#Word Count Goals

[novella-november]

Weekly Word Goal Cards!

(Source on Pexels)

(Source on Pexels)

(Source on Pexels)

You can make your own custom word goal cards with free stock photos from Pexels!

Template:

[the-wip-project]

SloMo WriNo: Failure Proofing Your Goals

A Novel in one year.

So, what are the numbers for that?

If you’re so inclined, you’ve probably already done the math, and come up with some numbers for yourself.

Numbers like projected length of novel (I’m going to use 80k for this, but don’t get married to that, once you get into it the work with find it’s own length) and how many words a day you would need to write to hit that goal. (220)

That’s all very nice, but the problem with word count goals, is that you can create a situation where your writing becomes a pass/fail situation.

A situation where if you perceive yourself as failing (did I meet my word count goal this week? No? I AM A FAILURE!), and the pressure rises, it starts to feel safer to simply quit, rather than face repeated failures.

I’m against that sort of thing. (The quitting and also the negative self talk.)

So how does one measure progress without creating that sort of situation? How can you win the psychology game of getting words on the page?

Of course everyone is different. But here’s two methods (tricks? hacks?) that work for me at various times.

Low Goal, High Results. (The Min-Max zone)

The idea with this is to set a daily, or per session word count goal that feels too easy.

By now I hope you’ve figured out a good time and place to write. So go there, at that time, and do a timed 15 minute sprint. However many words you got, halve it. Repeat this exercise a few times to make sure you’ve got a good average.

Unless you’re a power writer, you will most likely end up with a number that is below that 220 we mathed out earlier, DON’T PANIC. In fact, for this example lets say that you managed to write an average of 200 words in your 15 minute sessions. Which means that your daily goal is now 100 words.

Of course with that number, even if you write every single day for a year that will only give you 36 500 words. Not a novel. Barely a novella!

The point here is not to write only 100 words a day. It’s making the daily task of writing feel easy and approachable. Not scary. If you know you only need to write 100 words, and you know you can get that done easily in less than 15 minutes, then why not do it? And once you’re writing, writing a little more generally happens easily enough. If getting started is the hard part, this should really help.

It’s a common psychological trick. But it’s common for a reason. It works!

Once you’ve set your (very easy) minimum goal, I also encourage you to set a maximum daily goal too. Especially if you’re the type of person who tends to go on 10k writing binges and then not write again for two months. Set your maximum at what you can comfortably write in 1.5-2 hours. So let’s say that’s 1000 words. Meaning your goal is to write 100-1000 words every time you sit down to write, and consider everything, from barely getting 102 to maxing out at 1002 an awesome, winning, writing day.

What does that look like? On a bad day, a day you don’t fee like writing at all, it means you tell yourself that all you need to do is write for ten minutes. Just get down 100 words (or whatever your minimum goal is.) And then if you haven’t found your mojo, you stop. No guilt or regret. You’ve met your goal, even though you’re having a bad day. You’re doing awesome!

On a power day, when you feel almost possessed by the muses, it means that when your timer beeps, or you see that number on the bottom of the screen hit 1000 (or whatever your number is), you make yourself stop. Yes. Stop mid flow. (It’s painful, I know! But please try!) Why stop? Because you’re learning how to have a healthy long term writing habit.

Write yourself some notes, and come at it fresh tomorrow. The goal is teach yourself that your creativity isn’t actually a unreliable muse. You are not subject to it’s whim. With time and practice your creativity will be there whenever you reach for it.

This is the method that I use most of the time, and I strongly recommend you give it a decent try (6 weeks at least.)

However perhaps you’re really just convinced that particular kind of psychological trickery just won’t work for you, or perhaps you’ve tried it in the past without success. Maybe it creates the opposite effect for you, and you find daily writing skippable because the minimum goal feels so low that you think you can make it up later (you won’t, but ahem, brains are weird.) So here is an alternative method that is also quite effective.

2. Higher Goals to Plan For Misses

Instead of setting your goal ridiculously low, you can try setting it high enough that you can miss writing days while still staying on track.

This will only work if you’ve been able to carve out a larger chunk of time for daily writing, thirty minutes to an hour.

So, lets run the example numbers. Using the 80k novel template, we already know that it would take 220 words a day if you write every single day, and never delete anything.

Writing every day is almost impossible, so you’re setting yourself up to fail if you set 220 as your goal.

So instead you plan for writing 6 days a week. Perhaps you intend to take Mondays off. They suck and you know you usually don’t feel like writing then anyway. Awesome. Let’s make that our schedule. Writing 312 days a year means a daily target of 257 words.

