#i did count the outline i wrote in my wordcount of this week

[dualmessiahs]

going to be probably putting around half my wordcount every week into my p4 bang project for awhile. I have a full month before the first check in, but the further I get along, the less time this piece will need later. My outline for it is over 1k so it's going to be a bit of a hefty piece, though my goal will actually be trying to turn a big idea into a smaller and more manageable one, while still hitting the biggest parts.

im not really changing the premise at all, so the premise itself is a huge massively-scoped thing, but if i don't trim it down, it's a story i will never write, so im treading an interesting line with it.

i do hope my partner artist likes it enough and obviously whatever part they choose to draw i will absolutely expand on. the rest though, i will try to write moment-to-moment things, idk.

this bang is an excuse to have an exercise in shortening myself, and while there isn't a wordcount cap, i HAVE to shrink this idea because if i wrote my 'normal way' this could be over 100k. I don't have time for that, so I HAVE to cut it down to a reasonable threshold. it'll be a really interesting learning experience.

[recurring-polynya]

Writing/Art Update 10.31.2023

Sorry this is a little late, I was trying to get something done yesterday and then I got overtaken by Halloween Festivities and didn't get a chance to post it, but this update is as of 10/31.

This week was pretty slow to get going--as per last week's update, I really didn't know how to get started with Chapter 3. I had to sort of think about it for a few days, during which time no writing-writing took place, but I did eventually get it figured out, and now I have a pretty solid outline for Chapters 3 and 4. I was able to get about halfway through Chapter 3, which involved writing one new flashback (which I had a false start on, but the second try came out good) and reworking two present-time scenes, one which needed a lot of work, and one which needed just a little (mostly deletions).

This week's wordcount: 23,299 (+5,439), with about 2,387 of new content.

I am very close to having more in my "clean, contiguous" version than in my "old pile of crap" version (24,245), and that ought to happen this week. My goal for this week is to finish Chapter 3, which two flashbacks (one of which is half-written) and one new real-time scene.

I've been having really mixed feelings on my progress. On one hand, half a chapter per week is proving to be pretty doable, and I'm able to see real progress every week, and it's giving me a nice amount of "I wrote!" satisfaction. On the other hand, if, as I projected last week, this story goes to 10 chapters, that means it will take me 15 weeks, which feels like forever. On the other hand, that will mean it took me almost exactly two years to write, all-told (including time I wasn't actually working on it). Maybe I should just be grateful if I can actually get it done in 15 weeks.

I made a joke about it being November and trying to hype myself up to NaNoWriMo-style push my way through this thing, but that's actually a really bad idea. I still think about that "writing is just behavior" post every single day of my life. You only get to write each story once, and I think it's important to take my time and enjoy the story I'm in, right now. Also, we're getting into the busiest and most miserable time of year for me right now, and I think it's extremely important to keep writing as a treat I get to do, not an arbitrary word count obligation that I made up to torture myself with.

On a final note, I'm in one of those weird brain-places that I get sometimes where I really have not looked back over any of the stuff I've finished. My usual writing state is to enjoy re-reading the stuff that I've read, but right now, it's all "Don't look back! Forward only!" I do think this is good, because I know this will pass eventually and there will certainly be time to edit, later, but I am also really worried that everything I have written is going to be absolutely horrible when I go back to it later. (In general, I'm usually pleasantly surprised to find writing I haven't looked at in a while to be better than I remembered, but it's not guaranteed, you know?)

(no art this week)

[catchingbigfish]

guess who skipped their last weekly update? it's close enough so i'll do a monthly update instead!

writing update:

i'm taking the day off from writing so here's where i landed! i calculated my monthly goal based on my GYWO goal this year -- 200,000, divided by the number of days in January, for a goal of 16,940. obviously, i did break that goal by about 4.8k words, but the majority was written before the 20th this month; i only wrote 2k of that in the last 11 days. i calculate my "daily minimum" as the amount left towards my goal, divided by the number of days i have left in the month, and the average includes days i didn't write -- a total of four, including today.

i spent most of those words on the primary storyline for So It Goes, but i had a burst of inspiration on the criminal/cop WIP that started last week -- some of those words are prose, some are zero-drafting, but since my zero-draft is more of a narrative version i'm counting it. "other" was used for poetry and a short story i started writing based on a prompt i reblogged! noticeably missing is conversion, but i'm doing a lot of hopping around lately, so i can see it making a comeback soon.

my highest word count for one single day was 2,216 words on the 3rd, all written towards the marisa storyline for so it goes; that doesn't even come close to my historic best, but is pretty stable for my general best, so that feels good. my lowest word count for one single day -- on which i wrote, since otherwise it's 0 lol -- was 60 words on the 25th, which were written for the criminal WIP. it was more of an editing session plus adding a few words in, so it was still a good session.

february plans:

theoretically, i want to write just over 15,000 words towards my GYWO goal. my quarterly goal was initially to finish a first draft of so it goes at around 60,000 words, but unless i really blow through february and march's word counts, i probably won't reach it -- especially considering how i'm shifting focus to other stories, too. i'm thinking i'll shift over to my backup goal of finishing an outline for the criminal/cop WIP instead and subtract the overage from this month from february's wordcount just to make things a little easier on myself.

on a side note, i think i might move some of my ramblings about my other goals to a sideblog -- if i do i'll post the url here so anyone who's curious can check there!

[writinglyra]

NaNoWriMo 2023 - Week One

Progress: 2,432 / 30,000

Average Daily Wordcount: 484

Excerpts

Day One:

She stepped back only an inch as her mother approached, clasping her hands together behind her. “I’m sorry,” she said on instinct. “I know that I’m late.” “Then why are you still dancing?” “We’re celebrating, aren't we?” “We’re honoring. You’re needed elsewhere for that duty.”

Day Two:

“Father said his hurt more,” she said. “I was expecting you would cry.” He snarled and shoved at her shoulder. “You are insufferable,” he said. “Have I told you that recently?” “Once or twice," she shrugged. "Though I always appreciate it."

Day Three:

“I should say,” she said, passing the chalice between her hands. “That I am also very happy for you.” Teodema looked down, waiting for something more, slightly unsteady at her tone. “You are great Prince,” she carried on. “And a good brother. I’m glad that this night is yours.”

Day Four:

Keroesa waved off her curtsy. They were familiar with one another. She was Sineda, a poetess and rhapsode—perhaps the greatest in Siruna. And her son Ekela was her humabi—her accompanist—who Keroesa turned to with a smile. “Please, ignore me” she said casually. “I do not mean to interrupt your work.” “Of course, Princess.” Sineda smiled knowingly. Then she looked down to Ekela and nodded permission. He whispered his thanks and, with a somewhat subtle urgency, nodded farewell and moved to follow Keroesa through the crowd.

Thoughts

Unfortunately, I got off to a slow start this week. Beginnings are always hard, and there were a few distractions I had to deal with. But, I did manage some solid dialogue scenes with Teodema and Ekela that I liked. I think they're good introductions to their characters and their relationships with Keroesa.

