#I'll start planning for camp nano in July

[leave-her-a-tome]

[sovvannight]

My Year in Writing, 2023

And this is another situation where I wish I could pull up last year's post to use as a pattern, but I can't because my writing blog got deleted, so I'm feeling a little lost.

But I can at least see the graphs I made last year in my writing progress tracking spreadsheet, so that give me a bit of a hint as to what I would normally post here.

I wrote 183,465 words on 2023. It's my third year in a row of increases (thank you, Julie and the Phantoms!) and my first year over 150k, which was my goal for the year. I'm at 856,124 words since 2017.

I'm also super excited about winning NaNo for the first time since 2017. November was my most productive month, followed by February, when I spent most of the month working on Baby, This Rain Changes Everything, which I guess I was just excited about because I had a lot of 1k+ days.

Part of the 44k increase from 2022-2023 was due to NaNo, but I also increased my average daily word count for non-NaNo months from 291.8 to 387.5. And I do write every day--December 31 was day 2,395 of my write-ever-day streak.

What I Wrote

Other than 2% of my words for the year for Garfield, a Teen Wolf Movie fix-it fic, everything else was for Julie and the Phantoms: 81% on various scenes for Electric Boogaloo, 12% for Baby, This Rain Changes Everything, and 5% on two different AU fics that I may convert to original fiction instead.

Plans for 2024

So, the saying goes something like, "Write a million words, throw them away, now you're ready to be a writer." I didn't realize it until I was writing this up, but I'm going to hit a million words next year.

And I have to admit, in the last few months, I've started to think about writing and publishing original fiction. And that's partly because the JatP fandom is dying--I'd think the drop in kudos was because I suck, but I've seen declining kudos for new fic by big name fans, too, so it's not just me. No judgement on the fandom, it's just the nature of things. I've left a couple of fandoms myself because of a new hyperfixation. But at the same time, I had this AU idea in the spring, and thought to myself, are you really going to write a whole novel-length fic for 20 kudos?

I think I'd rather earn a couple hundred bucks instead, which seems like about what I would net if I self-pub. And I'm poor, so any little bit helps. Plus, I don't know, I just feel ready. It's partly because I read some pretty bad books this year, and it's like, OK, this got published, and in one case it got optioned and made into a TV show, and I feel like I can do better.

So, my plan for 2024 is:

Write the last ~9 scenes for Electric Boogaloo.

Write season 3, AKA the Electric Boogaloo sequel. Boogaloo is probably going to reach somewhere around 300k total, but I'm aiming for something more like 150k-200k for the sequel.

Finish the two Arrow fics I still can't give up on, even though I haven't worked on them in years. One just needs another 2k, and the other maybe 15k.

Transition to original fiction, taking the idea I had for a JatP boy band AU and "filing off the serial numbers" as I go. (Or something else--who knows what I'll be most interested next fall!)

In terms of word count goals:

I want to hit 50,000 for NaNo in November. For April and July Camp NaNos, I want to write 1,000 a day, so 30k and 31k.

I want to take it somewhat easy in the three months after NaNo events, so May, August, and December - 600/day, or 18,600 words/month.

For the other six months out of the year, I'm going to try doing "NaNoWriWeek" or 1,667 words/day for the first week of the month and then 600/day for the rest of the month, which will get me around 25k per month.

All of this totals up to about 300,000 words.

[inadreamerslibrary]

camp nanowrimo july 2023: day 07

word count: 10,032 / 40,000

first week of camp nano complete! and omg i hit 10k words today and i'm officially a fourth of the way towards 40k! i'm surprised i managed to do so since today i felt very little motivation to write. i didn't do my afternoon writing session where i write half of my daily goal so i had to do everything in the evening. i managed to pull together over 1k words in an hour and ended around 11:30pm (cutting it a bit close as always).

the lack of motivation came from what i talked about a couple days ago; chapter three is where things start going downhill and i'm lowkey scared to write it. i'm most likely going to make myself sad while writing it so i'll just have to accept it and push through. i'm almost to the part where everything starts going wrong, so i'll probably reach it sometime tomorrow. wish me luck :'(

my favorite line that i wrote today:

"On a normal day, I would head to the witches’ study or directly to [name]’s office to see what she wanted [other name] and I to work on that day.  She would also bring us breakfast and tea to have while she discussed her plans with us."