But still, that leaves no margin for error. No time for bad days, illness, that one scene you have to cut because it wasn’t working, etc.

So we double it. Your goal, with a plan of writing 6 days a week, is 500 words a day. And also (and this is the important bit) 2000 words a week.

Wait! That’s 4 days, not 6! Yes. That’s the point. It allows room for misses. To allow you to fail without failing. For days when you can’t reach 500, for days when you don’t have time (and with a larger daily goal like this, that’s a lot more possible.) For days when you just can’t.

Of course if you can only count on writing 5 days a week, or 4, or whatever your life situation calls for, adjust your goals accordingly. Always keep your goal word count about 1/3 higher than needed, to give yourself that cushion. If the numbers gets too large to manage, then it’s time to change the long term goal.

Yes. Really. Change it. Setting a goal that you’re bound to fail at is not going to help you.

Perhaps it’s more feasible for you personally to write your novel in 18 months, or two years. As always, your health is more important than an arbitrary time line, and you’ll still be awesome if you write your novel a little slower.

But what if both of those methods still stress you out, or if focusing on the numbers like that kills your joy?

Here’s a bonus method, that I personally use when things get to be a real struggle.

3. Gold Stars

This is for the times when the thought of tracking word count is just one step too many, and becomes an obstacle for writing at all. However when you abandon tracking completely, it’s often a way to abandon writing too.

So having some sort of way to confirm that yes, you’ve written for the day still helps, whether that’s putting a gold star, or an X on a calendar (you can find printable month/page calendars online for free, or you can buy those little book calendars very cheap), creating an art or craft piece (one time I wrote an entire novel assisted by a scarf where I only got to crochet a row after I’d written for the day), or whatever other way you can think of to mark that you wrote. Having a way to look back at your week or month and confirm that yes, you’ve written most days, is often enough keep you honest (with yourself.) As long as it’s something that feels like a reward and not additional work.

So there you have it. 3 methods for setting word count goals and tracking what you’re accomplishing.

Let me know what you’re going to try, or what sort of tricks work for you! (and feel free to ask me for help figuring out how to apply this in your own life.)

—Maree

Subscribe to my substack to make sure you don't miss a post, chat with me on the WIP Project discord, and tag any posts you make about the challenge with #slomowrino if you want me to see them!

[shards-of-silver]

9044 today, 8035 yesterday. This may be my longest streak yet for a month long writing challenge. More often I fall behind, catch up some, then get behind again to the point it takes a hail Mary I'm unable to muster.

Maybe 2024 can do one good thing for me yet.

[hxneyfarm]

Make Me Write

I was tagged by @steves-strapcollection

The Rules

Set a word count goal for the week.

Create a 24-hour poll with all the projects you would like to work on for the week.

People can send asks or messages about the things they'd like to see snippets of. [I will tag you in the snippets I post at the end of this challenge]

Once the poll closes, divvy the word count based on the percentage of votes each option got!

Optional: By the end of your 7-day writing period, post a snippet for each option.

This means there is no winner or loser. All the fics below will be worked on! This is just deciding the percentage of the word count!!

The Goal

So I really, truly want to push myself this weekend and into next week, and with me having all of Wednesday off to recover from my post concert depression (FOB TUESDAY AAHHHHHH!), I'll have a decent amount of time to really push myself

Minimum WC Goal: 7,000 words Stretch WC Goal: 15,000 words Completion date/time: Sunday July 23, 10:00 PM Eastern Time

The WIPs!

The Tags!

Either to do this too or just to boost and/or enable me! No pressure!

@patchworkgargoyle, @starryeyedjanai, @starrystevie, @sidekick-hero, @legitcookie, @scoops-stevie, @inairbinad, @thefreakandthehair, @flowercrowngods, @kkpwnall, @stobinesque, @artaxlivs

[audrelite]

I recently joined a Dreamwidth community where members set word count goals for their writing and track their progress. The minimum word count goal you can set in this community is 75,000 words.

Given that I wrote around 230,000 words worth of fanfiction in 2023 that I posted (according to the AO3 stats page), reaching a 75,000 word goal should be very achievable for me without much extra effort.

However, since I did not formally track my total word count for works posted on AO3 last year, I did some math to estimate how much I might need to write per month to definitively reach 75,000 words. Based on my rough calculations, as long as I write at least 6,500 words per month of fanfiction that gets posted on AO3, I should easily surpass the 75,000 word goal through the course of the year.