The most frustrating thing so far has been the constant rewriting I do. I wrote three different versions of the opening scene already that I will have to sort through in the editing process. This is also something I wound up doing a lot while I was working on Project Ichor, so I think it's just becoming part of my process. It definitely slows me down (my average WPM so far is 11) but it's also pretty helpful. I could probably help it by making more thorough outlines before writing that go down to the scene level, but for now, I'll stick with it and see how it works out. Sometimes getting a scene right just takes a few stabs, and progress is progress however hard fought.

For the sake of this NaNoWriMo, I'm counting everything for my stats, even if it's not going in the final draft so, by the end of this month, I won't be surprised if half my words are deleted and rewritten scenes. I clearly need the help and it's just easier to count that way.

Hopefully I'll make quicker progress next week. See you then!

[aurevell]

2022 Fic Year in Review

For the first time ever, I tracked my word count in a spreadsheet, which means I get to see the overall patterns in my writing now that the year is over. This includes fun with charts and graphs, as you can see below:

Total words written: 182,526

Worst writing month(s): February-April

I wrote literally 0 words from February 6 to June 1. Ongoing knee pain made 2022 a rough year. The chart above shows my fun little "wow fuck my knees actually" break for physical therapy woes.

Best writing month(s): June-July

Once I committed to AU-gust, I outlined in May and started churning out words in June and July. My June wordcount alone was 53,804, and I at some point wrote 7,522 words in a single day, a harrowing feat I have since blocked from memory.

Total fics published: 37

This includes The Striking Complication, a longfic I finished in early 2022. It also includes 30 fics (~2k-5k each) for AU-gust and several continuations for them, plus two fics for my long-haired Steter collection. In October, I wrote a Stetopher Week sickfic, a werecat Stiles AU and a Sterek horror fic I’ve been wanting to finish forever.

My longest work was The Third Sacrifice at just over 21,000 words. 

My shortest work was We’ll Have Words Tomorrow at 1,145 words.

My most popular work by kudos and hits was When It Counts, because I’m apparently not the only one who’s a sucker for tongue-tied!Peter Hale.

My favorite fics were:

When It Counts (Steter) - Surprise, surprise. Can’t overstate how hard I cackled while writing this.

It May Simply Lie in Wait (Sterek) - Haunted houses are my favorite, and I basically wrote this just for me.

a small span of quiet (Steter) - A super fun miscommunication fic, and I adore established Steter.

The Endgame (Steter) - My favorite of the AU-gust sci-fi fics. I wish I had sequel ideas, because I want to know what comes next.

The Third Sacrifice (Sterek) - Horror, my beloved. This was a very self-indulgent romp through some monster-infested woods.

Stuff I Want to Work on in 2023

My dreaded nogitsune fic. I posted it as a ficlet for AU-gust, but I want to do a full version even though it's fighting tooth and nail. Waiting to see if it'll cooperate or get buried in my fic graveyard.

A mob AU sequel, which I told myself at the start of 2022 I would definitely work on, and yet here we are.

A second (smaller) AU-gust??? I am really considering it. They say the mind forgets trauma, and I’ve already mostly forgotten the seven layers of hell this year’s event put me through. If I did the 2023 challenge, I'd probably tweak the rules for myself.

In Conclusion

Tried some new fandom events. Met some AMAZING tumblr mutuals, followers, and commenters who made me feel much more connected to the fandom. Wrote some fun stuff I never would have imagined without help and inspiration. 2022 was a fun year for writing, and I can't wait for what 2023 brings 🥳

[the960writers]

I know you personally prefer quiet when writing, instead of music. What are your thoughts on writing habits in the form of time (duration) versus word count? I saw a Leena Norms short on YouTube recently where she talks about being inspired by a classic professional writer who wrote 3 hours a day, no longer, no less, and if he finished a novel during that writing time, just started the next novel! ❤️D.

That's an interesting concept. I looked up Leena Norms' short video, where she said that she can't approach her writing goals by aiming for specific wordcounts, because she doesn't know enough about her abilities yet to guess what a realistic goal is. I like that kind of rational approach. Instead she wants to aim for establishing a habit. This reminds me of @gywo, where you can pledge for a yearly wordcount or a habit.

So, a habit. Like three hours every day. Now, in theory, I think that is one of the best approaches if you want to be a writer (or any kind of creator). It sounds perfect. For certain sorts of persons.

Omg, I'm dying here. Like, I could never, possibly, be that kind of person. I have data about my personality and my way of working of 40+ years, and I can say with utter confidence that I never had and never will have that kind of discipline in my life. That's just... how do you even schedule that? How do you work that into the general chaos of life?

I work three days per week, which already makes me incredibly privileged. And even with two whole days, plus the weekend, I can never guarantee that I can actually write three full hours on any of those days. I have a writing date with a friend once a week and in some weeks, the words I write that afternoon are all I get for that week.

There's a reason why I'm only counting weekly wordcounts. I don't need that anxiety of "oh shit I didn't write today" in my life, but I need some way of proving to the yelling brain that I did indeed write something that week.

I know a lot of writers form a habit of getting up one hour earlier and writing for that one hour before starting the day. That sounds like a great habit and I wish my brain wasn't like cold molasses in the morning that this would work for me.

Here's the thing I keep saying all the time: You have to work with your brain, not against it. You can try all sorts of cool concepts, habits, outlines, rituals, and if one or more work for you, great! If they don't, fuck em and do it another way.

My way of writing time is "whenever". I have a laptop, I have a phone and a bluetooh keyboard. Technologically, I can write anywhere and whenever. Do I, always? No. But I try to grab the opportunities and use them. Would I stop after three hours, no matter what? No way, not when the words flow.

My personal recommendation is the writing date. Find someone for parallel play. They don't have to write, my friend knits and studies while I write, but it makes writing less lonely.

This all went on a bit on a tangent, I think what you actually asked was whether counting hours of writing instead of words is a useful approach. Of course it is! We just chatted about that for the upcoming @the-wip-project. Some writers are editing their works and if you're revising, you can't count words, that doesn't work. And how many times have we all written whole paragraphs, only to delete them later on. Do those words not count?

So yes, counting the time spend on working on your story is a valid approach. I'm sure there's apps for counting these things, possibly even gamefy them (if my duolingo app can give me XP to learn Norwegian, there must also be an app that will remind me to spend time on my story).

I hope you'll find an approach that works for you. But don't beat yourself up if you can't get a specific system to work. Work with your brain, not against it. Remember why you write, let it be fun. Writing is hard sometimes, but don't make it miserable for you.

[shadowsong26fic]

Coming Attractions!

I haven’t gone to bed yet so it still counts as Monday, lol. XD

Plug for my writing discord--it’s pretty quiet, but mostly intended to be a slightly more interactive version of this blog.

Also, open question night, though I can’t promise I’ll get to it before tomorrow ((I also still owe at least one prompt fill from a meme I reblogged like...a week ago...))

Anyway.

This is going to be short because I got very little done last month, whoops.

Star Wars:

- Not really much has changed from last month; still poking at Precipice!verse and possible ideas for next year’s SWBB. Pretty much everything else is on the back burner.