(there's nothing special about this line, i just wish i was living in it lol)

[little-peril-stories]

Camp Nano July 2023

How It Went

Um, not how I expected.

The good:

I managed to write every day. I'll confess here that, because we went on vacation and were all over the place most days, I sometimes updated my word count for the day, wrote more, and saved that 'update' for the next day because I like getting the badges. (All the writing was done in July though! I did all the outlining and planning work between February and June, but I didn't start writing till July 1.)

My outline was helpful. I didn't spend a lot of time agonizing over "what happens next" because I always knew, even if the specifics were a little fuzzy. My process boils down to 'plan hard, but allow for deviation & exploration' and it seems like that is still a system that works for me.

Some of the writing was OK. I mean, it's a writing challenge and I was going fast. She gonna need work. But I often smiled while I was writing, or when I was rereading scenes, and that's a good indicator for me. :)

The , uh, well, you see:

I wasn't always feeling it. Trying to track exactly why I felt this way has been tough. I'm willing to admit it could have been burnout (or something adjacent to it) since Camp Nano began right on the heels of the end of the school year, and I had just finished the whirlwind of writing The Queen of Lies in a month, a Thing That Happened that we may never understand. Maybe I started planning too early and the passion had faded since the height of my enthusiasm as I plotted it out. Idk. Maybe it was being on vacation, constantly being around people and having limited time to myself to really feel the story and the words and the everything. Idk.

The romantic tension isn't there. And this one hurts, because I (personally, as someone who is actually really new to writing romantic tension lol) think I did this really well in TQOL, so what's different here? (Aside from diff characters, diff story, okay I get it, you know what I mean.)

I was distracted. And this one is purely my fault. I was editing chapters of TQOL for posting throughout this time, too, and even though it takes a different kind of brainpower, it was often the task that called to me more.

Overall:

So, I'm SUPER proud of myself for achieving my Camp Nano goal of 31,000 words (1000 words/day) on July 28. But I kind of wonder if maybe it wasn't quite the right time to write this story.

We'll see how the last three days of July go (I want them badges, dang it), but the true test will be in August, when I have no goal set for myself. Will I focus on the finally finishing Book 1 and letting humans read it? Will I just work on TQOL? Will angsty heist wip rise again? Or will the passion for Book 2 (which I was SO EXCITED TO WRITE) return the moment the daily word goal is gone? (lol what a joke we all know I'm gonna write Will's POV chapters for TQOL.)

Thanks for reading this pointless ramble.

[words-after-midnight]

Summer writing schedule and major updates ✨

Hi all! Sorry for dropping off the face of the Earth for the past couple weeks, it's been a Time™. But I'm back and I have some pretty major writing updates to share!

The big one is that I'm delaying my query start for Life in Black and White to Fall 2023. Kind of a bummer because it feels like the millionth time I've delayed something for this project, but I've had some major delays with the revisions due to both work and being blocked on various sections involving rewrites, and I'm just not ready to query right now. I don't have a finalized agent list, I don't have a finalized package, and I don't want to half-ass my line edit in order to query sooner. I'm also quite burnt out from the revisions and, after the last chapters are done and sent out to my current readers, I want to shelve the project for at least a month before starting the line edit. Tentative summer schedule is therefore as follows:

Summer schedule:

June: Reading (!!), preparing query materials for Life in Black and White, probably zero drafting Supernova. July: 20K on The Dotted Line's draft for Camp NaNo, Life in Black and White line edit August: Query prep, Life in Black and White line edit

Other updates:

I've officially chosen a pen name and, in the coming months, I'm planning to build a sideblog (under my pen name) that will double as an online "portfolio" for my own writing so I can build some kind of "official" online presence in advance of querying. This (words-after-midnight) will remain my main blog, a more "informal" space for reblogs, community interaction, featuring and supporting other people's writing, and where I talk about my WIPs.