But given my high level of writing output last year, even this per month estimate is likely more than necessary.

In any case, with no concrete tracking of my 2023 total word count, I'll just have to see where I end up by the end of this year. But reaching the minimum community goal seems very feasible.

[transcendragon]

WINNER of Big Word Count Month and Cong-RAT-ulations for Winning Big Word Count Month - For everyone who set themselves a writing goal this November and met it, regardless of if it involved any official National Novel Writing Month stuff or not.

I just got to 50k words tracked by my own Google Sheets and I’m aiming for 60k, so making these was a fun way to celebrate!

These designs are also in Redbubble, in case you want to get yourself or the writer in your life a little treat for winning Big Word Count Month. Find them here https://www.redbubble.com/i/mug/Cong-RAT-ulations-on-Big-Word-Count-Month-2023-by-Transcendragons/155361537.9Q0AD?utm_source=rb-native-app&utm_campaign=share-product&utm_medium=ios and here https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/WINNER-of-Big-Word-Count-Month-2023-by-Transcendragons/155361839.EJUG5?utm_source=rb-native-app&utm_campaign=share-product&utm_medium=ios

My original art made in Procreate. Image descriptions in alt text.

[little-peril-stories]

Camp Nano July 2023

How It Went

Um, not how I expected.

The good:

I managed to write every day. I'll confess here that, because we went on vacation and were all over the place most days, I sometimes updated my word count for the day, wrote more, and saved that 'update' for the next day because I like getting the badges. (All the writing was done in July though! I did all the outlining and planning work between February and June, but I didn't start writing till July 1.)

My outline was helpful. I didn't spend a lot of time agonizing over "what happens next" because I always knew, even if the specifics were a little fuzzy. My process boils down to 'plan hard, but allow for deviation & exploration' and it seems like that is still a system that works for me.

Some of the writing was OK. I mean, it's a writing challenge and I was going fast. She gonna need work. But I often smiled while I was writing, or when I was rereading scenes, and that's a good indicator for me. :)

The , uh, well, you see:

I wasn't always feeling it. Trying to track exactly why I felt this way has been tough. I'm willing to admit it could have been burnout (or something adjacent to it) since Camp Nano began right on the heels of the end of the school year, and I had just finished the whirlwind of writing The Queen of Lies in a month, a Thing That Happened that we may never understand. Maybe I started planning too early and the passion had faded since the height of my enthusiasm as I plotted it out. Idk. Maybe it was being on vacation, constantly being around people and having limited time to myself to really feel the story and the words and the everything. Idk.

The romantic tension isn't there. And this one hurts, because I (personally, as someone who is actually really new to writing romantic tension lol) think I did this really well in TQOL, so what's different here? (Aside from diff characters, diff story, okay I get it, you know what I mean.)

I was distracted. And this one is purely my fault. I was editing chapters of TQOL for posting throughout this time, too, and even though it takes a different kind of brainpower, it was often the task that called to me more.

Overall:

So, I'm SUPER proud of myself for achieving my Camp Nano goal of 31,000 words (1000 words/day) on July 28. But I kind of wonder if maybe it wasn't quite the right time to write this story.

We'll see how the last three days of July go (I want them badges, dang it), but the true test will be in August, when I have no goal set for myself. Will I focus on the finally finishing Book 1 and letting humans read it? Will I just work on TQOL? Will angsty heist wip rise again? Or will the passion for Book 2 (which I was SO EXCITED TO WRITE) return the moment the daily word goal is gone? (lol what a joke we all know I'm gonna write Will's POV chapters for TQOL.)

Thanks for reading this pointless ramble.

[mareebrittenford]

SloMo WriNo: Failure Proofing Your Goals

A Novel in one year.

So, what are the numbers for that?

If you’re so inclined, you’ve probably already done the math, and come up with some numbers for yourself.

Numbers like projected length of novel (I’m going to use 80k for this, but don’t get married to that, once you get into it the work with find it’s own length) and how many words a day you would need to write to hit that goal. (220)

That’s all very nice, but the problem with word count goals, is that you can create a situation where your writing becomes a pass/fail situation.

A situation where if you perceive yourself as failing (did I meet my word count goal this week? No? I AM A FAILURE!) and the pressure rises, it starts to feel safer to simply quit, rather than face repeated failures.

I’m against that sort of thing. (The quitting and also the negative self talk.)

So how does one measure progress without creating that sort of situation? How can you win the psychology game of getting words on the page?

Of course everyone is different. But here’s two methods (tricks? hacks?) that work for me at various times.

