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July 2024 Writing Update: I HATE MOVING I HATE MOVING I H...
a year ago
*Falls onto her podium in a half-conscious zombified state*
Ugh... hi.
Yeah. This month wasn't great.
I fully expected it of course. I predicted that life was gonna dig up all manner of bullshit crises to make this month a nightmare, and thankfully none of the worst case scenarios happened. Our uhaul didn't explode or suffer flat tires on the highway. We didn't have any accidents or major injuries. Nothing (that I know of yet) was broken during the moving process. But I gotta say, making the decision to just use a uhaul and move everything ourselves instead of hiring professional movers was a mistake. Because my poor autistic brain is NOT coping with the change in living environment as well as it did last time I moved. Last time I moved, it was into a bigger living space than the one I had previously, but this time I'm moving into a MUCH SMALLER place. This is gonna make my rent HUGELY CHEAPER, but it means I'll be living in a shoebox for awhile. The downgrade in living space size has hit my brain VERY HARD with stress. Most of my decorative stuff is not going to fit in my new room, which makes my brain feel very unhappy. That, combined with Autism making adapting to change much harder, is a nasty combo. Add in physical exhaustion from driving for tens of hours and lifting and carrying thousands of pounds of stuff and that makes for a profoundly unhappy brain.
I'm still glad nothing crisis-level happened during the move itself though. It seems like life wanted to make more shit go wrong, but timed it mercifully. Because I got sick again with what I suspect was probably another round of the rona, but it happened at the beginning of the month before the move started.
This was good because the idea of trying to move places while sick as a dog sounds like actual literal torture, but it also sucked because it legitimately ruined my entire week off from work for Independence Day. Y'all remember how hyped I was to hit my monthly quota during the solid 9 days off I was getting from work? Yeah, that didn't happen. I spent the entire fucking week watching SGDQ and praying for death because of the fucking bug. SGDQ was great of course, they had a Mario Maker 2 Troll Level Race that was so fucking funny I nearly fell out of my chair laughing, but I really would have MUCH preferred to not have had a fucking hell-virus making me feel like a living dumpster fire for the entire marathon.
So yeah, as you can guess from all this, I definitely didn't hit my quota. I spent the first week of the month in a virus-induced brainfog, then the middle weeks of the month recovering slowly and prepping for the move, and then the last actual week moving. And yet somehow I still managed to get SOME writing done, so I didn't hit the big fat zero at least. Let's see how it went.
JULY 2024 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Hair of the Dog Part 2: Wrote 0 new words
❌ -Editing of Hair of the Dog Part 2: Edited 0 words
❌ -Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 3: Wrote 6,323 new words
❌ -Editing of Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 3: Edited 0 words
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 4: 0 words edited
❌ -Arina is All - Chunk 12: Wrote 0 new words
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: Wrote 4,372 new words
✔️ -Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4: Wrote 1,716 new words
❌ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN JULY 2024: 12,411 words
❌ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN JULY 2024: 0 words
Well, a 12K month is certainly better than the big fat 0 that could be reasonably expected from someone who got brutally sick AND moved houses cross-state in the same month. I wanted to get a start on the new part for Hair of the Dog, but writing on comms in this state was just not gonna happen. I HAD to do fun stuff that soothed my brain, and that's why I ended up adding Mutagen Origins to this month even though it wasn't originally on either objective list. I read some really good writing based on themefinland's Amalgamate monsters during the middle weeks of the month and it really inspired me to write more of my own sci-fi horror, and Mutagen Origins was perfect for that.
This does mean our deficit is growing significantly this month, but it's not unexpected. Last month we had shrank our year-on deficit down to 2,756 words, and this month we're adding 12,589 words to the deficit for a total year-on deficit of 15,345 words. This is technically the biggest that the deficit has gotten this year, but still roughly in the same ballpark. Our last few months before recovering, the deficit was like 13K words, roughly. Given how well I pulled myself out of it last month, I know it's possible to eventually pull myself back out of a deficit this size and catch up.
The rough part is gonna be finding a month to actually slam out a fuckton more. August is probably gonna be a little bit rough on me, as I'm gonna be mentally recovering from the move and adapting to my new place for most of this month, and I gotta get right back into my day job the day after this journal goes up. September is also gonna be dicey since the newly announced Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom, is coming out that month, alongside the modding tools for Baldur's Gate 3. Between playing the new Zelda, a fresh new BG3 run, and my friend Nimbus coming to visit all in September, that month is looking busy. October and November are probably gonna be when I pick back up on working off my deficit hardcore, ESPECIALLY if I have managed to mentally recover back to 100% from the move by November and decide to try going for NanoWrimo again. Another 50K word month would cover my deficit and then some, putting me back into surplus again, assuming I don't flub severely and dig myself deeper before then.
