December Update: I haven't updated since July???

Wow. This poor blog has been horribly neglected this year. I legit forgot about it again for almost six months.

But I have lots of writing progress to update about!

First, we kept meeting every Saturday through the end of September. I wrote about 7500 words across those three months, making good progress on both SP 2.5 and CLC.

In October, I took a break. I don't remember what exactly happened, there. I know some of it was travel-related. But I think a lot of it was lack of inspiration and a desire to spend time outside, as is typical for October.

But Neil and Dianne decided to host a non-Nanowrimo writing month, and they took my naming suggestion of AMOC (a month of confabulations), so I decided that I'd give it a shot. I haven't done an actual NaNo in many years. I skipped it entirely last year, and before that, I think I managed only a week, maybe two, each November. But using a new tracking website (Trackbear) and setting my own goal, I felt like it might be do-able. I was only going to do a half-NaNo at first, but then I decided that since that is an arbitrary number already, that aiming for 1k a day was a better goal. So a goal of 30k words, with the sub-goal in there finishing SP 2.5 first, then writing as many words as I could on CLC, maybe even finishing it.

I can officially say I completed my AMOC goal. I wrote 30k words, and I finished SP 2.5. I did not finish CLC, but I wrote 15k words on it. And now I'd say I'm within 5k of finishing the book. So, AMOC was a success. It was fun having a leaderboard again and having a graph like the old NaNo site. Keeping a streak of 14 days in a row to finish off SP was great. I didn't manage to keep a streak with CLC, but I did manage to write most days. And the best part is, I don't have the writing hangover I used to get with NaNo. I did have to write 3k on the last day to hit my goal, but the rest of the month, it felt like a comfortable pace. I hope that we do it again next year, because it was a lot of fun.

I also hope we do it again next year, because it put me pretty far ahead on my writing goals for next year. I am hoping to write at least a few thousand more words on CLC this December (since I don't have a writing hangover), so I'll be within a few thousand of done. That frees up two months next year in my project timeline.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, though. I could absolutely burn out before next November. But I plan on using Trackbear for my upcoming projects. I've already created a project for SP 3.1. I'm not sure when I'll start that one, but I do have the first line floating around in my mind, already, so I could start it any day now. I put my goal for the year next year as 60k. If I write 30k during AMOC next year, finish at least one SP novel and start another, that's easily 60k. That doesn't count any writing on Sleepy Shoals or any other project I decide to work on. It also doesn't count any editing, but I think I'll track that as a different goal.

I did really want to dive into Mystwatch edits next year. And I still might. But I'm not really feeling it right now. We'll see how I feel after holiday craziness and January blues have passed.

One last thing I haven't mentioned: I'm taking a hiatus from freelance editing. I really want to focus on my own writing for a year or two. Getting these projects that have been hanging on forever wrapped up is a huge priority right now. I know there will always be more projects, but getting back on track with two SP adventures a year, finishing CLC after all these years of dragging it out, and finally, finally giving Mystwatch the edit it deserves so I can do some sort of limited self-published print run are things that will allow me to reach a stage where I can either decide to lay my writing aside for good, or I can jump into a ton of new stuff and not have to look back.

So yeah. That's where I'm at, now, as we draw closer to the end of 2024. I am happy with my writing progress. I hope to write one or two more days before we ring in the New Year, but at this moment, I have written 56,000 words, spent 20 hours editing my work, wrote 4,000 brainstorming words, and have written a total of 60 days, averaging around 5 days per month. I even did a freelance developmental edit. Most importantly, I established a writing habit with my friends, getting together to at least look at my writing once a week for a few hours.

It's been a dang good year. Not my most prolific, for sure. But maybe my best since the days I was writing for publication. I'm looking forward to even more progress next year.

June Update: I haven't updated since January??

Okay, wow, holy cow. I thought I was doing monthly updates this year. Why did I think that? I seriously came here and panicked because I thought entries had been lost. I guess...I just decided not to update my progress. Weird.

So I guess that it goes without saying after that statement that I have, in fact, made progress. Here's a quick recap.

January, I apparently wrote 5500 words and edited for 2 hours, working on SP adventures.

February, I didn't do anything until the very last couple of days, where I finally started working on my fantasy Leverage thieves guild story. Managed 2100 words on that, so that's cool. A respectable start, anyway. Not that I know where it's going. It needs some more world building, I think.

March, I did nothing. No writing. No editing. No freelance from Lisa. I have no idea what happened in March. I think that's about the time I reached out to the writers and let them know that I did, in fact, want to start writing, but I couldn't do it on my own.

Because then, in April, I managed 1000 words and an hour of editing. Writing was on SP, editing on fantasy Leverage.

