stupid and marvelous

GOALS

2019 Total Wordcount Goal : 48,121 / 150,000

2019 Total Writing Days : 51 / 120


SEPTEMBER
More or less skipping this section, since I didn't do any writing at all in September. Or in August. It's been a really rough couple of months for me, holy butts. But it's a new month and I feel like I'm finally starting to get my feet back under me again, so I'm (optimistically, perhaps naively?) making up a goal post because I'd really really like to get some writing done this month. I miss it so much.


OCTOBER
We're not out of the woods yet and things around Chez Fire are still super stressful with fairly frequent bursts of ugh, but I think that I've reached the point of being able to get at least a little bit of writing done. I'm starting to feel excited about it that I haven't felt in a while, and was actually doing well for a while with my Tropes fic (which I still need to claim...) so we're going to see how this goes.

October Wordcount Goal : 1k and wow am I struggling not to bump this number higher. But even setting a goal of 2k I think would be aiming too high, especially seeing as how I started this post on October 1 and am only just now finishing it and getting it posted. As much as 1000 words feels low, I think that's about what I'm capable of right now. It'd be awesome if I'm wrong, but this is my attempt at being reasonable and realistic for once.

October Fics to Focus On
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : Currently 86,657 words and while I don't think that I'm actually going to be adding any new words to this one this month, I'm putting it on here anyhow because I want to get it back on my radar. I want to keep thinking about it and brainstorming ideas and maybe--maybe!!--if things this month go well I can manage to start on a fresh read-through of it because I don't remember much of where I was at when I paused on writing it in favor of my Tropes fic all the way back in... jeez, I think it was April? May? It was a while ago... Estimated total wordcount, 170k.

☆ I'm not sure which other fic I'm going to list here... I need to sort through the WIP Folder of Doom and pick out something that's mostly-written where I've got a good idea of what needs to be filled in to finish it off with a not-too-high total wordage estimate. I've got a couple different ones in mind that might do it, but am not sure which would be best. So! I will look through them and maybe come back to update this and maybe not.

This last week has been busy busy busy! It feels like I've had something going on pretty much every day, and even the weekend wasn't much downtime--it was our first one in a while where we didn't have visitors or any events going on, so instead we got to spend it rushing around and catching up on all the errands we haven't had time for, plus some social stuff, plus walking a friend's dog 3x per day while he was out of town... and this week is basically more of the same. Whew!

New words this week : ???? words in the interest of being sneaky because it's All Tropes All The Time around here!

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

HP
☆ Tropes : ???? words which brings the total to ????, and progress was made! Poked at my rough outline a bit more, and have worked out a way to trim down some of the bits that I was worried might run fairly long. Which is a relief for me in terms of keeping wordcount lower, and also I think it makes much more sense for the plot. I'm hoping to make more wordage-type progress this week.

Another kind of hectic week between social stuff and health stuff and ugggh I just want my life to be calm and boring again. Also sort of annoyed to have lost writing time this week, we have family coming in for a visit through the weekend, who were planning to arrive Thursday afternoon, then switched to today, which I assumed would be this afternoon/evening, but nope! They meant this morning and the plane has already landed and they will in fact be here soon. I found out about an hour ago.

New words this week : 2072 words which finishes off my May wordcount to a total of 3811 and starts off June with 1363 and I haven't managed to do a monthly goal post yet. I'll try to get to that soon...

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

HP
☆ Tropes : 2072 words which brings the total to ????, and while I didn't make quite as much wordage as I'd hoped to, I did write more this week than I have in any single week so far this year! I also managed to work out one thing I was really struggling with. I didn't really like how the beginning was coming out--it's a necessary scene but it didn't really feel exciting. Then I moved my second scene up to be the new beginning and shuffled my original first scene into place further into the fic, and I like it a lot better now. Progress!

First one of the year! Goodness, I have been full of fail on this, haven't I?

New words this week : 966 words which brings my February wordcount to a total of 1010 / 20,000 which is not... ideal. But I've been laid out most of this week so far with a headache, so I will take it.

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

HP
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : 966 words which brings the total to 86,265 and it's all been bits-and-pieces writing, adding a little here and a little there. I think what I'm trying to make one chapter really ought to be two, and I don't really have a good feel for the pacing of it quite yet. So I've been chipping away at it and hopefully that'll sort itself out soon.