The idea is for the sideblog to feature a selection of my own writing (shortform stuff), regular updates, and hopefully a proper (longform) blog, something I've wanted to do for years now. I'm currently planning for the blog to cover mostly writing-related topics, and aiming to build up a "reserve" of at least 6-12 posts before starting. This is just so I can ensure regular (probably monthly to start) updates since, as you know, life tends to happen. Some topics I'm hoping to cover (feel free to suggest others):

A crime writer's thoughts on the true crime genre

Tips and resources for research in writing

Resource posts on writing-related topics (not to toot my own horn, but I used to do this professionally, so I'm pretty good at it)

My books of the year (in December)

This is mostly nebulous for now, I'll definitely update as it all solidifies. For now, back to revisions...

[readythefanons]

desk dispatch (early May 2023)

writing desk updates from your pal reddy

desk status: under control (patches of the desk's surface are visible, and the stacks do not exceed 3 inches in height = manageable but in the middle of some things)

General notes from April:

I used April's camp NaNo (NaNoWriMo=national novel writing month, which is in November. Camp NaNo is for self-set goals and is held in April and July) to work on an outline! I outlined the Petra/Sylvain fic, and I wrote about 10k >_> the outline is mostly there, but there are a few sections in the middle that could use some more attention

I finally succeeded in winning the "write every day" achievement for (camp) NaNo!!!!!

I posted "Place" in April which is an Adopted!Hilda AU. If you're reading this post, you probably saw at least one of the eleventybillion promos I scheduled for the fic. (five. It was five.) I started that fic in 2020, so it feels great to post it

What's in the can: NOTHING. I have nothing lined up to post. But...

The Leonie fan anthology (AKA Sunflower: A Leonie Fanzine) is shipping/has shipped! I have a fic in that one, and I hope that soonish I'll be able to post that fic to AO3 :) That piece is titled "not a circle, but a spiral"

I am poking the Leonie/Lorenz SciFi AU again. In a fit of productivity, I re-outlined the thing and I hope to poke the draft itself soon.

I wrote and edited 3k of thoughts on pronouns and personhood in the book Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. When I finally hit post on that, you'll see it on my book blog @reddy-reads but I might also bump it over here because why not. embarrassment is for other people. (disclaimer: not every blog on tumblr with "reddy" in the name is connected to me, i promise)

Miscellaneous thoughts: outlining

I might... love... outlining? To be determined. But it felt so good to work on the Petra/Sylvain outline, and it felt good to work on the SciFi AU outline. So IF these fics actually get written, then I might never go back to my no-outline ways.

What I liked about it: it was so satisfying to think about all the parts of the story and how they were supposed to fit together. It was useful to be able to plan out which characters would show up when and where. It was useful (but often felt bad) to realize that certain scene ideas I had weren't working (usually because there wasn't enough concept there). It was SO much easier to go "wait this isn't working" after only writing a few sentences instead of pages and pages. It was much easier to go "oh I need to introduce X earlier" in an outline than after writing (and posting!!!) whole chapters. It feels good to have a plan about where the story goes and how it reaches the ending.

Outlining (it's new to me): My other multichapter fics ("all things considered could be worse" in Netflix!Daredevil fandom, and of course the "Pull It Together" duology) were written without an outline! I knew generally what I wanted to happen and how the ending should feel, but I didn't know how I was going to get from A to Z.

(Actually... those fics BOTH started as oneshot responses to prompts on kinkmemes... and... the Petra/Sylvain fic was inspired by a post on a kinkmeme, and it was originally conceived as a oneshot. So, uh, credit for finally recognizing a pattern!)