It looks like the middle of May is when we started meeting on Saturdays to write. I spent an hour deciding what to work on one of those write-ins, and then dove into CLC. By the end of the month, I'd spent 12 hours reading and editing CLC and wrote 2250 words.

I guess that's why I haven't updated. By the first of June, I didn't have a ton of progress to update. Although in all honesty, all of that is a ton of progress! Even though I took a break in March, the fact that I was touching projects enough to write 1-2k a month is impressive.

But I think the other reason I decided not to update is that the spark of inspiration was very small and fragile. I tend to get overzealous when I finally start writing again after a long break, and when I get excited, I make all these plans, and when I do that, I snuff it out. So. I think I remember deciding to see how June went before updating.

So, here we are, first of July. And I had a really great month! We met every Saturday to write. And since we got most of the social stuff and procrastinating done in May, but June, we were able to actually settle in and do a bit of writing. By the end of the month, I was averaging 1000 words on those days. Which is fantastic.

So, grand total for June: 6400 words and 4 hours editing, all work on CLC. I am at 98k on that novel, now, and have fixed a lot of the problems from early on. I still probably have 20k more worth of story to tell, and I'm losing steam on the project. But. I made awesome progress on it last month. A few more months like that, and I could finally get that thing finished. Which would be so awesome!

Trouble is, I am getting bored with it again. And I don't know if that's just, in general, bored with writing, or if it's the story I'm bored with. It wouldn't be the first time. It's very exciting when I first read it, but then I lose the excitement once it comes time to write new words. I don't know why. I'm debating pushing through and trying to get to the end over the next couple months. Or at least giving it one more month. I am down to about six more scenes that need to be written. Five and a half. Including the epilogue, which I've written a lot of already.

In my experience, finishing any book can be a slog. But I don't want to burn myself out. And I don't know that I want to waste my writing inspiration on a book I'm not excited about anymore. Luckily, I have some time to decide before our next write-in. Although I really ought to try to write a bit on non-write-in days. I managed that a bit in the beginning of June but not so much by the end.

I actually decided to make it my goal to write 200 words a day. That's less than a page a day. A few paragraphs. But I picked 200 words a day because that's 6k words a month. I was originally aiming for 5k a month this year, but I got behind by, y'know. Not writing. I know writing an extra thousand a month won't catch me up, but telling myself I only have to write 200 words a day makes it feel surmountable. Of course, 100-150 words would be even better, but it's not quite enough to get where I want to be. At any rate, if I can write 1000 words every 5 days, that's my 200 words. I can write 1000 words in less than an hour. So if I write 1000 words at write-ins, I only have to spend maybe another thirty minutes writing during the rest of the week.

I hope I can keep this up. I'd like to keep this up for at least a few more months to get some projects finished. If I can do it the rest of this year, I could realistically get CLC and SP 2.5 done. Those are my big goals. If I get nothing else done this year, I at the very least need to wrap up SP 2.5. And I'd like to spend at least one more month on CLC.

But I might rebel and just work on Sleepy Shoals instead.

I will likely try to write another blog at the beginning of August to give an update on how my July went. I'm excited to see where I go. I might have a freelance editing project in the middle. Maybe I can work on CLC until I get that, then switch projects once it's done.

I have options! And I have accountability! And I have at least a little bit of excitement to write. Here's hoping I get some good progress done this month.

January Update: Art

I once said in one of these blog posts, or some other blog of mine, that six months is about as long as I can go without writing before I start feeling the pull. Well, my last update here was July of last year. Here I am, six months later, here to report...progress?

Indeed. As is fairly typical, I spent the first week of January sick with a cold. But once the misery of that started to fade, the whisperings of characters with stories untold began to stir in the back of my mind. I got to thinking that maybe, just maybe, I'd like to write instead of paint. One of my resolutions this year was to make space for writing, after all. And I was finally in the mood.

I ignored the mood, though. Out of spite? Out of anger? Out of indignation? Out of apathy? I'm not sure. But, much like my dog, when ignored, it gets louder. So, I gave in. I opened up the Sally Prescott adventure I'd been working last year when the muse abandoned me. And I did the thing I always do. I started reading, and when I got to where I left off writing, I was pissed there wasn't more. I always get pissed that there isn't more. That the story didn't magically write itself or someone else didn't go in and finish writing it for me. That I am the one that has to write the words if I want to know how it ends.

Ugh.

But it's okay. I poked at the previous adventure to get my brain back in the right timeline space, and then I dove in. Four days later, I've written three thousand words and moved the story along pretty well, if I do say so myself. I even had fun, researching pirates and figuring out how Sally figures stuff out. My brain did the thing it always does when mulling over a plot, looking at things from every angle, trying to find the simplest, most efficient way to get to what I'm trying to do. I do worry that I may be stuck again, but I am also confident I can hand wave and/or figure it out. If not now, then the next time the need to write strikes me.