Low Goal, High Results. (The Min-Max zone)

The idea with this is to set a daily, or per session word count goal that feels too easy.

By now I hope you’ve figured out a good time and place to write. So go there, at that time, and do a timed 15 minute sprint. However many words you got, halve it. Repeat this exercise a few times to make sure you’ve got a good average.

Unless you’re a power writer, you will most likely end up with a number that is below that 220 we mathed out earlier, DON’T PANIC. In fact, for this example lets say that you managed to write an average of 200 words in your 15 minute sessions. Which means that your daily goal is now 100 words.

Of course with that number, even if you write every single day for a year that will only give you 36 500 words. Not a novel. Barely a novella!

The point here is not to write only 100 words a day. It’s making the daily task of writing feel easy and approachable. Not scary. If you know you only need to write 100 words, and you know you can get that done easily in less than 15 minutes, then why not do it? And once you’re writing, writing a little more generally happens easily enough. If getting started is the hard part, this should really help.

It’s a common psychological trick. But it’s common for a reason. It works!

Once you’ve set your (very easy) minimum goal, I also encourage you to set a maximum daily goal too. Especially if you’re the type of person who tends to go on 10k writing binges and then not write again for two months. Set your maximum at what you can comfortably write in 1.5-2 hours. So let’s say that’s 1000 words. Meaning your goal is to write 100-1000 words every time you sit down to write, and consider everything, from barely getting 102 to maxing out at 1002 an awesome, winning, writing day.

What does that look like? On a bad day, a day you don’t fee like writing at all, it means you tell yourself that all you need to do is write for ten minutes. Just get down 100 words (or whatever your minimum goal is.) And then if you haven’t found your mojo, you stop. No guilt or regret. You’ve met your goal, even though you’re having a bad day. You’re doing awesome!

On a power day, when you feel almost possessed by the muses, it means that when your timer beeps, or you see that number on the bottom of the screen hit 1000 (or whatever your number is), you make yourself stop. Yes. Stop mid flow. (It’s painful, I know! But please try!) Why stop? Because you’re learning how to have a healthy long term writing habit.

Write yourself some notes, and come at it fresh tomorrow. The goal is teach yourself that your creativity isn’t actually a unreliable muse. You are not subject to it’s whim. With time and practice your creativity will be there whenever you reach for it.

This is the method that I use most of the time, and I strongly recommend you give it a decent try (6 weeks at least.)

However perhaps you’re really just convinced that particular kind of psychological trickery just won’t work for you, or perhaps you’ve tried it in the past without success. Maybe it creates the opposite effect for you, and you find daily writing skippable because the minimum goal feels so low that you think you can make it up later (you won’t, but ahem, brains are weird.) So here is an alternative method that is also quite effective.

Higher Goals to Plan For Misses

Instead of setting your goal ridiculously low, you can try setting it high enough that you can miss writing days while still staying on track.

This will only work if you’ve been able to carve out a larger chunk of time for daily writing, thirty minutes to an hour.

So, lets run the example numbers. Using the 80k novel template, we already know that it would take 220 words a day if you write every single day, and never delete anything.

Writing every day is almost impossible, so you’re setting yourself up to fail if you set 220 as your goal.

So instead you plan for writing 6 days a week. Perhaps you intend to take Mondays off. They suck and you know you usually don’t feel like writing then anyway. Awesome. Let’s make that our schedule. Writing 312 days a year means a daily target of 257 words.

But still, that leaves no margin for error. No time for bad days, illness, that one scene you have to cut because it wasn’t working, etc.

So we double it. Your goal, with a plan of writing 6 days a week, is 500 words a day. And also (and this is the important bit) 2000 words a week.

Wait! That’s 4 days, not 6! Yes. That’s the point. It allows room for misses. To allow you to fail without failing. For days when you can’t reach 500, for days when you don’t have time (and with a larger daily goal like this, that’s a lot more possible.) For days when you just can’t.

Of course if you can only count on writing 5 days a week, or 4, or whatever your life situation calls for, adjust your goals accordingly. Always keep your goal word count about 1/3 higher than needed, to give yourself that cushion. If the numbers gets too large to manage, then it’s time to change the long term goal.

Yes. Really. Change it. Setting a goal that you’re bound to fail at is not going to help you.

Perhaps it’s more feasible for you personally to write your novel in 18 months, or two years. As always, your health is more important than an arbitrary time line, and you’ll still be awesome if you write your novel a little slower.