BSG:

- Didn’t get as much writing done as I’d hoped over the last month. But in order to Motivate myself, I’m going to shoot for a Halloween debut for The Other Battlestar, which means I need to finish. Like. Naming people. And come up with a title I actually like, lol...

- Maybe I’ll do some preview/etc. posts here as bonus content; giving some details about the fourish OCs who will end up playing major roles? To both keep me on task/motivated and hopefully pique some interest...we’ll see.

Castlevania:

- If I could just get this next chapter to cooperate, lol. There are so many things I want to get to! I just have to get past that...

Original Fic:

- I don’t think I wrote anything original this month, alas. Other than poking at things in my head, as one does. I did go to a library booksale, which reminded me that I have at least three half-planned projects that I need to finish researching (an alternate history where Henry VIII dies in 1536; a novel about Judas Iscariot; a novel about What If Mordred Was A Girl) so maybe I’ll see some movement on that front. For the stuff I already post on an origfic community on Dreamwidth, I really should. like. post something plot-advancing, shouldn’t I...

NaNo Plans:

I’m still figuring out exactly how I want to play it this year. And I think a lot of it depends on what I get done re: TOB and Incinctus and Protectors/Preludes over this month, because I might decide to just narrow my focus onto one of them. But most likely I’ll do what I’ve been doing the past few years, which is set myself a wordcount goal (which may or may not be greater than the 50k standard) but I can fill it with Any (fulltext) fiction writing (I think I decided outline/bullet-point form fics counted for 2/3 the wordcount when I did one during NaNo a couple years back? We’ll see if it’s relevant).

...and, yeah, I think that’s about it. Like I said, a short update...hopefully the next time I do this I’ll have more to report!

What are you guys working on?

[heirophantomthief-sk8-eternity]

National Novel Writing Month

Not a novel, but I set some writing goals for myself this month and I've been keeping track. It's mostly fics for Secret Santa exchanges so the details are SECRET! (the word counts per day and per project are based on how much I write in a session, so they don't account for everything I delete in editing or sometimes add in editing without counting.)

NaNoWriMo Week 1

Project A ~2k complete

Project B ~5k draft

Project C estimated 30k full outline, partially drafted

Project D estimated 10K partial outline, partially drafted

Day 1: 1581 D

Day 2: 0

Day 3: 1320 D, 1110 B

Day 4: 1266 A

Day 5: 0

Day 6: 200 A, 1416 B

Day 7: 1417 B

Worked on three projects and pretty much finished one. total 8313 out of 11200 word goal.

NaNoWriMo Week 2

Project B ~5k complete

Project C estimated 30k full outline, partially drafted

Project E, bonus chapter, posted

Day 8: 2052 C

Day 9: 506 B

Day 10: 664 E, 767 C

Day 11-14: 0 I was traveling as the driver, no writing :(

Total 3989/11200 this week for 12302 this month. I did a lot of editing to finish Project B and as I worked on Project C. I intended to focus on just writing this month and edit later to beef up my word count, but I just don’t like writing more content without tidying up as I go, so the wc definitely isn't reflecting the time spent writing.

NaNoWriMo Week 3

Project C drafted estimated 18k

Day 15: 2602 C

Day 16: 1383 C

Day 17: 534 C

Day 18: 726 C

Day 19: 2002 C

Day 20 2172 C

Day 21: 2061 C

I wrote every day and I hit my goal! The shorter wordcount days were big editing days so there was also a lot of deleting. I’m just about done with my december gift fics! I’ll try to spend some time on Project D and maybe start something new for the final week.

11480 this week for a total of 23782 this month!!

[elvenbeard]

Wordcount Update!!

Last week I wrote 1989 words for the rough outline of "The King of Ivendarea" - not as many as I had wanted to, but the outline is about 90-95% finished now. In the next couple of days I should be done - and then it's editing and refining time!! Finally :D

My February total until last week were 10908 words, so in comparison to my 11000 words in January I did well! Add the words of today on top and I even surpass what I wrote in January, so despite all struggles I did write more in February than January! That was the real surprise of this week I think.

In last week's update post I had a little miscalculation with my Draft Total count, accidentally adding up the wrong things - so the one here is lower than last week's, but correct again this time XD 42654 and counting!

[missmaxime]

Author Meme

Tagged by - @entwinedloop and @mego42 for this thing everybody said they already did but I don’t think I did - SO THANK YOUU

Yes well will tag some peeps like @nakedmonkey @bourbon-ontherocks @sothischickshe and @xstrawmari

ao3 name: MissMaxime

fandoms: atm it’s only Good Girls (also wrote HP, BtVs/Angel, and some miscellaneous ones but let’s not talk about past life).

number of fics: 7

fic I spent the most time on: either Wild at Heart or I See Your True Technicolors (even though the latter has a lower wordcount - it requires at lot more thinking). 

fic I spent the least amount of time on: somehow I wrote and edited and posted Stuck in the Middle in five days (i wrote it after i posted The Girlfriend Experience and that was 5 days earlier - I had vacay I think?)

most hits, most kudos, most comment, most bookmarks, highest total word count: Most hits: Wild at Heart (makes sense, it’s my first). Most kudos: I See Your True Technicolors (it was one of the fics that got massively kudobombed after the prompt-a-thon), most comments also on ISYTT, most bookmarks on The Girlfriend Experience, highest word count on Wild at Heart

favourite fic I wrote: Pfff, I mean I’m all over the place with genres, style, format. For now I’m going to say The Girlfriend Experience, because well a) it’s finished and b) I like how I structured the story, and how the OCs worked, and it’s both crimey but also romcom - it’s a mixed bag of some of my favorite genres and tropes. 

(But I gotta say, I may switch to I See Your True Technicolors when i finish it, iunno - don’t make me pick between my babies they’re all special in their own way hmmk). 

fic I want to rewrite/expand on: In the near future I’m not going to expand on any of them, really. I, like, have this paperthin outline of a follow up for The Girlfriend Experience, called Boyfriend Material, which picks up not long after that fic. But pfff, first things first k (looking at you, ISYTT3 and WAH5). 

share a bit of a wip or story idea you’re working on: Like probably everyone I have a bunch of unpublished WIPs. But the one I’m daydreaming / taking notes on the most that’s probably going to be the newest bigger thing (after I do updates) is the Reality TV Show / The Bachelor AU. In this fic Rio is The (annoyingly reluctant and tv-nightmare) Bachelor, and Beth is the showrunner who has to step in after two episodes shot to save this hell of show after the previous showrunner gets fired. Obvs a lot of on-set and off-set drama and forbidden romance and only one bed because have you met me. Like TGE I want to fully write it, but I’m going to try and chapter this one so I can post it over x-amount of weeks. 

[theastrophilearchitect]

I started writing a book.

And I’m mad about it, because I just started this post, brought up a new tab and lost it because I didn’t save my draft.

Anyway. That’s a thing I did. Wow.

As of this moment, this post won’t be going up until April 19th, but I’m starting writing this at 10.30pm on Sunday, February 21st, 2021. I’ve done a lot in the last couple weeks, and I want to have some record of all I’ve accomplished without just letting most of it fade over the next two months.