Why I'm finally trying outlining: I've become increasingly aware that I have limited time and energy. I wish I didn't. I wish I felt limitless, but the last few year-or-so has just taught me that I only have so much bandwidth. (Which is a good lesson, even/especially if it's not really welcome.) So since I'm admitting that I have limited time and energy, why shouldn't I help myself spend more time doing what I enjoy (writing!) and less time doing what I dislike (not writing because I'm stuck). So that's part of why I have this fresh interest in outlining.

The other thing about outlining is that--well Leonie and Lorenz's stories were fundamentally pretty simple. The Matt & Foggy (Daredevil again) story was even simpler because it was a slice of life. It was hard to get truly lost there. The Petra/Sylvain story needs to fit together a little more precisely, and that means prewriting. AKA writing the whole thing, then editing and posting. I'm not looking forward to giving up my post-as-you-go ways, but maybe I'll end up loving it.

The last part of the "why suddenly outline and prewrite" puzzle is a little... uh... it's a little sensitive. I have ideas about Petra and Brigid that I want to express, but the themes involved (colonialism/imperialism) are delicate. I want to give myself the option of really thinking it through & maybe even getting an extra set of eyes on it before putting it out on the whole internet to see.

So that's why I haven't been posting as much. I'm cooking up something big, I hope people will like it.

Final goodies

Fic rec: Ruu has written a Leonie/Lorenz fic called "Of Conduct, Of Manners." The Jane Austen influence wafts off the page. It updates regularly, and the whole thing is already written :D :D :D

Writing podcasts: I like the writing podcast "Writing Excuses" and "Fiction Writing Made Easy with Savannah Gilbo."

Media podcasts: I still adore "Be the Serpent." It's on hiatus but they have an extensive back catalogue. I got so many great media recommendations from them.

Writing essays: I enjoyed Diane Duane's blog post about her outlining style and approach. I used her "grocery shopping list" and it really helped me build my outline's backbone.

Writing essay 2: A discord pal shared this post with me, which helped me get past an outlining block. The bit about "stop writing scenes you don't want to write" was the magic ingredient for me.

Meal Idea: Vegetarian sushi bowl. Make some rice, season it into sushi rice. Add all the yummy veggies you want. Eat and enjoy. (I made the sushi rice, but then I mixed some riced cauliflower into it for extra bonus veggies. For topping I did avocado w a sprinkle of soy sauce, finely cut carrot, Japanese pickles [cucumber and ginger], and edamame. I also had nori to wrap it as I ate because I loooove seaweed.)

[aerialworms]

Writing update!

So! Since I finally finished posting Watching Over You (Hooray!!!! Yippee!!!!!), I can focus on finishing my other destiel WIPs! I did a poll a little while back to determine what my next fic should be, and the result was The Wrong Avalon, my BBC Merlin/SPN crossover, tied with my demon Dean fic.

However, my Star Trek brainworms have come back with full force, and I'm tempted to bash out the first fic in the Tales From The USS Impala series (I've already written the second and third ones) before I lose interest in it again. Plus, I started live-writing a silly Dean-and-Cas-go-to-couples-therapy-without-realising-its-couples-therapy fic over in the Profound Bond discord server that I feel bad about leaving half-finished.

Also, I'm gonna do Camp NaNoWriMo in July, and I need to decide on a project/goal for that. I'd like to write every day, and I might set my daily word count to 100/day, since I did 50/day in April Camp and that went pretty well.

So, I think my plan for the next month or so is this:

Bash out a discord message's worth of the therapy fic at least once a day until I finish it or July Camp starts, whichever's sooner

Reread/replot the demon dean fic (it was supposed to be a oneshot but it grew a plot and now I've gotta get a chainsaw and trim it back into coherency)

July Camp:

Goal: 100 words per day, every day of Camp

Write Rose by any other name (star trek au) first draft OR finish writing the demon dean fic depending on what makes my brain go brrr

Reread/double-check plot for Wrong Avalon (words don't count for NaNo)

Think up a title for the therapy fic, maaaaaybe edit and post it (otherwise I'll edit + post after Camp)

Also, would you lot be interested if I posted snippets/writing updates? I'm aware 99% of my blog is just reblogging memes and fanart but if people are interested I can keep y'all posted on how my WIPs are going.