GOALS

2018 Total Wordcount Goal : 109,165 / 300,000

2018 Total Writing Days : 180 / 240


DECEMBER
And I think this is one of the last bits of housekeeping I've still got to do to wrap up 2018. (Still need to write up a couple of fic claims, and THEN I will be done!)

December Wrap-Up : And on that note, I finished the month with 26,588 words which was a bit of a shock even though it didn't meet my goal of 30k. December has historically been a pretty low-wordcount month for me writing-wise, so having it be the most productive month of 2018 was quite a surprise! I owe most of it to writing on a deadline, turns out I'm pretty useless at getting anything done without one... A total of 2 WIPs got new words, with all 26,588 words going into 2 HP fics, one of which was started and completed this month.


JANUARY
This is always such a wonderful time of year for me, where everything feels fresh and new and where all sorts of lofty goals suddenly seem achievable. I suppose that's one advantage of being so ridiculously late on it, that now that feeling's faded and I think the goals I'm setting for the remainder of the month are pretty reasonable.

January Wordcount Goal : 10k and honestly that might be aiming a bit high considering we're nearly halfway through the month and my wordcount so far is zero.

December Fics to Focus On
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : Currently 84,923 words and am ready to pick it up again. I think our time apart has done us both some good, and after rereading it from the beginning I have a clearer idea of what I'm doing and where it needs to go. Estimated total wordcount, 170k.

☆ ex-erised fic (working title) : Currently 61,286 words and I've recently picked up a bit of momentum on it, to the point where I think I can get it finished without too much more trouble if I can just keep it going. (Just for you, Grace!) This was originally Erised Attempt #2 back in 2016, and was originally meant to be only ~30k, so you can see why it got abandoned. But I like it, I'm having fun writing it, and I'm pretty excited to share. Estimated total wordcount, 90k.

GOALS

2018 Total Wordcount Goal : 82,577 / 300,000

2018 Total Writing Days : 161 / 240


NOVEMBER
Managing this on time for once! And now that we've finally hit the last month of the year, it's sinking in just how woefully, pathetically short of my goals I've fallen. I plan on doing GYWO again next year, and I'm going to seriously adjust my goals I think. Hope springs eternal and all that, but I'd really fucking like to meet a goal I set for myself.

November Wrap-Up : And on that note, I finished the month with 9,361 words which was close--so very very close!--to meeting my goal of 10k. I mean, I'm thrilled with 9k words for this time of year, between the stuff I had going on both in fandom and IRL, but... so close!! A total of 4 WIPs got new words, with 7,966 words going into 2 HP fics, and 1,395 words going into 2 MCU fics. (I think that technically Venom is not in the MCU, but it's Marvel so I'm just sort of lumping it in there.)


DECEMBER
I really honestly have no idea what I'm even doing this month. That's fairly typical of this time of year, though.

December Wordcount Goal : 30k which is probably fucking bananas. But I've had some awesome inspiration recently, and I finally (finally, FINALLY!) invested in a nice mechanical keyboard and it came in last week and the childish thrill of typing on clickety-clackety keys has not yet worn off. Plus, I'd really really like to break 100k for the year, and I'm hoping that if I aim high... well. We'll see what happens.

December Fics to Focus On
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : Currently 84,923 words and have made barely any progress on it last month ugggggh. Estimated wordcount, 170k.

☆ ex-erised fic (working title) : Recently have had a burst of inspiration/motivation on this one and have actually been making some excellent forward progress on it, so I'm just going with it. \o/

This has been the longest week ever. Between travel and the election and all the goddamn noise going on next door, I haven't been able to get much done. But I did sort through and reorganize the WIP Folder of Doom, which was just mindless enough that I was able to get my brain to focus on it.

New words this week : 1297 words which brings my November wordcount to a total of 1297 / 10,000 which is not as much progress as I'd hoped for.

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

HP
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : 435 words which brings the total to 84,923 words and I'm still in Chapter 6. I'd hoped to have that finished in October, but didn't make it.

MCU
☆ smutty steggy thing (working title) : 862 which brings the total to 1825 and it's coming along. I'm not quite used to these characters so I'm a little nervous, but I think I like what I've got so far? I'm thinking that it won't be more than 1-2k more to finish it off, so I'm pretty optimistic about getting it finished and posted soon.