I’ve always wanted to be an author. From when I was reading under my covers with a torch past bedtime, through the years I wanted to be an artist, through the years I wanted to be a lawyer. It’s always been there - no matter what primary career path I went down, I wanted to be an author. The last few years, I’ve been invested in becoming a biologist, and that dream really took a backseat.

In the start of this lockdown, my mental health went downhill, and some advice my therapist gave me was just to prioritise myself. It sounds simple enough, but, even in my free time, I’d been focusing on schoolwork - revising constantly for exams I’m still not sure are actually happening. (Boris Johnson is apparently making an announcement tomorrow about beginning to ease lockdown, but we’ll see) So, on Saturday, February 6th, I started an attempt to coalesce the ideas I had floating in my head into something tangible.

I’ve tried to write books countless times (not technically countless - I have all the documents on my laptop, so I could if I wanted to), but mostly, I’ve never gotten further than a couple bare plot points and some characters, maybe some ideas for subplots, before I’ve stagnated and given up.

Three times, I’ve finished a skeletal outline. Twice, I’ve started to go back over those outlines only to realise they made no sense or just seemed week, and simply not cared enough to fix it. Until now, I guess.

February 6th, 7th, and fast-forward to my week off beginning the 15th, up until the 19th, I kept developing this concept I’d managed to form, but I was struggling to establish a coherent plot. I had up until and including a midpoint (which was later condensed into just a first act), but everything after that was just a void. I began searching for some skeletal structure I could apply to it, both to work on pacing and fill in the blanks. I tried several, and got a little further, but was about to give up hope.

Then I remembered a video by Katytastic I’d watched years ago about the 3-act, 9-block, 27-chapter structure she used, and couldn’t see the harm in giving it a go. And something clicked.

You can find the video here - the structure’s detailed and easy to follow, plus she even gives an example of using it to generate a plot.

I started binge-watching her writing vlogs in the background, and even started using her same writing program, Scrivener, which just made every a thousand times easier by taking away the need to juggle a billion Word documents. It’s fairly pricey, but I’m currently using the 30-day free trial - it’s 30 days of use, not of ownership, too: if you use it every day, it lasts 30 days, but if you use it once a week, it lasts 30 weeks.

Where Kat used the 27 parts the structure broke down into as chapters, I chose to refer to them as beats, and separate chapters later.

On Saturday the 20th, I finished defining my scenes and started writing an actual draft. I wrote two scenes, putting me at a collective word count (not including notes, synopses, etc.) of 2,580 words.

This morning, Sunday the 21st, I started over. I hated my opening. I’m not going to go through the mess of today’s process, but I currently have around 80 one-line-outline scenes, split into 3 acts. I wrote a draft of my prologue and detailed-outlined (which I’m mentally referring to as zero-outlining because it’s similar to how Katytastic does what she calls a zero draft, but is very much outlining, not a draft) two and a half other chapters. Scriver also tells me how many words I wrote in total, across notes, character profiles, location lists, a document I’ve named ‘Train of Thought’ for my ramblings as I go etc.

Today, I wrote a grand total of 4,141 words, which, rather counterintuitively, puts me at a draft total of 2,598. That makes sense. Anyway.

There are a lot of unknowns in the world right now, and I have no idea how much time I’ll have in the next six months to invest in this project, but I’d like, at bare minimum, to have one complete draft by the start of the next school year in September, which gives me just over 6 months. Which is probably too much time to actually motivate myself, but that’s not the point.

A manuscript needs to have a minimum word count of 50K words to be considered a novel, so, even though my ultimate goal for this project is around 80K words, 50K is going to be my goal for this draft.

I’m being optimistic about sticking with this.

Tuesday 23/02/2021 - Word Count: 3,099 I wrote nothing yesterday; planning to focus writing solely on days off rather than work days, but last night, watching through the incredibly long queue of Alexa Donne writing videos, I came to the conclusion writing every day, even just a little, would be the best way to ensure I keep working on this, so I set myself a goal of just 500 words a day.

Wednesday 24/02/2021 - Word Count: 5,350 After doing a little bit of maths as to how long this outlining and draft would take me if I were to only write 500 words a day, I decided to boost that goal to 1,000. I got started around 1pm today, online school draining me so much I couldn’t face another two hours. I worked on and off until 6pm, and around 4.45pm, I finished outlining Act One!

Thursday 25/02/2021 - Word Count: 7,022 I continued my scene outlining into Act Two, but I hit a brick wall around the midpoint. I have to write chronologically - some people jump around, but I have to write linearly, or it feels like I’m trying to make something in a void. It just doesn’t work. I didn’t know how to get from one scene to the next - there were so many things I needed to establish to get there, but I didn’t want to backtrack. I decided to re-jig the whole thing, but, after dinner, I realised I didn’t have to, and instead, decided to just start a draft, conscious of the things I need to establish as I go.

Friday 26/02/2021 - Word Count: 8,208 Starting draft one, I rewrote the prologue I’d already written, technically putting me to my second draft of it, because I’d been thinking about it for days and just wanted to revisit it, and it was so much better. Then I moved on to chapter one, but decided I wanted to re-jig my chapters. While outlining, I’d split the whole book into only about twenty chapters, but decided to go for shorter ones for more effective divisions of the story. I got most of the way through the first scene of chapter one, but basically ran out of both time and motivation, since I hadn’t heavily outlined that scene. in total, I wrote over 2000 words today, but because I only increased the prologue word count by about 100 words, it didn’t do that much to the total count.

Saturday 27/02/2021 - Word Count: 11,050 I got some chores done Saturday morning and focused on finishing my book so I could include it in my February wrap-up, but I still had time to get some writing done around mid-day. My goal was just to hit 10K this weekend, but I though I could do it in one day. I wrote about 1,000 words before feeling a little word-drained, but took a break for lunch, got back to it and wrote 2,400 words. Though that only added a little over 2,000 to the word count, it took me to 10K! I’m 20% of the way to being able to call it a novel! We’re in quintuple digits!

And then eight hours later, I wrote another thousand words and got to 11K.

Sunday 28/02/2021 - Word Count: 13,722 I spent most of my Sunday morning writing, though it took me more than two hours to write about 1500 words, though it only added about 1100 to my count. I decided to set myself an overall and weekly deadlines to hold myself accountable. Due to the fact I don’t yet have a clue how many words this will work out as, I decided I wanted to have either a complete first draft or 100K words (which I doubt I’ll reach, but it seems like a good way to make myself finish the draft before my deadline) by the end of April. Which works out to a little under 1500 words a day, or just under 11K a week, which is perfectly doable. Bearing in mind my current word count is including outlines, but I still believe in myself.

I wrote another 1600 words later, which took me to 14K, until I deleted the 300 word outline I wrote for one scene, but I worked out my words per day for the next two months with the assumption of a 10K word count as of March 1st and a target of either a complete draft or 100K words by the end of April, so I’m nearly 4,000 words ahead of schedule. Which gives me 6,606 words to write this week, instead of 10,328. (If you couldn’t tell, I like numbers. They just make sense to me.

