#the wip project

[the-wip-project]

Reach for the stars!

Hello writerly friends!

Today is the day! We're starting to reach for the stars!

From today, May 4th all the way to Sunday June 29, we'll be hitting our daily writing goals. A nice goal, low enough to easily meet it. And for your accountability posts, you'll be getting a star.

Here's how it works.

First, you'll be making a post about your daily goal (or weekly). Mention this blog so I can see it. That will get you a flower.

Then, in the coming days, I want you to make posts about your daily (or weekly) wordcounts. Mention @the-wip-project in each post so that I see it, and I will give you a star for your fabulous wordcounts, no matter how high or how low.

Every word counts, every little win counts! Get your stars, you deserve it.

Happy writing!

[bilightningwriter-writing]

Kay's Progress Report- Day 0

Alright, let's reach for the stars! I'm participating in @the-wip-project 's event, so hopefully, I can stay on top of writing at least weekly, if not daily.

Going to give myself a weekly goal of 2,000 words (averages to 285-286 a day). Purposefully making it low because with work and my migraines, I don't always get to write every day, even when I want to.

Including my other writing sideblog ( @bilightningwhumper ) within this goal because I'm hoping to get some May event prompts done. I'll just be posting them in chunks at the end of the month rather than each day.

[soldiermom1973]

Writing Accountability - 7/17/2025

363 words today. I had a scene pop in my head while I was at work for the Resident Evil thing. As much as I'm enjoying writing this, I'm anxious to get back into my Mass Effect stuff. Especially because the RE stuff won't see the light of day for quite some time.

Sometimes it's hard to know when to stop. Right now, I could keep going because the idea is there and very strong. But it's about 2am here and I need to get to bed. Sometimes, though, on my days off, I just want to keep going but I stop because I want to be able to meet my goal the next day. Is that cheating? Maybe...? The words are going to get written either way, but if I kept going I'd be able to get back to my ME stuff sooner.

The flip side to that is when I DO get back into my ME stuff, I'll have to spend some time reading what I've already got so I can dive back in.

Man, sometimes I wish my brain would just focus on one thing at a time instead of dancing every time a different muse starts to play the violin.

[tildeathiwillwrite]

Reach for the Stars: Day II (2)

Daily Word Goal: 280/100

Daily Word Goal Reached!

Daily Word Goal Exceeded!

Weekly Word Goal: 300/700

WIP Worked On: Whump Request 5/5/25

@the-wip-project

I decided to format this like the Dark Souls simply because it sparks joy

To make your own FromSoftware text image:

[marshvlovestv]

I already hit a block on Day 1 of the Reach for the Stars event, as I've been feeling very fatigued and might be coming down with something. There's no better day than the very first day to adjust my goals, though! My original hope was to write 400 words a day, but that was a bit of a stretch as my usual per-session minimum is only 200 words and this is supposed to be about small goals. So I've pared my daily goal for the next two months down to 200 words a day...

And today I wrote 232 words! Yay!

My secret hope is to keep 400 words as a stretch goal for days I'm feeling better than this, but if 200 is all I can do, that's okay!

@the-wip-project

[cheerfulmelancholies]

Reach for the Stars Writeblr Event!

It's been a hot minute since I've done anything like this, so I'm super happy @the-wip-project is doing this event!

I'll be focusing on weekly updates rather than daily because life, although I may sneak some mini updates in between my main posts. I'm super excited and I think that tracking my daily word count will really help motivate me to keep going. I'm gonna set the count at a nice and easy 300 words a day because sometimes I just don't have the energy to type for long. I'm curious how often I'll go over that though…

[prudereality]

okay life nerf or nothin’d me and it was all outta nerf. yeah i got nothin’d for a bit

despite that i am proving to myself i can get back on the horse! for @the-wip-project i added 433 words into a self insert fic this evening :) yippee!!

[mareebrittenford]

Weekly Writing Update

I'm participating in @the-wip-project Reach for the Stars challenge. And the next few weeks is about finishing things.

And in that vein I just wrote the final lines of a fic I've had hanging around for a while. Yay!

Stats for this week:

Words written: 3349

Things finished: 2

A piece for a flash fiction for the writingbattle.com Spring Microfiction competition, and a final chapter of a fanfic.

I didn't reach my goal of 4000 words, but eh, it's the first week, and I did write at least 150 words a day. So I'm calling it a win.

[incognitajones]

February 23 - My accountability this week is to finally get started!

I knew that I'd be behind on this project, since I had competing deadlines up until last weekend. But now the last one has passed, so I'm committing to working on my novel for 20-30 minutes a day this week - starting slow by re-reading the entire (extremely rough) draft and then fleshing out the second chapter.

@the960writers

[wickedwitchofthewilds]

Getting to Know Your Story (Week One)

This is my weekly check in for the event run by @the-wip-project (Thank you, @barbex)!