But what if both of those methods still stress you out, or if focusing on the numbers like that kills your joy?

Here’s a bonus method, that I personally use when things get to be a real struggle.

Gold Stars

This is for the times when the thought of tracking word count is just one step too many, and becomes an obstacle for writing at all. However when you abandon tracking completely, it’s often a way to abandon writing too.

So having some sort of way to confirm that yes, you’ve written for the day still helps, whether that’s putting a gold star, or an X on a calendar (you can find printable month/page calendars online for free, or you can buy those little book calendars very cheap), creating an art or craft piece (one time I wrote an entire novel assisted by a scarf where I only got to crochet a row after I’d written for the day), or whatever other way you can think of to mark that you wrote. Having a way to look back at your week or month and confirm that yes, you’ve written most days, is often enough keep you honest (with yourself.) As long as it’s something that feels like a reward and not additional work.

So there you have it. 3 methods for setting word count goals and tracking what you’re accomplishing.

Let me know what you’re going to try, or what sort of tricks work for you!

—Maree

Subscribe to my substack to make sure you don't miss a post, chat with me on the WIP Project discord, and tag any posts you make about the challenge with #slomowrino if you want me to see them!

[progressivegraffiti]

National Novel Writing Month 2023

National Novel Writing Month is coming up: Nov 1-30, 2023. Who's signing up? I think I will.

My story idea is about a little dog who falls into the company of #ProgressiveActivists. (Of course!)

[authorkarajorgensen]

March 2023 Wrap-Up Post

This week's blog is our monthly wrap-up for March where I talk about writing updates, what else I've been up to, and all the books I've read. Click here for more!

I’d love to know why March felt like the longest and shortest month. Oddly, this month was busy, yet I spent a lot of the time resting and re-calibrating as I worked on The Reanimator’s Soul. It was sort of a weird month. Not good or bad, just a transitional month between projects and parts of the semester. Anywho, let’s see what my goals were and what I got up to during the month. Read 8…

[pearlypairings]

LOL so I definitely got carried away on the Steve x Chrissy wip......

It's almost done 🥰 and will be posted in the next few days~

update for my wip goals this week:

word count goals based on poll votes:

1. steve x chrissy one shot = 900 words 2. jonathan x chrissy sequel = 400 words 3. aurelias update = 600 words 4. hellcheer mystery = 1200 words

Yay one down, three to go!! on a roll😎

[liones-s]

one of my favourite techniques (for studying or just for life) is to just start it with no expectations beyond that. read two pages of the reading, write a single paragraph. Heck, just open the document. The next time you come back to it, it’s already opened and you don’t have to go through all those little preparatory steps that can stand in the way. As someone who has struggled with a psychological block about beginning tasks, doing the beginning steps without expecting myself to complete the work has been a major shift. You also get the bonus of saying thank you to your past self when you return to the task, because past you gave future you a little boost to get through the door

[nanowrimo]

Smash Your Word Count Goals in 3 Easy Steps

from our sponsors at Freewrite

Here at Freewrite, we help writers reach peak productivity in order to meet word count goals and create their best work yet. That’s our reason for being.

Today, we’re going to share the three easy steps proven by science to help you reach your writing goals!

1) Set A Goal & Write It Down

The psychology of goal setting is pretty clear. It’s what NaNoWriMo is all about, right? Research has proven that people who set goals experience higher motivation and are more likely to feel accomplished.

However, the type of goal you set makes a big difference to your efforts. Make sure that your goals are (a) clear and specific, (b) realistic, and (c) measurable.

Being clear about your goal will help you hone in on what you’re trying to achieve and ignore distractions. Make sure to write it down, as well. Research by psychologist Gail Matthews has revealed that people who write down goals are 33% more successful than those who simply set a goal in their head.

Next, be realistic. This means being honest with yourself about what you can and can’t achieve based on your other life obligations. Setting goals that you can’t achieve will only lead to frustration and, ultimately, a lack of motivation.

And last, make sure each goal is measurable. “Write 1,000 words each day” is much easier to measure than “Finish this book.” Because we all know it’s difficult to measure a book being “done”!

Breaking these goals down into smaller, simpler steps will help, too. If your goal is to write 20,000 words during Camp NaNo, break that down into 5,000 words a week, and then figure out how many words you’ll have to write each day to reach those smaller goals.

2) Practice Freewriting

Freewriting is thinking. It’s as simple — and as difficult — as that.