Monday 01/03/2021 - Word Count: 15,005 I didn’t quite hit my daily goal, but I was completely leached of motivation today, I’m ahead of schedule anyway and I was only under by less than 200 words. It’s alright. But, hey, we hit 15K! Two days after hitting 10K!

Tuesday 02/03/2021 - Word Count: 21,119 This was an insane writing day. My end-of-day target was only 16,480, and that was still ahead of schedule - if I was sticking to the 100K by April 30th, I’d only actually need to be at 12,950 today. This was the best writing day I’ve ever had. I wrote before school and during breaks, which kept both my writing and working momentum up.

I didn’t read a page of my current read, but I wrote a total of 7,681 words and increased my wordcount by 6,114 words, or literally an additional 40.75%. I hit 20K three days after hitting 10K, and am 42.238% of the way to being able to say I wrote a novel, be it a shitty first draft that won’t be complete at 50K words.

I also finished chapter three, which I’ve been working on for three days and came out ~5,000 words, and wrote chapters four and five in their entirety.

Note to self: this is day 10 of vaguely outline-drafting this project.

Wednesday 03/03/2021 - Word Count: 23,364 I've only written 490 words today, as of writing this update, but I just wanted to make note of the fact I've done some calculations, and can reasonably finish my draft this month. I'm still not completely sure how long it'll work out to be, so I can't quite work out my daily words to finish on the 31st, but if I stick to my current 1,475 words a day, I'll hit 63,894 words by the end of the month, which is a little less than I imagine this draft will be, but if I stick to that as a minimum, my first draft won't have to go into April.

I'd like to post this later this week, but I already have a post for this Friday, so God only knows how long this will be by the time it goes up. So far, I've written 1,900 words today, and I don't think I'm out of fuel yet, but I'm stopping because I need to read today, and I'd rather not burn out. I'm over my goal, anyway.

Oh, also, I'm nearly at 25K, which is halfway to a novel, but I haven't broken into Act Two yet, which means this book will be 75K minimum. I'm going to do some maths and work out how many words a day to hit 80K by March 31st. 2,030. That's doable. So I haven't read, but back to writing for like ten minutes.

I've now hit an additional 2,245 words for the day, though I wrote a total of 2,663

Thursday 04/03/2021 - Word Count: 25,415 I've decided to work out how many words I need to write each day to hit 80K by March 31st, and watch the fluctuations. (I like statistics). It should steadily go down throughout the month if I surpass it each day. Today's minimum word count is 2,023, already seven words less than yesterday's. How exciting.

The last scene of Act One was very heavy on world-building I haven't yet figured out, so I stuck what was meant to happen in brackets and just moved on, meaning I have now broken into Act Two!

I think, during the week, I'm going to focus on just meeting my minimum word count rather than exceeding it, just to save fuel for the weekends, when I can write so many more words.

And, we hit 25K! I'm halfway to a novel!

Friday 05/03/2021 - Word Count: 26,693 In complete honesty, I'm beginning to lose momentum. Maybe it's just today, but I don't really want to write and feel like I need a break, but I'm going to make myself write anyway. I'm going to make myself keep writing until this draft is done, however shitty it may end up. I really hate first drafts.

When you say 2,000 words is only 7-8 pages, it doesn't sound like that much to write per day but my god. Luckily, most of the stuff I've had to save to a Pinterest board called 'Writing Motivation' says if you write when you don't want to, it should pass instead of worsening. I wanted to hit 35K this weekend, but I'm not sure I'll have the momentum. I'll at least hit 31,270, though, which is my minimum goal for this week. I'm still over 700 words off my goal for today, but I'm taking a break because my head is foggy and there's still eight hours left in the day. Besides, 700 after dinner is easy. She says, realising she's probably jinxing it. Oh, well. 80K by March 31st would be difficult, even if I weren't going back to school soon, but that's a stretch goal. 100K by April 31st is my minimum, and I'm 9,000 ahead of where I need to be for that.

I think I’m stagnating because I’ve hit the ‘Fun and Games’ section, which I find really boring. I’m going to try to keep going with it, but I may just skip it and come back later.

Saturday 06/03/2021 - Word Count: 28,150 So, I did not get the extra 700 words in. Before dinner, some stuff I had to deal with came up, and by the time it was done, I just wanted to go to bed, so I did. Today, I'm going to try to make up for it, which I think is reasonable because it is now the weekend. I'm still kinda exhausted this morning, but I'm going to do my best, and my wrist hurts, but I'm not sure why. You'd think it would be from all the typing, but only one wrist hurts - you know what? Never mind. They do both hurt. I'm just not sure why, but it doesn't hurt typing this, so that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, to hit my word count for the day, I need to write 2,555 words, which doesn't sound like too much, but it kinda is because I'm primarily writing Act Two at the minute, and for every thousand words I write, I lose like 400 from my outline. You'd think I'd just not include my scene outlines in the word count, but it's too late for that now.

I'm thinking this over, and I really don't think trying to write 80K by the end of the month is going to be good for either my motivation, mental health, or ability to function back at school, so I'm going to stick to 100K or a finished draft by April 30th, and re-work out my goals from there, based on yesterday's word count, so I'm not making myself do catch-up today.

So, to hit 100K by April 30th, I only need to write 1,309 words each day (which will decrease over time because if that's my minimum now, I'll probably surpass it, decreasing the amount of words left etc.). That's so much less pressure.

God, I really don't want to write today. I just want to watch YouTube and Netflix and read.

Okay, so here's the thing. I've been working on this story straight for three weeks and I'm kinda exhausted of it. I'm not done with it, not at all, and I want to keep working on it because it exists, which makes it workable.

I watched a writing vlog by ShaelinWrites yesterday, and she said she writes different projects at once, alternating in week- or multi-week-long blocks. I think I might try that.

My plan with this post and the following updates was to keep updating it until the day it goes up, the day after which is when I begin drafting the next, but, since I may be switching projects for a while and this is really about the project I've decided to dub 'Bay Tree' (which is just, I guess, a pseudonym for here because while I have no idea what it would eventually be called, I know that's nothing like the title I'd want to give it) so I'd want to start a new post for a new project.

I'm now doing a little outlining instead of actually continuing writing, but I think this will help me, though I'm still not certain about whether or not I'm going to directly continue with this specific project for the minute. Instead of setting daily goals based on a target, I'm also just going to say 1,000 words a day, and see where that takes me.

I've just been outlining into Act Three, and I've met a major plot stumble, but I'm going to work that out and explain what I'm doing in my next writing update.

So, go drink some water, eat if you haven't eaten in the last few hours, stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself how wonderful you are and how much happiness you deserve, and, if you want to write a book, stop thinking about it, and go write.

[theda-rison]

Camp Nano (July 2020) Week 2 Check-In

(This is replacing the “Pre-Nano in Nano #14” weekly check-in. I told you, we like to keep it purposefully confusing around here)

Week 2 Check-In

So Week 2 has gone as well as Week 1. Better, if you’re looking at word count alone.

Also, the fireworks seem to have calmed down, but now that I’ve thought that thought out loud, they’ll start up again.

Words!