That being said, I wanna dive into HotD Part 2 hardcore this month. Plus, it sounds like Nimbus wants to be a dear and also comm me too in order to help cover the costs of the move as well. I might just be doing a sequel to Steel Apotheosis for her! Keep your eyes open for that! Let's break it down
AUGUST 2024 WRITING GOALS
So, I'm going to start this off by assuming that Nimbus is fully on board for this Steel Apotheosis Sequel and putting that on my Primaries. I'm also keeping Hair of the Dog Pt. 2 as a Primary. Ideally I should be able to finish at least one of them this month. If I can do both though? That'd be fucking AWESOME.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Hair of the Dog Part 2: Expected 15,000 words
-Editing of Hair of the Dog Part 2: Expected 15,000 words to edit
-Untitled Steel Apotheosis Sequel: Expected 20,000 words
-Editing of Untitled Steel Apotheosis Sequel: Expected 20,000 words to edit
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 4: 35,646 words to edit, plus an unknown amount of revising.
-Arina is All - Chunk 12: ANY amount of words
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4: ANY amount of words
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: ANY amount of words
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for August 2024: 35,000+ words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for August 2024: 70,646 words
This is significantly more ambitious than last month, and yeah I totally expect to not hit either goal. As of writing this I still haven't even finished hooking up my desktop PC and have been writing this at a brand new coffee shop. I have fucktons more unpacking to do, and my brain is still reeling from the move. I fully expect to need at least 1-2 weeks of numbing the mental pain from the move before I feel settled in and mentally capable of handling hard writing work on comms. I probably will still be able to write on fun stuff like COTP and Mutagen, which is why I put them onto my Secondaries, but comms take more emotional effort than I may be able to handle. Having fun stuff in secondaries is gonna be vital to getting ANY sort of wordcount out of this month, I think. Heaven knows without it I'd have ended up with that big ol zero this month.
But, I think I'm allowed to be a little bit optimistic here. You know why? Last time I moved a few years back, in August 2022, I hit a big fat zero thanks to the move. I gave myself full grace and understanding for it too. But this time, I dealt with a move AND a bout of the plague and somehow STILL managed to pump out a solid 12K words! That's... an achievement all on its own. Hell, I talked about it on the /r/fanfiction subreddit and someone replied to me and said "If you can still hit "a few thousand words" while you're in the middle of moving, you might be unstoppable." That comment was a uniquely wonderful shot in the arm that made me smile for hours afterward.
So let's go for it. I'm gonna spend the first half of the month on fun stuff like COTP and Mutagen, and the second half on HotD and Nimbus's comm. And if I can hit my quota, that'll be cause for celebration. If I can even go far enough to hit my stretch goal, that'll be mega party time. Wish me luck!
Ugh... hi.
Yeah. This month wasn't great.
I fully expected it of course. I predicted that life was gonna dig up all manner of bullshit crises to make this month a nightmare, and thankfully none of the worst case scenarios happened. Our uhaul didn't explode or suffer flat tires on the highway. We didn't have any accidents or major injuries. Nothing (that I know of yet) was broken during the moving process. But I gotta say, making the decision to just use a uhaul and move everything ourselves instead of hiring professional movers was a mistake. Because my poor autistic brain is NOT coping with the change in living environment as well as it did last time I moved. Last time I moved, it was into a bigger living space than the one I had previously, but this time I'm moving into a MUCH SMALLER place. This is gonna make my rent HUGELY CHEAPER, but it means I'll be living in a shoebox for awhile. The downgrade in living space size has hit my brain VERY HARD with stress. Most of my decorative stuff is not going to fit in my new room, which makes my brain feel very unhappy. That, combined with Autism making adapting to change much harder, is a nasty combo. Add in physical exhaustion from driving for tens of hours and lifting and carrying thousands of pounds of stuff and that makes for a profoundly unhappy brain.
I'm still glad nothing crisis-level happened during the move itself though. It seems like life wanted to make more shit go wrong, but timed it mercifully. Because I got sick again with what I suspect was probably another round of the rona, but it happened at the beginning of the month before the move started.
This was good because the idea of trying to move places while sick as a dog sounds like actual literal torture, but it also sucked because it legitimately ruined my entire week off from work for Independence Day. Y'all remember how hyped I was to hit my monthly quota during the solid 9 days off I was getting from work? Yeah, that didn't happen. I spent the entire fucking week watching SGDQ and praying for death because of the fucking bug. SGDQ was great of course, they had a Mario Maker 2 Troll Level Race that was so fucking funny I nearly fell out of my chair laughing, but I really would have MUCH preferred to not have had a fucking hell-virus making me feel like a living dumpster fire for the entire marathon.