While every writer is unique, and there is no one way to be a writer, there are similarities we all share as humans — especially humans in the modern world — that create common obstacles to doing the things we love — like reading, writing, and yes, thinking. There are the obvious external obstacles: social media, email, the internet. But there are sneaky internal obstacles, too — the main culprit being the inner critic.

As humans, we are judgmental. It’s in our DNA. Our brains are constantly assessing situations, imagining outcomes, and making decisions. It’s part of survival at a very basic level. However, that means that when we do anything, including writing, we tend to automatically assess our actions — judging our own words, tweaking and editing them as we go along. That constant evaluation not only hinders progress, it can also stop us from ever getting started. And if we do manage to sit down to write, that inner critic creates an unconscious anxiety that prevents us from experimenting and writing down our most innovative and creative — and weird! — ideas.

We’ve all heard the advice to “write now, edit later.” Or perhaps you’ve heard writers reference “the sloppy/crappy/messy first draft.” Those are just fun ways of referencing the writing method in which you separate the drafting process from the editing process. Or, what we call freewriting.

Many people haven’t written this freely since childhood, but there’s a reason this method is taught in MFA programs. Getting your thoughts down first and revising later increases productivity and yields better, more creative work because it allows you to give your brain fully to each task. It means that when you’re drafting, you’re drafting, and when you’re editing, you’re editing. There’s no context-switching or multitasking.

So, what if you gave yourself permission to write badly at first? And we don’t just mean cheesy or with glaring plot holes — we mean typos, missing words, character names replaced by big Xs because you couldn’t remember them in the moment.

The next time you draft, we challenge you to give it a try. Just let yourself go and give your thoughts and feelings over to the act of creating. Because that’s when the magic happens. 

3) Track Your Stats

OK, you’ve set measurable goals, and you’ve started drafting. What’s next?

Track your efforts!

Here at Freewrite, we’ve created a tool to automatically track important writing stats, like word count, writing days, writing streak, and more! It’s called a Postbox Profile, and it gives you a unique URL that allows you to share your stats with writing friends.

Anyone with a Postbox account — that’s anyone who writes on a Freewrite OR uses our free in-browser drafting tool, Sprinter — can create a Postbox Profile and track their stats.

👉Don’t have a Freewrite yet? No problem! We have a FREE in-browser drafting experience called Sprinter that helps you shut down distractions and make progress — and gives you access to Postbox. Start writing today absolutely FREE at sprinter.getfreewrite.com.

👉Ready to grab your own Freewrite? Our entry-level device, Alpha, is $50 off this June only! Just use code STARTWITHALPHA at checkout.

[moonshine-nightlight]

Courtship Confusion: Part 2

You’ve been working with your siren partner for a couple years now. A consummate flirt, you’d initially been put off by his whole charming deal, somehow he’s become your best friend. You’ve been wanting to see if he’s still interested in dating, but unfortunately he’s not picking up your hints. A pair of visiting cubi remind you of the cultural differences that come with interspecies dating. Maybe you’ve both been misunderstanding each other. Maybe it’s time you set the record straight.

Modern Fantasy, friends to lovers, siren/harpy, male monster x reader, Part 2 of 8

AO3: Courtship Confusion Chapter 2

[Part One] Part Two

One of the witches tries to clap now that Morgan’s song is over and looks down, befuddled at her cuffed hands. Some of the others are coming down faster, struggling with their cuffs and cursing out the officers—luckily with only words and not hexes.

Morgan smirks down at the formerly ensnared before removing himself from their sight. He alights to the ground at the back of his makeshift stage, his wings gentling his fall. He’s so effortlessly graceful it makes your teeth ache.

With your own practiced movement, you look away long enough to get your bearings while he strides over, going in a wide circle to put some distance between himself and the witches.

“Good job,” you say, because it was. You remember how these types of operations used to go. How much more dangerous and less successful they were without Morgan’s skills. “NIA snagged two, but we got the rest.”

“Wonderful,” Morgan replies, clearly satisfied with a successful hunt. His distance from those formerly bewitched is two fold. Firstly to help them calm down, away from his influence, but also to help calm his own prey instincts. There have only been one or two instances where the person you were attempting to stop was powerful enough to prove to be a valid threat even after Morgan sang. Morgan preferred to set people at ease around him, but he could disregard such tendencies when he needed to without a second thought. Sirens’ merciless reputation was not unearned. 

He was beautiful then too. That was when you first realized that perhaps your feelings for him had changed, from platonic to something else. And by then, it was already too late.