[flowerslut]

When are we getting “Roots” and can you give a little synopsis?!

roots! oh I love to talk about roots! you will forgive me for the ramble that I am about to indulge in, but you have pressed the roots button!!! and I love!!! to talk!!! about roots!!!!!! 🤩🤩🤩🤩

I am very nearly done with it's outline (a huge fix for one of my biggest plot roadblocks hit me in a half-asleep, inspirational haze yesterday) and the first draft is about halfway done. I don't know when it'll be finished so I'm not sure when I'll start posting it, but I'm going to be working on it during camp nano in both April and July and at the very latest I'll also work on it for nano in November if I haven't finished it by that point. I do want to go through a couple of drafts before I start posting it, just to see what it's like to actually write a draft of something for the first time in my goddamn life. it's a whole lot but it's been a very VERY exciting process!!!!

I don't have an official synopsis yet but I can give you some more basic info! it's a post-breaking dawn canon-compliant fic (with some minor, minor tweaks that will genuinely barely be noticeable) that answers many questions, including: "How much longer do the Cullens have before something (or, someone) tries to take them out again?" 👀👀👀

it's the most ambitious project I've ever taken on and I'm, to put it frankly, obsessed with it! it's a 3rd-person story with multiple, alternating POVs (including a couple of characters who have been a fucking BLAST to write for) that centers on jasper's past, his and alice's relationship, as well as the relationships all the cullens have with one another. if I had to classify it with tropes and genres I'd call one part action/adventure, one part thriller/mystery, one part tragedy, and three parts horror with some non-linear storytelling, some messy complex relationships, and a whole lot of different interpretations of trauma. roots is like if every character in a murder mystery was already a murderer. roots is like watching nine different people argue and insist that no, they are the ones having the worse day out of all of them (they are all somehow both right and wrong all at once). your most reliable narrator in this story is, at their core, this meme:

some chapters read like an episode of the brady bunch. others read like a cut scene from a saw movie. a few chapters are like those TV stations that old catholic people like to watch where it's mainly just mass broadcasted near-constantly along with horrible shows where the vibes are so, so off. a couple of the chapters are like an evil, more fun version of the bachelorette. I really take you guys on a journey with this one and I'm so excited to be your guide

roots has been genuinely so fun to plan out and I wanna give a special shoutout to my jalice girlies for letting me rant and ramble about it to them for the past 7/8 months while I figure the story out. they're the true MVPs here

[raptorbox]

some midway-through-camp-nano thoughts (currently sitting at 9.9k/15k)

i've been rly enjoying this challenge i set for myself! doing a bunch of little stories/fics has been fun, but after the first week or so i started feeling like i was running out of ideas/steam. i've been able to keep going on an unbroken streak despite that, but every day it feels a little harder.

sometimes the writing itself feels like the hardest part, but for the most part once i get going i keep going, so long as i have an idea to work with.

the drabblethon challenge has let me experiment with some style stuff and topics and ships, so that's been a good time, too!

i'm thinking about doing july's camp nano, too, but i'm running into a few issues there. 1) going on vacation in july, 2) the problem of running out of ideas is stronger, and 3) i'm going to be doing some form of learning over the summer. so maybe i won't do july's camp nano? but i want to.

my brain is kinda mush atm so maybe this post isn't coherent, but yeah. i'm having a good time with the drabblethon challenge but maybe if i end up doing this again in july i'll just try to work on smth else or come up with a different challenge? maybe i'll write up a better list of ideas than the vague lists i have currently.

been thinking about doing the same word count goal (15k) but doing 500+ word fics as my challenge? so a new fic a day that's at least 500 words. idk! maybe i'll be working on a longer project by then. big shrug!

my commitment issues make longer projects scary to think about but it's a lot of energy to plan out so many different stories every day.

i think that's all i have to say about camp nano atm

[crwn-nrth]

Camp Nano July 2023: Accountability Thread

Intro to VH wip

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

This project was last year's July camp nano project, when I first started drafting this wip. Its now at 72k with half of a plan of what's going on

GOAL

I kept the word count goal for 25k (as that was last year's goal) but really I'm just going to try and reach the midpoint of Act 2. Right now, I am in the 25% marker of Act 2.

