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Writing Report #4

6.23.25 - 6.24.25

Welcome to the final update of RMDO!

✨ words written:4,571 💫 WIP total word count:30,473 🌙 mood: 🎉 🪐 notes:

As of yesterday I've officially hit 30k words in Project Hare and thus accomplished my Rough Draft Month goal! And everyone cheered!

As I mentioned in my last update things are busy for me this week and are going to get especially busy starting on Saturday, so I was glad to be able to finish early before all the craziness kicked in. Also, I wanted to do a last update a bit early before I forgot about Tumblr's existence for the duration of however long it takes life to settle down again.

So! How am I feeling? Well, really good! Since Project Hare is a novella and I'm terrible at estimating word counts I did kind of expect to finish it during RDMO, but the fact that it didn't fit into 30k words does not worry me. To my knowledge the upper limit for a novella is 40k words and I think I have a decent chance of fitting into that based on how much of the story I have left to write. Anyway I'm trying not to think about word count too much right now because that's more of a draft 3 kind of problem for me. I also have a feeling I'll be cutting quite a large chunk of words from the beginning of the story because I think I was meandering around a lot with my words when I first started writing. Trying to find the story's voice and figure out how to best go about scenes and all that kind of stuff. I'm quite happy with the way the drafting process has gone though. I think I have a really good foundation to build upon in future drafts.

With all that in mind, what's next? I'm going to take a little writing break, but I'm hoping to get back into it starting July 1st. It might be a bit slow going because I'm actually starting an internship in July, but I have a plan in place for when I'm going to fit in writing around that, so the goal is to finish the first draft of Project Hare in July. After that? I don't like to plan too far ahead in regards to my writing. I can be kind of chaotic when it comes to creative pursuits and I've found that giving in to the chaos and just letting my brain work on anything it wants to work on--even if that means keeping a million projects on the go at once--yields better results in the end. Will I go back to SunDove in July? Unlikely, but certainly possible. I do have a new WIP idea that I've been marinating in my brain juices recently, but who knows if I'll still be in the mood to work on it after I've finished Project Hare. Certainly not me.

Basically, I'm just along for the ride. Hope you'll join me! <3

If you want to know more about Project Hare you can read the wip intro here.

If you’ve read this far here’s an excerpt from the draft as a little treat :)

But she was too incoherent, Georgie's words too horribly lovely. She could only sob harder and cling to her favorite human for dear life.

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Notes game/Challenge

So I have... a few things I need to do for Stars of the Sky. A lot of which is stuff that happens in the background in a story over the story itself. So I am choosing to seek outside motivation because my brain hasn't given me the appropriate motivation otherwise.

So this is a notes game/challenge thing.

You can spam as much as you want to. I won't limit any one person to a certain number of notes. But for that reason, I will be starting this at a bit higher number so one person doesn't just zoom me through all the things. (Though I won't complain about that either-)

30 notes - Work on information for Family Lines 45 notes - Work on information for Mating Bonds 60 notes - Work on information for Mating Bands 75 notes - Draw Hades' parents mating bands 90 notes - Work on Hades' Character Information 105 notes - Draw Hades' parents family line rings 120 notes - Work on information for the Magic System 140 notes - Work on information for the Ancient Gods 160 notes - Work on information for Settings 180 notes - Work on the History 200 notes - Work on the Lore 220 notes - Work on information for Other Characters 240 notes - Work on Naming Conventions 260 notes - Work on Family Information 280 notes - Work on Foods 300 notes - Work on Clothing 320 notes - Work on Animals 340 notes - Draw Hades for her Intro 360 notes - Outline Stars of the Sky

Also reblogs will count as ten notes (because I don't want this to be painful-) Comments will equate to five notes Likes are one note

I've never done this before so I don't know if this will ever get to be considered finished-

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blank WIP intro format, free for the taking

unless you want to credit me and thereby sneakily get some more eyes on your project, which I would not be adverse to.

I, personally, like making little graphics, so I include one of those first and then do the word part. but you don't have to do that. you can just do the word part.

