stories or moments in time; Kat suggested I try writing stories first, then translating them to songs, and I&#8217;m not sure if this is what she meant, but it makes sense to me to do, like, a three-song EP that works like a three-issue comic arc. Dunno. I&#8217;m kicking that around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;m not done with Hero Falls, but it&#8217;s been hard to want to create more of it right now. I&#8217;m expecting this funk to pass, so stay tuned. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>August came and went without a track being released, which broke my streak. It&#8217;s not the end of the world, but you know, it kind of feels like the world is ending, and that&#8217;s part of the reason I&#8217;ve slowed down considerably on Hero Falls output. Actually, let me break this down. 1. As I&#8217;ve &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/18\/state-of-hero-falls-september-2020\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">State of Hero Falls, September 2020<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/herofalls.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}