stupid and marvelous

2021 GOALS

2021 Total Wordcount Goal : 6273 / 100,000

2021 Total Writing Days : 17 / 120


MARCH
It's been another month, and that's about all I can say about it. Literally. It's basically a blur. What even happened in March?? I have no idea. Not a lot of writing, I do know that.

March Wrap-Up : I finished the month with 1493 words which was short of my goal but by less than I was afraid of! I continue to fail at putting time into writing, since I only wrote for 6 days last month, and again, none of them were lengthy sessions. But a chunk of the month was taken up by re-reading my HDBB fic and then hammering out a loose outline for what I've got left to do. So, there were more days of writing-adjacent stuff, just not word-adding stuff. A total of 2 WIPs got new words, with all 1493 going into 2 HP fics.

APRIL
And the goal this month is once again to get back into the habit of regular writing sessions and I really really mean it this time.

April Wordcount Goal : 17k and I feel entirely unhinged even typing that, considering that's more than twice what I've done so far this year. But with my overall lack of writing time, we've hit do-or-die on HDBB and according to my very rough back-of-the-envelope math, that's the wordage I need to hit for April to bring it to 80% by June. Actually this is somewhat more than I need but I'm assuming that my final wordcount estimate is going to grow. It always does. Anyhow, I always tend to do the bulk of my writing closer to the deadline so I'm trying not to worry too much yet.

April Fics to Focus On
☆ HDBB Fic : I've reread what I've got, I've plotted out what I've got left to do, all that's left is actually writing this fucker. I've reached the point on it of having random bits of dialogue and scene ideas pop into my head during the day, so that's nice that it feels like gears are finally clicking on it. I actually threw another 400 words into it in between typing up this post, so even though there's a lot left to do, I think that I'll be able to get it done on time.

No idea how many words were added because I am revising, but there were words! There was progress!!

New words this week : ??? words and I'm sure this number is probably barely in the three-digits, but it's words! Two weeks in a row words were made!!

WIPs worked on this week : 1, with no new WIPs (yay!)

HP
☆ HDBB : ??? words which brings the total to ??? and I've finished my reread and am ready to begin writing on it! I am excited! And also terrified! I always go through this, when I pick up a WIP that's been lying untouched for a while. I reread and have such a good time, and then finish and go, well crap. How am I going to finish this? This thing is so fucking good and I have no idea how I did it the first time, what if I can't write like this anymore?? I'll work through my nonsense, I always do, but it's always a little rough getting back up to speed.

2021 GOALS

2021 Total Wordcount Goal : 4780 / 100,000

2021 Total Writing Days : 11 / 120


FEBRUARY
So, back on January 1--which honestly feels like a million years ago by now--I started off the year with a small kitchen fire (no casualties other than my non-stick pan, thankfully) and I joked that it was hard not to take that as a sign for how the rest of the year would go. AND BOY HAS IT. It's just been one thing after another, and they've all been pretty stressful and upsetting in the moment, but so far (::knocks vigorously on wood::) they've all ended up all right. Like, this weekend my car got broken into. Which freaks me out because it was parked all the way behind my house and not visible from the street and the idea of someone lurking around my house very much creeps me out. But it was about the gentlest break in possible; Mr FTS had left it unlocked, and the thief only made off with about $3 in loose change because I don't keep anything valuable in it after the previous time it was broken into at our last apartment. And like, I'd be willing to write it off as someone desperate, godspeed good sir, I genuinely hope that the handful of change you took helps you out. But this absolute asshole left my fucking lights on, which there is absolutely no goddamn reason for and luckily Mr FTS went out there around 6am so it had been a short enough time that the battery wasn't dead. If this had happened literally any other day of the week we wouldn't have gone out there until the afternoon at the earliest, or more likely not for a couple of days, at which point it very well would have been dead and THAT is what I'm most upset about, because it really feels like a bit of a "fuck you" for not having much of anything in there worth taking.

ANYHOW. Life's been one thing after another like that, and I haven't been writing much as a result.

February Wrap-Up : I finished the month with 699 words which was WELL short of my goal, and the only thing that's giving me hope of coming anywhere near my goal for the year is the sheer lack of hours I've been putting into writing lately. Only four days this month had writing and none of them were lengthy sessions. A total of 3 WIPs got new words, with all 699 going into 3 HP fics.

MARCH
And the goal this month is once again to get back into the habit of regular writing sessions. We're going to ease back into it with a re-read of my HDBB fic, and then hopefully start making words on that. I'm aiming for 30 minutes per night, the toughest part of which is making myself actually sit down to do it.

March Wordcount Goal : 3k and I'm aiming pretty low because I'm anticipating the first chunk of the month will be rereading and going over beta notes from the last time I was working on this thing.