Real Life continues to be a thing. Adulting is the worst. And I am tired. So very very tired.

New words this week : 3366 words which brings my October wordcount to a total of 11,931 / 30,000 which is awesome. I'm really really excited about the bits I'm working on now, and my wordage is showing that.

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

HP
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : 3366 words which brings the total to 84,392 words and you will notice that this is a BIG difference in total wordage from last week. What happened was, I ended up cannibalizing an older fic that's been sitting untouched since 2013. I'd done it for NaNoWriMo and then put it aside to write Stop All the Clocks, and by the time I came back to it I realized that it needed a ton of reworking and I just... never got around to it, and then somewhere in the last couple of years I realized that I was never going to.

But there are a couple of subplots in it that line up with what I was already planning to write for my FTH fic, and after reading back through it I thought that I could actually salvage a bunch of it this way. I pulled out about 30k of potentially-usable words, even though I'm sure that what I actually end up using is going to be nowhere near that much. The characterizations are different, the pacing of their relationship is completely different, and I'm having to completely rewrite even the most usable parts of it... for something thrown together in a few weeks, NaNo 2013 has been pretty impressive in how tightly-constructed it is. There's so much in it that I love and want to use, and can't because it won't make sense without the rest of it. For now, I think there are about 4 scenes (of mostly-dialogue) I know for sure that I can use (albeit, with some pretty extensive rewriting) and the rest... Well, a lot of it might get thrown out entirely by the time I've written my way to the point in the story where it might go because I know how stories evolve as they hit the page. But I lumped it all into my FTH wordcount already because I think that I can keep a more accurate tally of daily wordcounts this way rather than if I keep adding bits in piecemeal as I go, even though I know that the total fic wordage might start looking a little wonky as I start deleting big chunks as I decide I don't want to use them.

So, I'm excited! We'll see how it goes!

New words this week : 4448 words which brings my October wordcount to a total of 5689 / 30,000 which is still a little behind pace for my goal, but almost 6k!! Just a third of the way into the month!! I've also been taking some time to read from HD-Fan-Fair, which I'm also a little behind on, but still not doing bad at all for trying to balance reading + writing this week.

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

HP
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : 4448 words which brings the total to 48,643 words and I'm coming up on the end of Chapter 5!! Pushed through the part I thought I'd have trouble with (which did in fact turn out to be a little bit of a slog to get through) and am now solidly into the parts that I've been super excited to get into. Chapter 6 is going to be so much fucking fun to write and I'm almost there!! :D

GOALS

2018 Total Wordcount Goal : 62,177 / 300,000

2018 Total Writing Days : 125 / 240


SEPTEMBER
Meant to do this yesterday but got distracted halfway through and forgot about it. Still, one day late is better than I've been managing lately, so... that's a partial success?

September Wrap-Up : I finished the month with 13,658 words which is AWESOME and more than clears the goal I'd set of 10k so I'm all sorts of fucking thrilled about that! A total of 4 WIPs got new words, with 13,229 words going into 2 HP fics and 429 words going into 2 MCU fics, one of which was a new idea. I also finished and submitted my Fan-Fair fic, and wow does it feel good to have finished something!


OCTOBER
Setting my goal a little bit higher this month, even though I don't have a deadline to help keep me motivated. But I'm not sure that I'm going to have quite as much writing time in November, so I'm trying to get ahead on some of the words that I'm not going to be making from skipping out on doing NaNoWriMo.

October Wordcount Goal : 30k which is probably bananas, but one day into the month and I'm already over 1k, and after I post this entry I'm going to try to hammer out the next scene I'm working on in my FTH fic.

October Fics to Focus On
☆ Fandom Trumps Hate : Currently 44,020 words and am still pushing through Chapter 5. I have a couple of scenes that I think are going to take some wrestling to get pinned down the way I want, but there's a partially written scene that I've been eager to get back to, and then starting in Chapter 6 is a lot of the sort of magical theory-type stuff that I've always loved writing best. Estimated wordcount, 110k.

☆ smutty steggy thing (working title) : Currently 963 words and I'd like to get it finished and posted this month because MCU Kink Bingo only runs through the end of October, and I'd kind of feel bad to have taken a bingo card and then not do anything with it. It's probably close to a quarter written, I'd say, so I just need to find the focus to sit down and fill in the unwritten bits and then get it posted. Estimated wordcount, 4k.