So here’s my first and second week wordcounts:

And here’s what my graph looks like now:

On the 10th, I just had so much motivation and shit, that I was like “Let’s write so much today! And wrote like seven thousand words. It was fun, I wrote all day, I loved it.

I did, however, realize that I might not be able to finish this project during nano, because we are about halfway through, and I am less than a quarter into my outline so…

Oh noooooooooooo…

While I’m excited at my progress, I also know that if I don’t finish it before my day job starts up again, I’m never going to be able to.

Week 2 take away: Excited, but also worried.

[recurring-polynya]

Hi! I really like the weekly updates on writing you post (I’m in favor of adding teasers for upcoming chapters btw). This might be an obvious question, but how you keep track of your progress? Do you log evert writing session, or have a weekly round up? I write really slowly and sporadically, so it’s hard for me to gauge how much progress I’m making. Thanks!

Gosh, thanks!

So, first and foremost, I want to make it clear that tracking my writing both helps my productivity and it makes me feel good. Writing, especially long things, can be sort of a lonesome enterprise, and having some "numbers go up" aspect of it is positive feedback that gives me that sweet, sweet dopamine. For some people, tracking metrics results in stress and guilt, in which case, just don't do it! But I am happy to talk about what works for me!

So, I def do not track by individual writing session. That stressed me out even just thinking about it. 😂

I vary this up a little bit depending on what I'm working on, but I'll use my current project as an example. It's a longform story that I had been working on, on-and-off for a while, but I picked it up in earnest in July. I had about 50k words of disconnected scenes scattered around three Google docs, and a somewhat functional outline, at least for the first half of the story, although it was a little rougher towards the end. The first thing I did was to work on the outline a little more and get that into better shape.

At that point, I started a few Google doc and set my tracker to 0. As you might expect, the early part of the fic was a lot better filled out than later sections. I started at the beginning, and copy-pasted the scenes from one of the three old docs into the new one until I hit a hole. Then I had to fill in the hole before I could move forward. I sort of do this on a chapter-by-chapter basis, where I am allowed to have TODOs (I literally mark things I haven't written with the word TODO because it's easy to use the search function for) within the current chapter I am working on. As I finish each chapter, I make a note in the outline as to how many words it is.

Now, because I have been keeping these sorts of statistics for a few years now, I have a very honest understanding of my own writing productivity. I know what 1000 words feels likes and I know what 10,000 words feels like. After getting about three chapters filled in this way, I said, 'this is going to take me 1-2 weeks per chapter, working at my normal pace.'

Every week, as you know, I do a post on Tumblr, which includes how many words I wrote, and also some stuff about how I felt. I literally just do a Shift-Ctrl-C to get my total word count and subtract the number from the previous week's Tumblr post. These posts are very valuable to me for a couple of reasons:

1) Accountability. I'm more likely to meet a goal if every week I have to own up to how much work I did.

2) Looking back at the week before and saying, hey, what worked? What didn't work? Sometimes I just have bad weeks. Sometimes I hit a piece of sticky writing and my word count might be really low because I re-wrote something sixteen times. It happens. It's okay. The goal is for me to know how I am, because that helps me better set my expectations.

3) Looking forward to the upcoming week. Maybe my kid has a big project due at school, and it's helpful for me to say, "I'm not gonna get a lot done this week and that's fine." Or, I might say, "This week looks clear and I have every expectation of finishing Ch 7 this week" and then I do it.

Setting achievable goals and then consistently meeting them is an extremely powerful productivity skill. I do this in micro, too. I said earlier that it would stress me out to track wordcount per session, but what I do do is I sit down with an intention. If I have a big open section with nothing written, the goal might just to freewheel a little, to get some ideas on the page, to see where it's going. Conversely, I might have three scenes that are almost done, but they lack beginning or endings or they don't flow together properly, and that might be one evening's work. (Which is sometimes, like, 7 sentences, but those 7 sentences can be harder to write than 50 sentences of the freewheeling). I'm not super strict about those per session goals, but it's something to focus on and I meet them more often than not.

A lot of people talk about having a certain time to write every day. I do, because that's just the way my life works-- It's usually about 7:30-9:30 pm, between the times that my kids start their pre-bed wind-down time and when my husband and I watch tv together. This is not 100% writing time-- it's also when I draw or write Tumblr posts and I also just goof off a lot, it's just my free time. I may have other times that I get to write, especially now that my kids are back in school, but I've had this time blocked out for several years now.

Every time I try to describe one of my writing processes to my husband, he makes fun of me, because it turns out to be some bastardized software engineering technique. If this sounds like a pared-down, one-woman version of Scrum, it's because it is.

To summarize:

- I set a realistic goal over a medium length period (two weeks for one chapter)

- I set a mini goal every time I sit down to work

- Every week, I report on my progress, reflect on how the last week went, and think about the week ahead

- I track word count because it's very measurable. How many words I write in a given time period is one measure of "how well I did" but it also gives me a sense of the pacing of the story and how to get the chapters balanced. Different stories are different-- in the one I'm working on, the chapters are 7k-12k each, but in another fic they're 2-4k. There is no right or wrong answer, the purpose is just to have self-knowledge.

Oh, one more thing I do is to keep up with my outline. When I start a new chapter, I look at what I already had written down (sometimes I find things I forgot about). I add any new bullets, because I may have brought up something in the previous chapter that I need to address further. I do a strikethru on any scenes I've already written. I refer to the outline a lot while I'm working on the chapter, and by the time I'm done, the outline reflects every scene in that chapter and an overall wordcount. In the end, I might need to go back and add a scene somewhere, or move some things around, and having an accurate, shorthand overview gives me insight into the overall structure of the story and makes it super-easy to figure out which chapter could handle an extra scene. (oh god. OH GOD. I document my own fanfic. throw me right in the garbage)

I really, really hope some of this was helpful! This probably sounds like a lot of work, but without this kind of structure, I feel really unmoored and it's easy to become depressed and overwhelmed. Doing it this way makes me feel like I know where I am in the journey and I'm able to feel concrete progress every week or two, which is really motivating for me. Good luck!