March Fics to Focus On
☆ HDBB Fic : I need to give this a reread and ideally come up with a loose outline for what needs doing to finish it off

☆ Stay : I need to reread the earlier parts to refresh my memory on the details, finish up edits, get it beta-ed, and post it.

☆ You Send Me 2 : which I actually pulled out and poked at a little bit after a couple of very nice comments on the first one. This is basically a smutty little coda about Harry getting un-de-aged that I don't think should run me more than a few k (though, famous last words...)

Only one of those last two is going to get done, to meet my yearly goal of finishing and posting one fic per quarter, and whether either of them gets done at all will depend on how HDBB comes along because I WILL finish my reread of it before touching anything else.

Spent all day today thinking to myself, god, I can't believe it's only Tuesday, what a fucking week! So, that's how things are going with me. Still, there were words! More words than last week, even, so I'm calling it a success.

New words this week : 568 words and hopefully this upward trend will continue!

WIPs worked on this week : 2, with no new WIPs (yay!)

HP
☆ Smutty Smut (working title) : 509 words which brings the total to 666 (lol) and this isn't something I'm meant to be working on but I didn't have the brain to work on anything else so I figured I'd dump some words into a PWP. Besides, who doesn't love some D/s + uniform kink?

☆ Stay aka Don't Think Twice #5 : 59 words which brings the total to 8407 and I still haven't done my read-through on the rest of it so this was just a bit of light editing, not the full edit I still need to give it.

Even less progress than last week, but not feeling at all bad about it. Had surgery yesterday and basically didn't sleep at all leading up to it because my anxiety was so bad. (But it went well! And hopefully will be my last procedure for a while!) Unfortunately I probably won't make much words this coming week either because the nurse completely botched the first attempt at putting in an IV and my hand is incredibly swollen and painful and I'm discovering tonight that typing really fucking hurts, ugh. Also not anticipating anxiety levels going down this week, since every time I leave the house these days I spend the next couple of weeks panicking over every little cough or sneeze or tickle in the back of my throat. Maybe next week I will start trying to be more consistent about writing, but for this week I'm just taking it easy.

New words this week : 375 words which is still not great but again, just glad to have written anything

WIPs worked on this week : 1, with no new WIPs (yay!)

HP
☆ Pride Goeth Before a Frog : 375 words which brings the total to 9944 and am still chipping away at it while I figure out what the fuck is actually happening in the middle bits.

Still not working on any of the things I actually should be working on, but progress was made nonetheless! Which, considering everything else going on in the world at large right now, I will absolutely take.

New words this week : 2401 words which is somewhat better than last week!

WIPs worked on this week : 1, with no new WIPs (yay!)

HP
☆ Stay aka Don't Think Twice #5: 2401 words which brings the total to 7978 and it's seriously like thisclose to finished! It's missing one bit of conversation that I'm not quite sure how to bridge, and then.... well, then I have to figure out what to actually do with it, since it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger and I haven't started the next part yet and can't promise that it won't be another six fucking years until it updates again so I don't know. I mean, the first step is rereading the rest of the series myself so I can edit this thing properly, and then sorting out a beta for it. But after that, I'm not sure what to do with it. Part of me kind of wants to delete parts 2-4 off AO3 and repost them on part 1 as chapters, which I really ought to have done in the first place but when I dumped all my stuff onto AO3 initially I was coming from LJ where posting a chaptered fic vs. posting a series was functionally identical so it didn't even occur to me to do otherwise. But, then I know I'm going to be breaking links if people have them saved, and I'd have to leave it marked as a series to not disrupt people's subscriptions, and then that whole cliffhanger thing is going to invite a whole new round of "Where's the next part!?" sort of comments which are so stressful and. I don't know. I'm probably way overthinking all of this. In any case, it's not done yet so I get to put off deciding for now.

2021 GOALS

2021 Total Wordcount Goal : 0 / 100,000

2021 Total Writing Days : 0 / 120


DECEMBER
December is always a bit of a slow month for me, and this was certainly no different. Still, after so long of not writing anything I'm just pleased I was able to keep my momentum going at all!

December Wrap-Up : I finished the month with 3275 words which is actually a bit higher than I usually do during the month of December? Most of them were even on the thing I meant to be writing, though sadly I didn't end up finishing it, as I would have liked to by the end of the year. A total of 3 WIPs got new words, with 1928 going into 2 HP fics and 1347 going into a fic for The Old Guard.


JANUARY
My writing time has been pretty consistent recently, and I've signed up for harrydracobang so I've got a project to really dig into, so I'm optimistic!

January Wordcount Goal : 10k and that's a bit ahead of what I need to average to keep on track for my yearly goal of 100k, but not so far ahead of it that it's unreasonable, I think.