TITLE: what's in a name? a story, I guess. GENRE: be as creative or specific as you like, darling SETTING: where does the story take place? tell me! TROPES: you get what goes here STORY: the combination of character and plot, what is the main thing that we're reading this story for, a tagline, if you will, a light summary

THE CHARACTERS: 

you can be funky and list your characters how you want

PLOT AND KETTLE: the timeline of events, the shenanigans, the points of HAPPENINGS that the characters interact with.

STUFF THAT IS NIFTY: worldbuildy bits and things that don't fit into the other categories. character bits that are more complicated. whatever you like.

STATUS CHECK: how far along are you in the process? please state for the record.

a lot of people have found this useful, I'm really glad my chaotic brain calmed down that one day and thought of it, and now here, many more people can use it and not have to calm down their chaotic brains too. unless you want to.

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if you're writing and find yourself thinking 'this is too weird/gross/offputting/esoteric/ambitious/catered to my specific interests + sure to push away a broader audience' that is the devil speaking and it is a lie. you are already firmly on the right path and you need to double down

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You've heard of using AI to write a novel. Now, get ready for the (infintely better) sequel: using a human to write an AI!

Join me in a hell of my own making, where I intentionally try to write sentences that sound like they were pasted straight from ChatGPT.

Why am I doing this? Because I hate myself. Why not just use ChatGPT to write the AI parts? Because I respect myself. The machines are not better than me! I can do everything ChatGPT can do, even sound like ChatGPT. It wants to take my job. I'll take its first!

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Writing Report #3

6.16.25 - 6.22.25

Of course now that we're three weeks in I'm picking up pace. Just took me two weeks to warm up.

✨ words written:10,289* 💫 WIP total word count:27,208* 🌙 mood: ❣️ 🪐 notes:

I've felt very inspired this week. Not just to write or by this story, but by stories in general, and by how stories affect us, lift us up. I blame the fact that I'm in a fiction podcast phase again.

Anyway. All this to say I've been possessed by the writing muses and started typing like a madman every time I sit down to work on the story. Which is great! I'm definitely not complaining. It feels amazing to shed all my inhibitions and just write and be inspired. I was definitely somewhat mired in self doubt about whether I was doing the story justice (not a relevant or beneficial instinct for a first draft) before this point so It's nice to feel free.

I've also been doing some writing sprints with a friend of mine which no doubt helps generate motivation as well. I am now way ahead of schedule with my RDMO25 goal. Definitely on track to get to 30k words by the end of the month. I won't be finishing the book, but I think I'll come pretty close to it which works out just fine.

At the end of next week life's going to get a little hectic so I'm hoping to hit the goal by Friday night at the latest. Then, once the life craziness passes it'll be time to wrap up the story! But I'll talk about that more in my final RDMO update.

If you want to know more about the project I’m working on you can read the wip intro here.

If you’ve read this far here’s an excerpt from the draft as a little treat :)

Perhaps it was foolish to buy a dead woman a gift, one she would only get so much use out of. But so was allowing a dead woman to kiss you, to hold you. So was drawing out the dead woman's life for as long as you could. So was sentencing her to death in the first place. One could even argue that it was foolish to ever know her. They were far past that now. There was no turning back.

*numbers may change if I decide to write more today

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ADVANCE READER SIGN UP: OPEN

SIGN UP HERE // BOOK PREVIEW // LINKS

Ten years ago, a masked cult known as The Worthy of Absence was entirely destroyed in an act of self-sacrifice. Trent is one of few survivors. He now works with Chris– an utterly intolerable true crime fan who is obsessed with the cult and has no idea that Trent is a part of it. When a chance encounter pulls Chris into what remains of the cult's activities, Trent reluctantly starts to get closer to him, setting them onto a path of violence, death, and worst of all– romance. 100k words • 290+ pages • m/m horror romance

MY FRIENDS THE TIME HAS COME!!

Did you watch Scream or Reanimator or The Passenger and think 'man this would be so much better if they kissed'? I HAVE TAKEN MATTERS INTO MY OWN HANDS and written an entire book about it.

I'm looking for some lovely people to read the final draft of The Absence is a Cat and provide some basic feedback ahead of publishing online! All I ask is that you are 18+ (there's spicy scenes) and are willing to answer some questions afterwards via a google form.

