FA+
Shop
October 2023 Writing Update: Regressed a Bit
2 years ago
So yeah, the title gives a bit away again, heh. This month was an echo of some of my previous months in some ways. Mainly, I still hit my wordcount goals while being sucked back into hyperfocusing on COTP again.
Yeah, I know, I know, I was making such good progress at balancing out my focus between projects this year! It stinks to backslide like this. My muse kinda just grabbed me by the neck and was like "ENOUGH OTHER STUFF, NEED MORE COTP!!!"
I had no shortage of other garbage come at me in October too. Work did the yearly inventory count midway through the month, and as always this turned out to be an agonizing and exhausting ordeal. Immediately after that, our hard work was rewarded with a potential layoff scare. We ended up downsizing the department I work in, but they are slowly moving us to other departments instead of laying us off. I'm still trying to find a good new station to work in to this day and it's been a stressful ordeal. As part of the downsizing, the station I'm currently working at is getting three other stations rolled into it, so basically my workload would be more than tripling for no extra pay. So I'm all like "NOPE" and am trying to bid into new stations as they open.
I also attended Aquatifur in October, but then got sick right in the middle of the con, causing it to be a giant waste of time and money. Blargh. And of course, after that, I suffered through a bout of severe food poisoning that had me spewing violently from both ends simultaneously. So it ain't exactly been smooth sailing for October. So I consider it lucky I got done as much as I did. Let's get to it, shall we?
OCTOBER 2023 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Joining The Family: Currently 19,374 - 14,121 pre-existing = 5,253 new words this month
❌ -Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett: 0 words this month
✔️ -The Rebirth of Lightest Chunk 2: 8,152 new words this month
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -The Rebirth of Lightest Chunk 2: The rest of the chunk beyond the hard cap, up to the expected final total of 15,000 words
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 3: Currently 32,098 - 8,860 pre-existing = 23,238 new words this month
❌ -Editing of Joining The Family: 0 words edited
❌ -Editing of The Rebirth of Lightest Chunk 2: 0 words edited
❌ -Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 3: 0 words edited
❌ -Editing of Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett 0 words edited
❌ -Outline for Granddaughters of Din
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN OCTOBER 2023: 36,643 words!
❌ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN OCTOBER 2023: 0 words!
So overall, yeah, in terms of hitting objectives this month was a pretty abysmal failure. COTP simply sucked me in and refused to let go. But in terms of wordcount I sure fucking aced it! I nearly doubled the monthly quota. We went over quota by 17,893 words, making our new running tally of surplus a whopping 59,250 words!
(Smash Bros Announcer Voice) A NEW RECORD!!!
Highest On-year Wordcount Surplus: 59,250 words (October 2023)
Holy shit man, that means... *Does a little tallying*
Dayumn! 🎉🥳 This month we officially hit and passed our yearly goal of 225,000 words! 🎉🥳
Our current total so far right now is 228,078 words in 2023! 🎉🥳
That also means we only need just 21,922 more words to hit our stretch goal of 250K! That only requires 10,961 words per month for November and December!
I think you know I'm not gonna just settle for that though either! Wanna know why? Well let's look at next month's goals!
NOVEMBER 2023 WRITING GOALS
IT'S NANOWRIMO TIME, FUCKBOIS! TIME TO MARATHON THIS SHIT!
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-The Granddaughters of Din: Expected 50,000 words!
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Joining The Family: Currently 19,374 words out of an expected 25,000 words = 5,626 expected words this month
-Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett: Expected 20,000 words
-Editing of Joining The Family: Expected 25,000 words of editing
-Editing of Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett Expected 20,000 words to edit
-Editing of The Granddaughters of Din: Expected 50,000 words to edit!
Total Expected Word Count for October: 50,000-75,626 words
Total Expected Editing Count for October: 0-95,000 words
Holy shit, right? This may be my most ambitious set of goals ever so far. I don't expect to go more than a few hundred words over 50K written this month, but I'm leaving the door open regardless. Why am I being so optimistic? Well, you guys remember how fucking amazingly I did in July, yeah? I wrote 52,194 words and edited 122,040 words that month, so that proves I'm capable of handling such goals if I really set my mind to it! But Lightest, you might say, you only pulled that off because work gave you tons of time off for Independence Day! You'd be right too, the time off is really what clinched it. But I have more good news!