January Fics to Focus On
☆ HDBB Fic : I'm using one of my (many, many) WIPs for this, which I luckily have not talked about in any sort of detail whatsoever. In the interest of maintaining anonymity, I'm not going to say how much of it I've got written and will only be counting newly written words on it. (And as my WIPs range in wordcount from 31 words to 87k, I figure that tallying my newly written words won't be much of a giveaway lol)

☆ There Is Always the Moon : I wrote this for Remix back in 2016 and just found out that the fic it's based off has been taken down. I deliberately wrote this to function as a companion, so with the original gone it's no longer complete. The first 12 chapters are more of a prequel, so it's just the last chapter that will need to be rewritten for it to stand on its own. My goal this month is to firstly reread it so it's fresh in my brain, and then to dig out my notes on it because at one point I did have a full ending plotted out and I'm really really really hoping I wrote it down before I changed my mind about it. ::crosses fingers::

☆ Lastly, I need to sort through the WIP Folder of Doom and pick out my First Quarter fic. Maybe I ought to stick with Pride Goeth, as that's what I've got at least some momentum built up on? But with the unexpected return of Always the Moon to WIP status, I feel like maybe I ought to pick something much shorter. I've got a handful of mostly-written PWPs kicking around that are a much lower wordcount investment than Pride Goeth, which still has something like 8-10k left on it... or maybe I ought to just count my rewrites as my First Quarter fic? I'd love to have it done by then, but that feels like it's maybe overly optimistic. Either way, I'm hoping to have a better idea by the end of the month.

Not a huge amount of words this week, and most of them on something I shouldn't even be writing on, but I've been in a not very good place mentally, which I think is a combination of anxiety from the pandemic, and then just not getting enough sleep. Anyway, it's been tough to write.

New words this week : 1451 words which is better than last week but most of them were not on the fic that I'm supposed to be working on.

WIPs worked on this week : 2, with no new WIPs (yay!)

HP
☆ Pride Goeth Before a Frog : 196 words which brings the total to 8753 and yeah, really not a whole lot of progress on this one. I don't know, maybe this isn't such a good one to choose to focus on. I'm greatly entertained by what I've got so far, but I can't quite seem to find the traction to keep going on it.


The Old Guard
☆ old guard : 1255 words which brings the total to 1347 and yeah, remember how I said that I didn't have any plot bunnies? That didn't last terribly long, did it. It was actually one of those very cool ones where the whole fic idea springs fully-formed into my brain (I actually had a really weird dream, and woke up with a whole fic in my head.) Wrote it down right away, went back later and expanded with some notes about what happens in between the bits I've got written out. It's MCD, because of course it is.

Sneaking in under the wire on this, because first I didn't remember that today was Wednesday, and then I got distracted by beta-reading something, but I remembered to post this, and here we are. (Now let's see whether I also remember to transfer my laundry from the washer to the dryer after I post this...)

New words this week : 826 words which is better than last week but not by much. Most of my time has actually gone toward sorting and reorganizing the WIP Folder of Doom and updating my spreadsheet, which has been. A lot. Like, a lot.

WIPs worked on this week : 2, with 1 new WIP (sort of?)

HP
☆ Pride Goeth Before a Frog : 734 words which brings the total to 8527 and I think I'm going to try to get this one done by the end of the year. It's not a novel, it's fairly silly, and has been languishing half-written for years now. Reread it, did a bit of light editing, and then kept going. And we'll see if it gets done! I'd guess it needs about another 8k or so to finish off, which ought to be very doable by December 31.


Not making a proper "entry" for this one but I jotted down a scene snippet-slash-headcanon that wouldn't stop rattling around in my brain for 92 words and I'm hoping that now that it's down I can let go of it. I'm completely absolutely totally obsessed with The Old Guard and I really really really don't want to write in this fandom, but I keep leaning more and more that way because most of the fic I've read doesn't really do it for me, and whether I end up writing for a fandom is a matter of obsession with source material + inability to find the sort of thing I want to read = fuck it I'll just do it myself. Am still managing to resist. For now. Mostly. Jotting down headcanons doesn't really count. Right? (Honestly what's really saving me is that I don't have any plot bunnies yet, just a collection of headcanons and characterizations. But that's always how it starts, damn it.)

(post updated 4/6/2021)


☆ What has FTS written recently! ☆
( Recent Harry Potter fics )


Fic on AO3:
Click here for Harry Potter.
Click here for Starfighter.
Click here for Captain America/MCU



Fic on Dreamwidth:
( Harry Potter )

( Starfighter )

( Captain America/MCU )



Translations & Podfics:
( Translations and Podfics )


>>>Are you writing for me for a fest? You may be interested in THIS POST, which is a more comprehensive list of my likes and dislikes!