[siarven]

NaNoWriMo 2019 Update #1

Helloooooo, I’ve decided that maybe I should be writing one of these. XD (Also have I mentioned how annoying some of the things and especially the BUGS on this new website are?? ಥ_ಥ) Also also, if I didn’t react to a thing I got tagged in, I’m very sorry, I’m getting only 1/3 of my notifications these days T_T 

Anyways! The first day I wrote 2k for Hope Beyond (I will put up a new short story soon! :3 I have finished one, and the other’s getting there! :D) 

Aaaand I spent the rest of most of the first four days figuring out the middle part and ending of my outline (regarding Elinor’s and Kiyera’s plotline, specifically) You can’t imagine how glad I am, to finally know that I know how Eli ties into this whole mess ahhhhhhhhHHHH So those words are all outline and mostly me rambling to myself about how I will fix things, idk, I counted them because they were words and it’s nanowrimo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So the actual wordcount of Good Proper Words™ for the third draft of As Dreams Collide is currently at ~13K :) 

I also re-discovered the horribly effective existence of the Cold Turkey Writer program, which is how I managed to somehow write more than 8k yesterday. XD It doesn’t let you leave until you’ve written your words :’)) 

✿ Progress

WIP: As Dreams Collide, 3rd Draft (intro post | nanowrimo)

Day 01 - written 6,030 | total 6,030 Day 02 - written 2,007 | total 8,037 Day 03 - written 3,314 | total 11,351 Day 04 - written 4,649 | total 16,000 Day 05 - written 4,167 | total 20,176 Day 06 - written 8,421 | total 28,588

✿ Excerpt

In which Ava has a nightmare while they’re in the hospital, waiting for news on Ben. Idk if I will keep it (for pacing reasons) but I like how it turned out >:3 (She dreams of the day a few weeks past when she and Ben went climbing part of one of the trees in the Sanctuary Grove) The happy memory turns nightmare, though. Trigger warning for blood and some gore, or sth? :’D That part and the tag list are below the cut, the stuff above is just cute :3)

/ᐠ｡‸｡ᐟ\ .｡.:*♡

“Did you see the fuzzydragons?”, Ben asks me excitedly. 

I nod, grinning. “They were so pretty! We really have to find a book about dragons, I want to learn all their names! There are so many different kinds…” He laughs. “I will have to look for one. Maybe in the library?” Then he stops, and just smiles. 

“We did it!” 

And together we look around the trees, enjoying the rustling and singing of all the animals around us. 

There’s a small flock of sparrow-like featherdragons flying towards us, and I watch them come closer. They seem loaded down by something and after a moment I realize that they’re carrying a bunch of (most likely stolen) fruit, crowing in delight to one another as they almost crash-land on one of the branches close to me and Ben.

“Look, Ben!”, I say, laughing, and turn toward him when he doesn’t react.

I guess I should’ve realized that something was off. After all, he hasn’t said anything in a few minutes. That never happens. 

His face is deathly pale, and there’s fear in his eyes, but also an anger so terrible that he’s almost unrecognizable. His eyes change colour as I watch, becoming lighter and starting to glow until they’re amber like Asim Eyes, but completely solid, with the black and white parts entirely gone. 

He turns these horrible eyes on me, and blood starts coming out of his nose, and then from his eyes, too. It’s as if something invisible is scratching at his face, leaving deep claw-marks. He’s shivering, the fingers clenching around the branch white and bloodless. 

Something rams its claws into his forehead and pulls all the way and through his eye down to the jaw, leaving a ravaged bloody mess behind. I scream, trying to fight my impulse to run, then I force myself to take a deep breath and scramble toward Ben to help, don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look—

Ben smiles. His teeth are red with blood and too long, too sharp. Even if his remaining eye is no longer his, I know that he’s in pain, that he’s afraid, and that he’s furious. At me. Does he hate me? 

“Ben?”, I croak. 

“Are you scared?” he taunts. I shiver, shrinking back from him but there’s no-where to go. So much blood, and I can’t even look at his face, his eye—the same eye—

The same eye… as what? For a moment I feel strange, the world off-kilter and wrong. From the corner of my eyes there’s a ghost-like shape, black with glowing red eyes. It leers at me, exposing too many teeth, but when I look directly at it, it’s gone. When the world settles back, Ben is lunging for me, fingers like claws. 

I scream.

~~

@warmbones @wilde-writing @thereisnothingwrongwithbeingmad @authordai @madmoonink  @lynnafred @prismalicht @sincerestaffect @romenna @zekethegm @hypnocutiegypsy @random-stuff-thrown-into-a-pot @els-writes @randooooooooooom @asttralhell @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword @jellybeanwriter @kittensartswriting @purpleshadows1989​  @raiswanson​ @ettawritesnstudies​​ @writingwordsanddrawingpictures​

[nadunacreates]

NANOWRIMO 2019 • WEEK FOUR

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WIP: heroes bleed red

THIS WEEK’S WORDCOUNT: 7’054 / 11’669

TOTAL WORDCOUNT: 58’242 / 50’000

•

read on under the cut for some excerpts and other fun stuff.

•

GENERAL RANT:

this week was like the exact opposite of week two. i had such a hard time and really hit that writing slump, hated everything about my story but still forced myself to write at least 500 words a day. i’m not sure if i’ll be able to use a single one of those in the end. i completely lacked the motivation to write this round up, which is why i’m only doing this now, on december 1st and i’m also really just counting that week four and not the last two days. i’ll post a total roundup of the whole month, too, as well as future plans, but i don’t know yet if i’m going to manage to do this today or only tomorrow. anyway, week four was positively shitty all around and thus the following excerpt won’t be great, but… have them anyway.

•

FIRST LINE BIT I WROTE THIS WEEK:

“Sorry,” Kaliope says, and decides to just once in her life fuck it and tell the truth. It’s not it can do much damage, right? She’s not interested in a friendship with Moe, after all, or even getting to know her any more closely than what is strictly necessary for the observation of her enemy. She’ll be keeping an eye on her, as much as possible, and nothing more. It doesn’t matter if Moe likes her or not, whether she thinks of her as a freak or not. Kaliope will not matter more to Moe than any other customer does. So. Truth it is, no matter how bitter it tastes going over her tongue, the regret and fear of rejection just things she doesn’t really feel.

-

yeah, kaliope, keep telling yourself that. so it runs out i’m really bad at writing consistent characterisations and not turning everything into an angst fest. also this is somewhat towards the end of my main characters’ first interaction as civilians, and it’s definitely one of those things that will drastically change in the second draft, if i ever make it that far.

 •

LAST LINE I WROTE THIS WEEK:

Amethyst likes these days, when she’s got enough brainpower and energy left to place these kinds of mind games, think about all the possible consequences to her actions. When she’s not just left playing catch up and trying not to die.

-

amethyst is moe’s hero identity, in case i’ve forgotten to mention this before. which i probably have, knowing me. it’s a bad line of an even worse scene and it’s most likely to get cut, heh

•

AN UNEXPECTED REVELATION THAT HAPPENED:

apparently both moe and kaliope are bad at making friends (or at least feel that way). so both their co-workers decide to friendship-match-make them. which is so not how i planned this whole thing to go, but oh well. now at least i get to write them texting and having moe be oblivious that kaliope is that annoying villain that she likes to complain to her about. identity porn is my jam, even though i feel like i’m really bad at writing it and also i’m giving out spoilers here like warm bread or however that saying goes. although i doubt that anyone is even reading this, or that i might ever get to the point where these things count as actual spoilers because i feel like i’m never going to be able to finish this. one of the reasons is the other “unexpected” revelation, with a lot of emphasis on unexpected, because by now i should really know myself better:

this story will not be done in 50k. is not done in 50k. i barely reached the middle of the first act now, although my outline is patchwork at best. which means that i think this story is going to be at least 175k, which would mean writing more than 1000 words every day until the end of february, sooo. gonna be playing the long game here. which means, in turn, that i’m probably going to be posting about this wip for a long time to come. if anyone wants to opt out of the tag list, feel free to do so, because i feel like my incoherent ramblings are not the most aesthetic things to read, or whatever. but also if you’d like to cheer me up, please do so. i need it ^^°

- the following excerpt is the second part of this match making thingy, happens very soon after the first lines of this week’s writing -

“What are you trying to do?” Moe asks then, and there’s so much suspicion in her voice that Kaliope can basically hear it dripping off of it. She did mention that Farren could get into strange moods, though, so maybe this is just one of their great ideas that Kaliope and Moe will have to wait out.