If all goes well, I'm setting a stretch goal to finish Act 2.

Daily word count goal: 500 words

Daily word count stretch goal: 800 words

UPDATES

I'm not really sure how I'm going to update this thread but I'm thinking at the end of every week (so like maybe every Sunday?). i'll figure something out

[bad-at-names-and-faces]

July Camp Nano is coming up soon (already here in some locations)

My plan is to edit a chapter a day of Prince of Two Realms, starting with chapter 11. Hopefully I'll start posting semi-regularly again.

[pens-swords-stuff]

Camp Nano April 2021 Announcement

It's that time of year folks, and I am definitely planning on going camping!

For Camp Nano April 2021, I will be working on three total projects.

Always the Bridesmaid

GOAL: 10k words GENRE: Romance, Mystery INCLUDES: Fake dating/marriage, rivalmance between a bisexual man and a woman, a serial murder mystery WIP INTRO HERE

Yes, I will be working on ATB for Camp Nano! I will hopefully have more to share about it in April now that my midterms are over and I will be actively working on it. I know a lot of you have been waiting for more, so thank you so much for your patience!

I have literally 0 plans for this WIP, and I'm going to pants my way through the entire thing and see where I end up. Don't even know who the culprit is yet, I'll figure it out as I go!

I'm not going into this Camp Nano project intending to start my first draft — though it may very well end up as one — I'm interpreting it more as an exploratory stage where I explore the characters and the world to see what happens.

I'm not very good about working on solo projects, so ATB will have a relatively low goal.

Harry Potter Fanfictions

GOAL: TBD WRITTEN WITH: @decantae

I haven't talked much about these projects much on my blog, but @decantae and I have been working on a series of private Harry Potter fanfictions for years where we decided to simply rewrite all the HP lore and history with our own original cast on our own terms, just for our fun. JKR's bigotry absolutely is embedded into the foundation of the series, and this is our way of reclaiming it for ourselves and making it better.

I do understand that Harry Potter and JKR can be a touchy subject for some; people who grew up on the series are dealing with JKR's transphobia in different ways, so I don't anticipate talking a lot about these projects to respect that. Please be reassured that we are engaging with the source material very critically!

We'll be working on these two projects specifically for our Camp Nano goal, and will be aiming for a cumulative word count goal for the both of them.

AMORTENTIA

A romance story about a large polyamorous relationship that takes place in the 19th century. Includes: An unwanted arranged marriage, Victorian-era courtships, class differences.

Amortentia is actually the project that made me fall in love with writing, and I've indirectly talked about it without naming it several times. If you've ever seen any post from me talking about my successes with writing or how much I love it, it was about this project. It is currently at 300k words (and on its second google doc since we hit the maximum amount of characters allowed on one gdoc) and is approaching its first anniversary in early April.

This was also our Camp Nano July 2020 project. We were churning out anywhere from 500-2000 words everyday during 2020 and it kept us sane during the onset of the pandemic. We stopped working on it a bit as McH got busy with their job and I got busy with grad school, and I'm really looking forward to falling in love with this all over again!

EPISKEY

A romance story that takes place during the wizarding war in the 1940s. Includes: Enemies-to-lovers romances between spies on opposites sides of the war, runaway teens causing chaos, and a literal found family.

Episkey is a project we've been discussing for a while now but haven't written anything for yet. We're taking Camp Nano as an opportunity to jump right in in the true McH-and-Undine fashion of having very little planned and letting the plot spiral out of our control into something amazing and grand.