You see, I already get a nice chunk of time off this month for both Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving. And since I can't afford to attend MFF this year, I decided to spend the 3 vacation days I had banked for it to give myself a fuckton of long weekends this month. Between the holidays and these extra off days, I won't be working a single Friday until December 8th! In July I got a mere total of 3 extra days off work, and this month I have 5! The all-long-weekend schedule in November has me 100% confident that at the very minimum I can match July's wordcount and complete my first NaNoWriMo, if not exceed it and get even more done!
Of course, there's always a chance IRL could decide to just step in and buttfuck everything with more crises, but I've never let that risk deter me from setting nice big goals before. So let's do it! Let's shoot for NaNoWriMo!
Why do Nano now though? Well, up until now I've never bothered with it since they had a rule against working on previously existing projects. You had to start something entirely brand new in order to be eligible. And since I've been obsessively working on COTP since before I even heard of Nano, I just sorta decided that I wanted to work on COTP and its sequels more than I wanted to start anything new specifically for Nano. Hilariously ironic that recently they rescinded that rule recently and now allow you to work on pre-existing projects right as I felt the overwhelming urge to start work on one of the Side Stories for COTP. So oh well, here I go on that! It will be my first ever attempt at Nano and I'm stoked! If I pull it off, I'm gonna buy the winner's T-shirt and everything, and you can bet I'll be bragging about it on here!
I'm still keeping JtF and the Werewolf story on my goals though, since technically they ARE commission stories and I'd feel bad about making Nimbus, Zaina, and Scarlett wait on me while I just SOLELY focus on self-indulgent geekery. I can't count their stuff toward Nano though, as Nano does require you to only do one project for its goal and you can't roll words from multiple stories together into one total. So I may very well not get anything done on JtF or the Werewolf story. But hell, I am going to try! If I can at least finish JtF on top of GoD then that'd be a new fucking wordcount record for a month! Hell, if I do the full 50K this month then I'll blow WAY past my 250K yearly stretch goal too! I may have to set next year's wordcount goal even higher, heh.
So that's all for this month's journal. Wish me luck guys and gals and enby pals, I've got a lot of work ahead of me!
Yeah, I know, I know, I was making such good progress at balancing out my focus between projects this year! It stinks to backslide like this. My muse kinda just grabbed me by the neck and was like "ENOUGH OTHER STUFF, NEED MORE COTP!!!"
I had no shortage of other garbage come at me in October too. Work did the yearly inventory count midway through the month, and as always this turned out to be an agonizing and exhausting ordeal. Immediately after that, our hard work was rewarded with a potential layoff scare. We ended up downsizing the department I work in, but they are slowly moving us to other departments instead of laying us off. I'm still trying to find a good new station to work in to this day and it's been a stressful ordeal. As part of the downsizing, the station I'm currently working at is getting three other stations rolled into it, so basically my workload would be more than tripling for no extra pay. So I'm all like "NOPE" and am trying to bid into new stations as they open.
I also attended Aquatifur in October, but then got sick right in the middle of the con, causing it to be a giant waste of time and money. Blargh. And of course, after that, I suffered through a bout of severe food poisoning that had me spewing violently from both ends simultaneously. So it ain't exactly been smooth sailing for October. So I consider it lucky I got done as much as I did. Let's get to it, shall we?
OCTOBER 2023 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Joining The Family: Currently 19,374 - 14,121 pre-existing = 5,253 new words this month
❌ -Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett: 0 words this month
✔️ -The Rebirth of Lightest Chunk 2: 8,152 new words this month
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -The Rebirth of Lightest Chunk 2: The rest of the chunk beyond the hard cap, up to the expected final total of 15,000 words
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 3: Currently 32,098 - 8,860 pre-existing = 23,238 new words this month
❌ -Editing of Joining The Family: 0 words edited
❌ -Editing of The Rebirth of Lightest Chunk 2: 0 words edited
❌ -Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 3: 0 words edited
❌ -Editing of Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett 0 words edited
❌ -Outline for Granddaughters of Din
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN OCTOBER 2023: 36,643 words!
❌ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN OCTOBER 2023: 0 words!