His ruffling of his own feathers as he adjusted his wings’ position on his back drew your attention. Your hands itched to help preen him, but you knew how sensitive he was about that. He’d only let you do more than fix a feather once or twice and even then only after they had been seriously messed up and in private.

You track his gaze and see the senior officer wave Morgan over. Evidently enough time had passed that they believed Morgan’s presence would be more help than hindrance.

You look back up at Morgan, to see if that's the case for him as well. He turns to you and seems surprised you’re already looking at him. He smiles a pleased but lazy smile, hands slipping into his pockets. “Be right back,” Morgan reassures you, answering your unasked questions. He starts to hum something calming in the back of his throat as he ambles over to the cuffed witches.

You wave him off as you start packing up your equipment. Why is it these things always take so much longer to put away than to take out? 

You’re nearly done when someone else, not Morgan, interrupts. “A siren, ay?” You look up to see a pair of the NIA agents approaching. You don’t remember them from the briefings earlier but NIA had brought in some additional field agents to help too. “Rare to have one this far from the waters.”

You shrug. People like to point out how odd it is for a siren to be landlocked, but what can you say to that except confirm that Morgan lives here? He’d only lived by the water when he was a little kid. “Suppose. Everyone lives pretty much everywhere these days.”

“That’s true enough. It was a wonderful performance,” the second of these two agents adds, just in time for Morgan to join you. Both agents are in nice suits, looking more like actresses than agents. You feel scruffy in comparison and resist the urge to fix your hair which you know the headphones from earlier must have messed up. The first agent’s dark hair looks artfully tousled by the wind while the second’s short, lighter hair looks as if it's as perfectly styled as it had been when she left the house.

Unfair. You almost hope they’re cubi or vamps or something to explain their supernaturally beautiful appearance.

“Why thank you,” Morgan says, as he walks over just in time to be complimented. He’s clearly unintimidated by their poise—likely because he’s managing to look as good if not better than them. “I’m always happy when my talents lend themselves to our work.”

“You just like to sing on company time,” you tease, looking for some familiar ground to regain your footing. You weren’t usually this insecure, but your nerves always acted up after the adrenaline wore off. You preferred to get anxious now rather than before, but neither was pleasant. 

He grins and adjusts his lapels. “As I said.”

“I’ve never seen a siren work so precisely,” the older agent comments, eying Morgan with speculative interest. You hate the jealousy and protectiveness that flares up in you with that look. She’s certainly his type: attractive and interested in him. She looks between the two of you and perhaps you should feel flattered not to have been forgotten, but it just barely helps you push your unreasonable feelings to the side. “You certainly seem to have this routine of yours down pat.”

Before either of you could respond, the second agent adds, “We were skeptical when your office offered to help, but we’ve never had such a clean capture.” 

“Thanks,” you reply. She said it like a compliment but it feels backhanded to you, though perhaps unintentionally. The traditional ‘local vs national’ rivalry has you inclined to hear an implication that a local office might have nothing to offer, but maybe you’re just reading into things. They lack some of the arrogance and condescension the national agents often had. The kind that makes you grit your teeth and forcibly redirect Morgan before he says something too honest, even if you agree with him.

“We were happy to be of service,” Morgan replies, an edge to some of his charm. “This is our specialty, mine and my partner’s, I mean. You’ll not find any better.”

If the brag comes across as self-agrandizing, they don't seem to mind. “So it would seem,” the senior agent says, leaning forward with interest. “Would—”

“Riding out!” One of the other officers calls out, the signal for everyone not a tech inventorying the warehouse for further evidence to move back to the precinct. 

“We should regroup back at base,” the second agent says. You resist the urge to raise an eyebrow in surprise, so they actually had something they wanted to talk to you about? You’d been chalking up their idle chatter as looking for someone remotely interesting to linger near until everyone left—which Morgan definitely was, even if you weren’t.

“Aye, aye,” Morgan replies with a tease before turning his back on them completely. Likely reminding them that they have no actual authority over the two of you. You press your lips together to suppress your smile. “Your arms look full, why don’t you hand me the keys?”

“Not on your life.” You don’t even entertain the possibility, despite how unwieldy the duffel bags you’ve got are. “You haven’t renewed your license yet for a squad car.”

“Semantics,” Morgan scoffs as he falls in step next to you. You figure the agents will go their own way now and track you down back at the office, if they’re even still interested. Instead they fall in step a couple paces behind you, talking to each other but clearly following you and Morgan. 

“Rules,” you reply automatically. There’s no sense in speculating on their motives with so little information, so you do your best to ignore the agents. Maybe their care was just also parked out by this entrance. “Here.” You hand him one of the bags of equipment. “Since you wanted to help and were so concerned about my arms.”