I'm hoping it continues to strike me for a bit longer this time, although I have a developmental edit coming up in a couple of days, so I'm running out of time to work on this. I don't like working on my own stuff while editing for other people. I have to live in the world to write and to edit, and I can't fully immerse myself in two worlds at the same time. Or at least, I've never tried, and I don't want to start, now.

So, yes. I may write a couple thousand more words before I get my editing project. And I may write five thousand or ten thousand more after I return the editing project.I don't know. I do know that I did what I always do when I start writing again, and hit the "project timeline" pretty hard. I started a new wordcount spreadsheet for this year and set my monthly goal for 5k. I logged into MyWriteClub and fixed the dates for all the projects I have in there. And I've made a plan of what I want to work on each year for the next decade. AND went to iStock and Selfpubbookcovers to contemplate covers for SP and Mystwatch. UGH. Why can't I just work on what I currently have open and not worry about what comes next? Why do I have to think about writing as producing product? Still? After all this time? You'd think I would have broken that by now, but I am now skeptical I ever will. I think I will always make a ten-year plan every time I start writing again. It sucks.

But I am trying. I read a newsletter from a watercolor painter I took some tutorials from last year. And she talks about art in a non-goal-oriented way. Well, first, she talked about goal setting and how we do it backward. First, you should figure out how you want to feel, and then figure out what it will take to feel that way. Then, you figure out the steps it will take to get there. I haven't taken the time to flip my way of thinking--my goals were all, "write one weekend a month, paint one weekend a month, adventure one weekend a month." Which, I think are good goals, because I feel good when I write and paint and adventure. But the other thing she points out...or actually one of the other artists I follow points out...is that you can't force art. You can make space for it, but if you don't enjoy it, don't do it. If you don't feel the drive to do it, you're not going to succeed. This is why I never did more with the singing classes I could have taken for free for a month. This is why I never play piano for more than a few weeks a year. I like the idea of singing or playing an instrument, but I don't enjoy practicing, and you have to practice to get better.

Painting...writing...I enjoy the practice for that. That's why I love Sally Prescott so much. She's practice. I can go into her world and play around with ridiculous stuff without consequence, because she's ridiculous and the world is ridiculous. And it's why I am so intimidated by finishing CLC and fixing Mystwatch. That's the performance. That, I don't want to get wrong. With painting, I feel like every painting I do is practice. I've never sat down to paint and thought, this is it. This is the performance. This is race day. Well, except once. When I painted my first NAMIL Art painting. That did feel like a test, y'know. A test of all my skills. But this year, I'm hoping to make those into practice rather than performance. Because I like practicing painting. Although I'm just not quite good enough yet to just paint. I still feel like I have to follow tutorials, which certainly complicates things. I'm close. My own paintings get better every time I have a freestyle painting weekend. But my best paintings are still the ones I paint while following someone else.

Anyway. The painting thing was a bit of a digression. But it reminds me so much of when I first got serious about writing. I would spend hours writing stupid things that didn't matter. In fact, the magic of the first Mystwatch book, before it was Mystwatch, before it was even going to be a series, was that I was just writing for practice. At some point, I stopped writing for the joy of writing, for practice, and felt like every time I wrote, I was performing. And in a way, I was. I was writing with hopes of publication. I'm not anymore, except for wanting to create physical copies for friends and family. But I feel like I broke that part of my brain. I walked the neural pathway so many times that it's permanent, even after the last few years of giving up on my publication dreams. Maybe because I still have this small hope of being a professional writer someday. A lot because I write these scenes, especially Sally Prescott, and I wish they could be movies or TV shows. That can't happen if these stories stay on my harddrive. But of course, that probably won't happen even if they were out in the world for all to read.

That was another digression. But. I've been thinking so much about art, lately. I've actually been thinking a lot about myself lately. I've been feeling lost. I've been out of touch with my spirituality. I have been out of touch with nature. I have been long adrift at sea, away from the harbors of writing. And it's now been a month since I did any painting. All of the things I use to define myself are very far away. And the finances haven't been going well, either, which is another thing I use to define myself (sadly).

So. Here I am. On my writing blog, talking about art, because I think art truly is part of the core of me. And I hope that because of or even in spite of my goals, I do manage to do more art this year. Painting without performing. Writing without worry. Taking photos without putting them on a website. Art is for me. And while I preen under the validation of art well done, at the heart of it, I have to do art because that is where I find value in myself. For better or worse.