Note: I am also cross-posting my check-ins to my newsletter since I am working on my original fiction and I want to keep a better record of my progress

Characters

I am participating in an event on tumblr that is focused on getting to know your writing through writing. Geared mostly towards discovery writers and yet, I have been looking for an excuse—a challenge—to kick myself into a higher gear where UNTETHERED is concerned. While I have the entirety of it outlined, I don't know everything about my WIP. First drafts are where my characters show me who they are and because of that, things I have outlined are very much subject to change as my characters interact with the world I've crafted.

How apt that this week's theme was characters…

Underhill has a cast of characters that have shown up throughout the first two books with focus on a few, and UNTETHERED will be no different. However, this is also where I introduce my final protagonist and arguably, the most important to what is going to come in the last book and the rest of the series.

Deirdre

Deirdre is my first genderfluid character (using he/she pronouns) and I am eager to explore that in the context of the story and what they will become by the end of this series arc. For thirty years, Deirdre has believed she is human and nothing really special. She has worked in a diner for years to help support her mom, Fia, and foster siblings but the diner is dying a slow death and she has no idea what exists for her after. Being fat and gay in a small town means Deirdre has swallowed down a lot of hatred from others and tried to make herself smaller and agreeable in the hopes that people will find her more…acceptable. Deirdre yearns for acceptance so when she is told she just might be special after all, of course she jumps at the chance no matter how terrified she feels. This also means she takes failure very hard.

Claimed by the Morrigan, wanted by Reluvethel, seen by a divine entity that wishes to return to Underhill.

Everyone else has plans for Deirdre. For what his destiny is to be. But what about what he chooses for himself? I already know but now I have to guide him there. I have to push him beyond wanting to be liked and wanted, to believe in himself enough to take control of his life. But sometimes, believing in oneself begins because someone else believes first…

Selanna

Selanna has appeared in the first two books as a minor character. Sister to Odhran. Friend of Eletha and Senna. What is she beyond that? Selanna is the eldest child of Valeria, a hunter of beasts by trade, and strives to live in opposition of whatever her mother wants. She tries to protect her siblings, throwing herself on the pyre if she has to, and is angry with herself when she can't. After Meralith's injury while hunting, Selanna has burdened herself with the blame. Guilt eats away at her but she hides it. While she does not have to get involved with the plight of the witches and their potential destruction if Reluvethel wakes, she knows a genuine threat when she sees on. Not to mention, she has a certain affection for the ones she keeps crossing paths with.

When she meets Deirdre, she finds someone with low self-esteem trying to make sense of what's happening around them but not giving themselves time to actually understand. Deirdre throws himself into trying to prove himself and Selanna watches him get frustrated with his own failure over and over again. While she is impressed that Deirdre doesn't seem to give up no matter what, progress is slow coming when he won't address his fear. She offers herself as someone to talk to, and then as his protector when circumstance pushes them into the thick of things.

An offering Deirdre will repay when Selanna is the one in need.

Weekly Word Count: 1757

I had hoped for more this week. My original goal was to shoot for 500 words a day, but unfortunately, there were some outside things (insomnia) that were out of my control. All I can do is pick myself up and hope for better next week.

[the-wip-project]

Hey writerly friends, wanna do a WIP project in May?

Something like daily words and when you post about it, you'll get a star? What do you think?

Anybody interested?

[bilightningwriter-writing]

Kay's Progress Report- Day 6

Continuing my participation in @the-wip-project's Reach for the Stars event [see this post for context]

Got way more done today with 1143 words! More prompt+plot planning like I did on Day 4. Same story, too. Got a couple title ideas now as well, figuring it out slowly. Keeping this update short because head hurts and should go to bed.

But hey, 4,582 words now for the week, which is now over double the goal I had. Let's see if tomorrow I end with triple, lol. (probably not since I'm hoping to actually be at work tomorrow and it's Saturday, but still!)

[soldiermom1973]

Reach for the Stars: Day 3

Only 130 words today. I was honestly hoping to write more than that, but I'm working 2 jobs now and almost forgot to do this before heading in for the overnight one. Which means my word count for tomorrow will (hopefully) be a little higher than this since I'll try to write again when I get home.

It's hard to not be disappointed in myself because my counts are so much lower than I'm used to producing, whether it's for an event or me just actually writing. I keep reminding myself every word matters and is more than I had before I started.

@the-wip-project

[solavelyan]

Introspection for week 1 of @the-wip-project's Getting to know your story (through writing it).

I've really fallen out of the habit of doing regular solo writing in the last year or so (or… kind of longer than that, 2023 was comically horrible for us), so I signed up for this as an accountability thing to help me get back into it.

And then in the leadup to it I outlined a separate thing and realized, well, that's not really the point of the WIP Project thing, is it? So I grabbed another idea from the barrel that I keep putting off because I could never get my thoughts together to make a useful outline. We're wingin' it.