“But Inspector,” Morgan whines even as he easily takes the weight, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “It’s not my fault that I rarely need to drive.” He puffs up his wings for emphasis, drawing attention to their sleek appearance.

You’ve got plenty of practice keeping focus even with him showing off his assets. “But you still need the license when you do, no matter your ‘natural advantages’.”

“I have a typical license,” he grumbles, giving up once he can see you’re not budging. “It’s not my fault they require a separate one for our vehicles and that they changed the rules after the Buzzar incident. How was I supposed to know?”

“Because you were there when it happened?” you point out. 

“Yes, and I would never do such a thing.” Morgan says, but you just raise an eyebrow. He’s damaged squad cars doing stunts before. He purposely ignores you as he continues, “And I certainly don’t see why it had to be memorialized on the exam.”

“Doesn’t matter and no amount of whining now is gonna change anything,” you reiterate with a smirk. You jingle the keys in your hand. Truthfully, you’d be driving regardless since you’re the senior inspector, but it’s fun to have a reason to tease him about. You only let Morgan drive in extreme circumstances anyways. “I’m still driving.”

Morgan pouts as he opens the trunk to drop in his bag, taking yours from you wordlessly. Before he can try to convince you again to let him drive, the senior NIA agent speaks up, “We’ll see you there.” The second agent waves as they head over to the sleek black car with the NIA logo on it parked only a few yards away.

“Why do we have to drive this old clunker when they have that?” Morgan grumbles.

“Because we have a fourth of their budget,” you reply with a snort. “Come one, get in.”

[daisywords]

hey uh does anyone have a recipe for Potion That Makes You Write

has anyone actually gone from not being able to write that often to a more consistent output and if so how did you do that

[sociallyrepressed]

devour

[norstappen]

There’s blood dripping from Max’s hands. It’s staining the hotel carpet, but Lando can’t be bothered by it when Max approaches the bed, bloodied hands leaving red imprints against the pristine white bedding. He tugs at Lando’s ankle to pull him away from the headboard, laying him out across the comforter. Lando goes with it, incapable of not following Max wherever he leads.

He moves them so Lando is flat on his back. It accentuates the slow rise and fall of his chest, the steady calm of his heartbeat. Sometimes Lando is unsettled with the way he’s comfortable around Max. He’ll allow the hands that choke to cup his cheek and stroke his hair. Max is so gentle with him, but he can see the tension jumping beneath his skin. Lando can see the wild gleam in Max’s eyes, the saliva that pools in his jaw. He doesn’t know what keeps Max from snapping and biting and ripping and pulling until Lando is so wholly undone he’s nothing but strips of tendon and shredded bone. But sometimes, he doesn’t care because Max is Max and when Max decides it’s time to finally consume Lando then so be it.

His attention slips back to the present by the weight of Max’s body pressing against his torso. His cheek is resting on Lando’s chest, but Lando swears he can feel the ghost of sharp teeth at his neck. He doesn’t feel alarm, the pressure isn’t biting, the threat of his throat being torn out by Max is nonexistent.

Sometimes, he thinks this is all Max wants. All Max needs. A place where he can exist with no expectations and no need to be anything but present and alive. Deep down, Lando knows being quiet and docile is the only thing sparing him of Max’s brutality.

It’s different out on the track. While racing, Max succumbs completely to the animalistic side of him. The side that hungers. No one is spared because when Max is hungry, he devours. Lando can recall the collision that ended his race early. He can recall the way Max shrugged it off, eyes glinting. Lando’s just a human, fragile, so he didn’t argue his defense. He knows his place and he won’t be forced to bow like some of the other humans standing before Max.

(Is what he’s doing any different? Is it any better? He’s laid himself out, but his fate won’t be any different.)

He remembers Max’s first championship. He remembers how Max came to Lando with blood running down his hands in thick rivulets more times than not. Lando never considered what would happen if it was his own blood. He can feel it drying between his own fingers from where Max is holding his hand. It’s gentle, far too gentle for a raging beast, starving for everything he could ever have and beyond that.

This thing being nurtured between them is dangerous. It could easily sour and destroy Lando. He knows he wouldn’t be able to stop it, he’d probably welcome it because if anyone were to ever to ruin Lando, at least it’d be Max.

He runs his hands down Max’s spine. Back up again to scratch the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. He rests his head back against the pillow, falling asleep to the phantom feeling of hot breath panting against his throat.