Maybe not, though, because Emerson suddenly clears their throat, moves down the bench to sit close at Kaliope’s side, and then they slip her own phone back into her hand. Kaliope startles, first, and then she glares. “Where did you get that? Why did you get that?” How didn’t I notice?, most importantly, because what kind of super villain is she if she doesn’t even notice her own phone getting stolen?

“You put it down on the table in front of you,” Emerson explains, calmly, as though this is something entirely rational. “I know you don’t have a code. I just put in Moe’s phone number, don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about— why the fuck would you do that?”

“You need more friends,” Emerson and Farren both say at the same time, because apparently Farren is trying to explain the same thing happening to Moe. It’s making Kaliope feel a little better, to be honest, that even the Great Hero Amethyst didn’t notice that her phone got stolen, that as an actual hero she should be able to prevent that kind of thing, let alone let it happen to herself.

“And Moe is the perfect choice, seriously. You don’t have to do anything but come here a few times a week and let her talk to you during her break.”

“What in all hells? Why are you trying to take our lives in your hands like that? We’re actual grown adults—”

“—and certainly older and more mature than you, Farren,” Moe puts in, and—

“—and certainly older and more mature than you,” Kaliope repeats, “and we don’t need you to friend-match-make us.”

“We were getting there on our own,” Moe puts in, and—

“We were getting there on our own,” Kaliope repeats. “Wait, what? No, we were not!”

“See?” Farren says, probably to Emerson, considering their conversational tone of voice. “I told you they wouldn’t get around to it by themselves. We did a good thing, there, and you don’t have to feel guilty.”

“Oh no,” Kaliope says, “you have to feel very guilty. Keep on right doing that. I’m done with you, you little traitor.” And Kaliope doesn’t even know herself if she’s joking or not, because she does mean it, a little, and at the same time she doesn’t, there’s just— something that she feels, something curling low in her belly and squeezing tight around her chest, something she doesn’t have a name for, something she doesn’t want to find a name for.

It’s an unfamiliar kind of feeling, and she doesn’t particularly like it, wouldn’t want to have it repeated.

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RANDOM CHARACTER FACTS I DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE:

there are way too many side characters that suddenly got way too much screen time and importance to the whole story. and it seems like i can’t stop making new ones.

there’s the owner of the garage where moe has her second job at, for example. he turned out to be lenny’s grandfather (lenny is one of moe’s best friends from her high school time and it was basically their death that triggered her whole “i’m going to be a superhero now” thing and yeah. it’s probably time i make some proper character introductions. maybe that’ll help me get my motivation back.) and that’s big. also he apparently knows that moe is the hero amethyst? although i’m pretty sure that i mentioned in one of the first scenes that absolutely no one knows about her being amethyst. seriously, this is going to take so so much work to edit.

but yeah, another new character is the wind, apparently, and that’s going to change so much? but also make a lot of the things make more sense?

also there are like four cops or “hero liaisons” as i call them for some reason, and somehow they get to have a lot of impact as well??

look, i have zero control over anything in this story, i’m just glad to get any words out at all and maybe do some world building and character development while i’m at it.

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SOME LINES THAT I ACTUALLY LIKE, SOMEWHAT:

Moe doesn’t know if she’ll be able to sleep now. […].

She wants to. She wants to get to. No Amethyst, not today.

(And yet, she turns on the radio, puts it on her nightstand, lets the static trickle on and hopes it won’t get interrupted, won’t turn into voices asking for backup to go up against a villain.)

(And yet, she puts her suit on the free space next to the radio, ready to be slipped into at a moment’s notice.)

(And yet, she’ll be ready to leave at that same moment’s notice, no matter the time of day or night.)

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and that was the last roundup! i’m kinda glad it’s over, save for the total roundup now, because i’m really bad at picking out interesting stuff and not rambling too much and actually stick to a posting schedule and everything else, basically. i hope that at least some of you liked these posts, but well, even if you didn’t, it still helped me reflect on the week and see that i actually managed to get some things done, and yeah, not everything is bad and a lot of it is fixable. much more fixable than an empty page would be, at least, so! and i won nano early, that’s worth something, right?

[jellielover]

it is so funny to me you knew i would ask these. 1, 3, 19, 22

1. What font do you write in? Do you care or is that just the default setting?

I usually write in cambria size 11, although the size is more of an "idc" thing. I just like it :)

3. What is your favorite writing ritual and why is it cursed?

My favorite writing ritual is the Sprint Gang in a discord server that I'm in. I'm about one of three people left that's still dedicated to the sprint bot, but I will do 15 sprints in a row if that is what it takes. I should also explain that a writing sprint is timed chunks (I do 20 minute ones) where you write as much as possible.

It's also why my personal wpm record is this much

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

I started writing when I was in elementary school, just some fantasy stuff that was very anticlimactic because I rushed to the good part and it ended up being too short. I've always been an avid reader, and fantasy is my lover, so it's not that difficult to make up your own universe in your head. It's not really about a "why" I started, more about an inevitable when *would* I start.

I still write small original works, but I also write a decent about of fanfic. I had a really popular MCU fic that I wrote when I was 14 and it was 3 am, and then I moved to crossovers like KNY X BNHA, and then onto minecraft my beloved. I wouldn't really call my older works bumps so much as learning experiences. For example, I've learned that it's better to take my time on writing something than to force myself into a panic about having something out every week. I've learned I should have an idea of a goal for my writing. I've learned to not make meme references because memes from 2015 are not as funny anymore!

Right now I'm working on Allerseelen, my hermitcraft fic for tango's big moon escapades, as well as outlining my original book. Allerseelen is great you should totally read it haha jk unless???

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The cloud?

I write down ideas as they pop into my head in my notes app, as well as in little journals and things. When I outline a fic I usually write a small blurb for each chapter to remind myself of what it needs to accomplish in the narrative. A lot of writing is problem solving for me. "Why can't Tango have HSMB yet to make other people realize he has moon trauma?" "Because HSMB is stuck in Tommy's inventory and we have to dive into his code to get them out." Problem solving can be used for organization. What problem does this chapter solve in the narrative? Why did you write this in this order? These are all things I ask myself when I do something.

If I split each chapter into sections, I can also focus on other characters and establish a place in the story for them. Each split of a chapter can be used to make a timeline of events.

Also, for organization I have 3 docs for Allerseelen. One is for the whole thing (oh god), one is for the current chapter (so I can get the word count properly), and one is for when I write something that doesn't quite fit and I use it later (the snippets doc). I used to use the whole doc for sprints, but it's starting to get slow and I usually also use it for the outlining blurbs and it's not accurate wordcount-wise. The snippets doc is really useful because I can write short scenes and copy paste them in when the time comes!