So overall, yeah, in terms of hitting objectives this month was a pretty abysmal failure. COTP simply sucked me in and refused to let go. But in terms of wordcount I sure fucking aced it! I nearly doubled the monthly quota. We went over quota by 17,893 words, making our new running tally of surplus a whopping 59,250 words!
(Smash Bros Announcer Voice) A NEW RECORD!!!
Highest On-year Wordcount Surplus: 59,250 words (October 2023)
Holy shit man, that means... *Does a little tallying*
Dayumn! 🎉🥳 This month we officially hit and passed our yearly goal of 225,000 words! 🎉🥳
Our current total so far right now is 228,078 words in 2023! 🎉🥳
That also means we only need just 21,922 more words to hit our stretch goal of 250K! That only requires 10,961 words per month for November and December!
I think you know I'm not gonna just settle for that though either! Wanna know why? Well let's look at next month's goals!
NOVEMBER 2023 WRITING GOALS
IT'S NANOWRIMO TIME, FUCKBOIS! TIME TO MARATHON THIS SHIT!
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-The Granddaughters of Din: Expected 50,000 words!
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Joining The Family: Currently 19,374 words out of an expected 25,000 words = 5,626 expected words this month
-Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett: Expected 20,000 words
-Editing of Joining The Family: Expected 25,000 words of editing
-Editing of Untitled Werewolf Commission for Zaina and Scarlett Expected 20,000 words to edit
-Editing of The Granddaughters of Din: Expected 50,000 words to edit!
Total Expected Word Count for October: 50,000-75,626 words
Total Expected Editing Count for October: 0-95,000 words
Holy shit, right? This may be my most ambitious set of goals ever so far. I don't expect to go more than a few hundred words over 50K written this month, but I'm leaving the door open regardless. Why am I being so optimistic? Well, you guys remember how fucking amazingly I did in July, yeah? I wrote 52,194 words and edited 122,040 words that month, so that proves I'm capable of handling such goals if I really set my mind to it! But Lightest, you might say, you only pulled that off because work gave you tons of time off for Independence Day! You'd be right too, the time off is really what clinched it. But I have more good news!
You see, I already get a nice chunk of time off this month for both Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving. And since I can't afford to attend MFF this year, I decided to spend the 3 vacation days I had banked for it to give myself a fuckton of long weekends this month. Between the holidays and these extra off days, I won't be working a single Friday until December 8th! In July I got a mere total of 3 extra days off work, and this month I have 5! The all-long-weekend schedule in November has me 100% confident that at the very minimum I can match July's wordcount and complete my first NaNoWriMo, if not exceed it and get even more done!
Of course, there's always a chance IRL could decide to just step in and buttfuck everything with more crises, but I've never let that risk deter me from setting nice big goals before. So let's do it! Let's shoot for NaNoWriMo!
Why do Nano now though? Well, up until now I've never bothered with it since they had a rule against working on previously existing projects. You had to start something entirely brand new in order to be eligible. And since I've been obsessively working on COTP since before I even heard of Nano, I just sorta decided that I wanted to work on COTP and its sequels more than I wanted to start anything new specifically for Nano. Hilariously ironic that recently they rescinded that rule recently and now allow you to work on pre-existing projects right as I felt the overwhelming urge to start work on one of the Side Stories for COTP. So oh well, here I go on that! It will be my first ever attempt at Nano and I'm stoked! If I pull it off, I'm gonna buy the winner's T-shirt and everything, and you can bet I'll be bragging about it on here!
I'm still keeping JtF and the Werewolf story on my goals though, since technically they ARE commission stories and I'd feel bad about making Nimbus, Zaina, and Scarlett wait on me while I just SOLELY focus on self-indulgent geekery. I can't count their stuff toward Nano though, as Nano does require you to only do one project for its goal and you can't roll words from multiple stories together into one total. So I may very well not get anything done on JtF or the Werewolf story. But hell, I am going to try! If I can at least finish JtF on top of GoD then that'd be a new fucking wordcount record for a month! Hell, if I do the full 50K this month then I'll blow WAY past my 250K yearly stretch goal too! I may have to set next year's wordcount goal even higher, heh.
So that's all for this month's journal. Wish me luck guys and gals and enby pals, I've got a lot of work ahead of me!