I'll mostly be talking about ATB on my blog, but here is everything that I'm planning on working on now that Camp Nano is here so you guys have an idea of what I'll be doing :)

[veneritia]

Camp Nano Check-In; Week One

Date; July 1 - July 3

Projects; Mainly Saints and Sinners (title pending) and another personal project

Overall WC; 2293 words out of 25k

SaS WC; 1747* words out of ???

First week of nano is over! Admittedly I didn't get as much done as I might have because this week I also finished one of my summer courses so I was pretty much brain dead for most of the week. But I did write something down once everday this week which is pretty good. I'll be doing these weekly progress reports/check-ins to keep myself accountable, so keep on the look out if you guys are interested <3

Outside of the wtw server I haven't really talked about Saints and Sinners. And that's because I haven't introduced it....because I got this idea literally a couple days before Camp Nano started and it wouldn't leave me alone. So instead of working on WCTD, TSDNBU, or rotating between other shelved projects, I decided to just jump right on in to SaS with 0 plans. Ok maybe like 0.25% of a plan.

*Total words written for SaS is probably a lot higher but I switched POVs from 1.5 to 2nd person midway through a chapter because I just...could not write in that POV, so I rewrote most of what I had.

Excerpt under the cut. CW for implied death, cannibalism reference, and injuries

(I mean....you guys should know what my author brand is)

You wake in the barracks with the scent of burning flesh in your lungs and the taste of ashes on your tongue. The words of a psalm are already forming on your mouth, ready to spill from cracked lips. Holy holy holy. Praise be to the gods. You lick your lips and wonder if this is how it felt when god feasted upon the flesh of their brethren.

The barracks are a dark and damp place. Quiet except for the smattering of snores from the other soldiers around him, lined up in thin cots, unaware that one of their own had been blessed by Diarum with a second chance.

You sit up, divesting yourself of your linen tunic to feel around your right shoulder. It is smooth. Clean. The pucker of the scar that plagued you in the past, gone.

The siege of Villon, then. That was where you were. But the siege had been going on for the better part of a year before She came, and so you were still at a loss as to exactly when you were. A whisper in the back of your mind assured you that She would come soon.

And you must be ready.

[talysalankil]

Sooo forgot to update sprints over here but, Sunday (last one after midnight)

yesterday (monday) which was my most productive day this session (didn't feel like checking if it was my most productive ever?)

and today (just one 1:20 session)

so i'm like…kinda catching up? there's a decent chance at least.

and also building a serious backlog! I finished Kiss Me Once Kiss Me Twice, which I'll probably post throughout May since what was supposed to be one final chapter turned into two chapters + an epilogue. One of my zine fics is in a finished draft form so i'll probably be able to just edit and be done with it. I actually have a decent plan for the other zine fic, which I'll probably try to execute right now if I have any steam left. I just did a one-shot completely unprompted, have another that's not finished but on which I goot a good chunk of progress. One of the WIPs I actually meant to work on this camp nano has two chapters written out and I got inspired and did some serious outlining for the rest. I also randomly got inspired to start a project for an AFTG wip fic that i had in my drafts since last summer at least, even if it's just a few hundred words right now. Oh! And of course I already posted two one-shots that I wrote during camp (the Easter fic and Soven week fic). So all in all, not bad.

I still want to get some progress done on By Blood Undone, and I hope I'll get some motivation for that next. The idea would be to at least have a draft of the end of it before I start posting any other of my new WIPs, so if I can't do that, well, those WIPs i'm working on right now will stay in the drafts lol. But even if I can't finish it for camp nano (which sounds highly unlikely right now) I think I'll set a new goal on the nanowrimo website for May that's gonna be exclusively for BBU so I can attempt to finish it for good. If I can do that, then I'll have a solid backlog built up through the end of July (hopefully), which would be ideal so I can keep posting stuff while I work on the final FTEITS rewrite (I have decreed) in July.

Hope I'm not jinxing myself by making so many plans so far ahead. I hear optimism is a good way to keep the depression at bay, so I'm trying that out.