The characters are super familiar to me, but I'm grabbing them from a period of time where their motivations and drives are different from what I'm used to, specifically to force myself to ask if they've already developed the traits that make them who they will be in the future -- and a lot of the time so far, the answer has been "kinda but mostly not really", which is exciting to me.

And obviously it's fanfic, that's why I'm posting this on my Dragon Age sideblog (but I did sign up with ~bogunicorn I promise it's just me)

Set in 9:34 in Ostwick right after the Qunari uprising in Kirkwall, Thayet Trevelyan is a Templar in the Ostwick Circle -- a position that she took in order to protect her younger brother, who is her father's illegitimate son. Her closest friend and ally is Aeryk, the First Enchanter who ended up in a southern Circle after fleeing Tevinter 11 years ago. When she manages to convince her mother's family that her half-brother is actually her full brother so that they'll collect him from the Circle and bring him to Minrathous for freedom and education, she also finagles a legal escape from Ostwick for Aeryk -- with the condition that they marry before they make it back to Minrathous. They make it to Tevinter's capitol, and then… I don't know because I haven't gotten there but I hope it's good drama.

I've written Thayet a lot, especially in private storylines with my partner, and only gotten to write Aeryk a bit, since he's the wife's character that I have some shared custody of (which means I enjoy writing him a ton, I love him, he's so cool). Their interplay is really fun to write, especially when it feels so different from an RP-style narrative; when you do that kind of writing, the audience for it is really just the people writing the narrative and pretty much nobody else, so I tend to put in jokes or asides that I think will make my partner laugh or that I find fun but cheap. But if I'm writing for an audience of people I'm not in direct conversation with, the relationship with the audience is totally different, so the places in the narrative where there might be in-jokes, or very long conversations that are allowed to meander, or some other signs of RP-as-an-activity that don't really apply to solo writing, I end up having to fill in with details that anchor them so they're readable to strangers.

My wife is beta reading for me, and my first draft of the first chapter had some pacing issues that were making the foundation shaky, so to speak. It was just a bit too quick, and while the romance was certainly there, it was relying too much on the vibes of the other fanfic that it's sort of spun off from, when I really don't want to make that a pre-requisite read. In adding trying to mend a janky transition, I ended up going with a completely different tone than I expected.

I often end up feeling like my first draft of a thing lays down the text, and the second going forward are like laying moss on top of it to make the text more subtext-y. That was definitely true of what I worked on this week.

Initially, they got into a pretty nasty fight! It was damage grinding against damage and making sparks, and while I do love that for them, I had an issue with the transition between subjects in the conversation that I asked for help ironing out. And when I filled in the empty space that was fucking up the pacing, the tone went somber and stayed that way.

And I like it a lot more, because both characters are really showing off the inherent conflict in their flaws. I think it's more effective to see them both tired and beaten down and kind of disappointed rather than raising their voices or being openly dismissive of each other. They're both acting from places of shame and wanting to prevent more damage in the future, neither of them are advocating for the wrong thing, but their trouble to communicate comes directly from wanting to do the right thing and not knowing what to say to get there. And I find this internal conflict more compelling in the second draft, I think.

This is shaping up to be about trying hard to do the right thing when you have no good options, and also about self-doubt and finding your worth in situations that make you feel like you have none. And (this IS a romance) about holding onto the people you care about the most even when everything is trying to keep you from being happy with them.

Finally, one fucking fic that isn't inherently about the nature of grief. Nature must be healing a little bit.

[fontainebleau22]

OK, Week 1. Kicking off the project

What I'm writing: a story for a Big Bang challenge.

What it's about: it's a time-travel story (another one).

Progress so far: I have an outline of the whole thing, and have written some of the first section.

The above makes it sound like it's not a story for the challenge if it's all sketched out already, but there are some big underlying issues with it. First of all, I had the idea for the story, and usually when that happens I go into a writing fugue and start scribbling down scenes as they come flowing out, until I've reached a critical mass and can start editing and adding to the draft. But that's not been the case with this story. I'm struggling to write little sections, and I'm not experiencing the usual rush of inspiration.

I know what's happening in the story, but I realised that the events aren't really the engine of it - the story has to be about relationships, and that part of it is still missing. So at the moment I have events, but no drive that's making them happen. And then when I started thinking about relationships, I realised that I don't actually know what's going on between my characters. I can't decide on the status of their relationships at the outset, and because of that they're not reacting to each other - the narrative is just empty. So there is work for me to do to find out (a) where the characters are starting from and (b) how that affects their reactions to the freaky events which ensue.

So that's my plan for this coming week: write at least 200 words a day to get rolling on it, and decide the opening situation, in the hope that a lot of reactions will flow from that.

@the-wip-project, thank you for the challenge!