If you are at all interested in finding out more you can sign up here!

If you aren't interested but know someone that might be, it would make my day if you could spread the word! This book was written out of frustration that there's not more like it, so I would love to find some other people that feel the same :)

Feel free to comment/DM any questions!

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has this been done

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Glad to announce so many friends I follow here are into vampires I now have one little vampire short story

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Writing Report #2

6.9.25 - 6.15.25

Officially about halfway through Rough Draft Month !

✨ words written:7,789 💫 WIP total word count:16,919 🌙 mood: 🌊 🪐 notes:

Hello again!

Most of my writing week was spent on vacation and it ended up being harder to write in the midst of that than I had expected. Turns out writing retreat vibes are harder to achieve on a trip where no one else is writing. But! I still consider the week a rousing success. Some days it was definitely a struggle to get to my wordcount goal for the day, but I still achieved it every day so a win is a win.

Now I just need to adjust back to regular life and my old routine and regain some of the energy that's been drained via disruption of routine as well as spending a lot of time around people.

I've got this. You've got this.

We've got this.

If you want to know more about the project I’m working on you can read the wip intro here.

If you’ve read this far here’s an excerpt from the draft as a token of my appreciation:

She had forgotten how much she adored the Otherlands. They were a delightful mix, a wonderful hodge-podge all jumbled together. Birch trees with their silvery bark brought to mind cold, bitter winters, while the cherry blossoms screamed Spring and the verdant moss that grew over anything and everything wrapped the whole scene up in a cozy bow.

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The most frustrating experience as a writer is having a clear vision in your mind of the story you want to tell but being too afraid to put pen to paper for fear of failing to do the story justice. I’m so scared that my actual execution will fail to meet my expectations that I’m paralysed to even start.

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Affirmations:

There's no such thing as too many semicolons

No, having multiple sentences with semicolons in the same paragraph isn't too many

Anyone who tells you otherwise is crazy. Keep adding those semicolons 🩷

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fantasy characters love staring into fires like it’s a personality trait

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“no one wants to read this” ok but you do. and that’s enough. and also wrong. i want to read it. hand it over

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removing distractions isn't enough anymore, I need to be sent to the seaside like a sickly victorian woman in order to get some writing done

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Writing Report #1

6.1.25 - 6.8.25

First week of Rough Draft Month !!!

✨ words written:9,130 💫 WIP total word count:9,130 🌙 mood: 😊 🪐 notes:

Who’s hyped!? I’m hyped!

This was a wonderful start to my Project Hare drafting process! Honestly, I don’t even have much to say because it was pleasantly uneventful. I finished up my weekly goal a day early and am now officially 559 words ahead of schedule. It’s been delightful finally getting to delve into this world and bring these characters to the page. I love them both so dearly and I’ve even had a few realizations of the “oopsies I made this character have to learn how to deal with this specific issue because I’ve been dealing with it lately and I didn’t realize until I started writing” variety. Always a good time when that happens, am I right?

I’m on a little beach-y type vacation now which I’ve decided to treat as my own personal writing retreat even though my family is here with me and none of them are writing. But it’s that kind of vibe, y’know?

So, yeah! Exciting stuff!

If you want to know more about the project I’m working on you can read the wip intro here.

If you’ve read this far here’s an excerpt from the draft as a token of my appreciation:

There was still so much she wanted to do, to accomplish. But, this would likely always be the case for her. She was a woman with a hole in her stomach. Once she had had a different form, but it had long since been molded by hunger. And all of her striving, all of her ambition, it had an expiration date—this she knew like it was her own heartbeat. Ironic, that. Georgie had done so much here at Kalmar. More than she had even expected upon arriving, though she came with a suitcase full of wild imaginings, extravagant dreams. She had exceeded even these. Well, most of them anyway. There was one that, she suspected, would continue to bother her. Not for long. Georgie thought of inky eyes, wild curls. Something else she knew well enough to write a book about. Then, she turned away from Kalmar University and walked out into the world of adventure one final time.

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i think its so awesome that ocs exist. u can just make up some girl and put so many problems in her head