So yeah, as you can guess from all this, I definitely didn't hit my quota. I spent the first week of the month in a virus-induced brainfog, then the middle weeks of the month recovering slowly and prepping for the move, and then the last actual week moving. And yet somehow I still managed to get SOME writing done, so I didn't hit the big fat zero at least. Let's see how it went.
JULY 2024 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Hair of the Dog Part 2: Wrote 0 new words
❌ -Editing of Hair of the Dog Part 2: Edited 0 words
❌ -Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 3: Wrote 6,323 new words
❌ -Editing of Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 3: Edited 0 words
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 4: 0 words edited
❌ -Arina is All - Chunk 12: Wrote 0 new words
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: Wrote 4,372 new words
✔️ -Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4: Wrote 1,716 new words
❌ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN JULY 2024: 12,411 words
❌ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN JULY 2024: 0 words
Well, a 12K month is certainly better than the big fat 0 that could be reasonably expected from someone who got brutally sick AND moved houses cross-state in the same month. I wanted to get a start on the new part for Hair of the Dog, but writing on comms in this state was just not gonna happen. I HAD to do fun stuff that soothed my brain, and that's why I ended up adding Mutagen Origins to this month even though it wasn't originally on either objective list. I read some really good writing based on themefinland's Amalgamate monsters during the middle weeks of the month and it really inspired me to write more of my own sci-fi horror, and Mutagen Origins was perfect for that.
This does mean our deficit is growing significantly this month, but it's not unexpected. Last month we had shrank our year-on deficit down to 2,756 words, and this month we're adding 12,589 words to the deficit for a total year-on deficit of 15,345 words. This is technically the biggest that the deficit has gotten this year, but still roughly in the same ballpark. Our last few months before recovering, the deficit was like 13K words, roughly. Given how well I pulled myself out of it last month, I know it's possible to eventually pull myself back out of a deficit this size and catch up.
The rough part is gonna be finding a month to actually slam out a fuckton more. August is probably gonna be a little bit rough on me, as I'm gonna be mentally recovering from the move and adapting to my new place for most of this month, and I gotta get right back into my day job the day after this journal goes up. September is also gonna be dicey since the newly announced Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom, is coming out that month, alongside the modding tools for Baldur's Gate 3. Between playing the new Zelda, a fresh new BG3 run, and my friend Nimbus coming to visit all in September, that month is looking busy. October and November are probably gonna be when I pick back up on working off my deficit hardcore, ESPECIALLY if I have managed to mentally recover back to 100% from the move by November and decide to try going for NanoWrimo again. Another 50K word month would cover my deficit and then some, putting me back into surplus again, assuming I don't flub severely and dig myself deeper before then.
That being said, I wanna dive into HotD Part 2 hardcore this month. Plus, it sounds like Nimbus wants to be a dear and also comm me too in order to help cover the costs of the move as well. I might just be doing a sequel to Steel Apotheosis for her! Keep your eyes open for that! Let's break it down
AUGUST 2024 WRITING GOALS
So, I'm going to start this off by assuming that Nimbus is fully on board for this Steel Apotheosis Sequel and putting that on my Primaries. I'm also keeping Hair of the Dog Pt. 2 as a Primary. Ideally I should be able to finish at least one of them this month. If I can do both though? That'd be fucking AWESOME.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Hair of the Dog Part 2: Expected 15,000 words
-Editing of Hair of the Dog Part 2: Expected 15,000 words to edit
-Untitled Steel Apotheosis Sequel: Expected 20,000 words
-Editing of Untitled Steel Apotheosis Sequel: Expected 20,000 words to edit
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 4: 35,646 words to edit, plus an unknown amount of revising.
-Arina is All - Chunk 12: ANY amount of words
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4: ANY amount of words
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: ANY amount of words
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for August 2024: 35,000+ words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for August 2024: 70,646 words
This is significantly more ambitious than last month, and yeah I totally expect to not hit either goal. As of writing this I still haven't even finished hooking up my desktop PC and have been writing this at a brand new coffee shop. I have fucktons more unpacking to do, and my brain is still reeling from the move. I fully expect to need at least 1-2 weeks of numbing the mental pain from the move before I feel settled in and mentally capable of handling hard writing work on comms. I probably will still be able to write on fun stuff like COTP and Mutagen, which is why I put them onto my Secondaries, but comms take more emotional effort than I may be able to handle. Having fun stuff in secondaries is gonna be vital to getting ANY sort of wordcount out of this month, I think. Heaven knows without it I'd have ended up with that big ol zero this month.
But, I think I'm allowed to be a little bit optimistic here. You know why? Last time I moved a few years back, in August 2022, I hit a big fat zero thanks to the move. I gave myself full grace and understanding for it too. But this time, I dealt with a move AND a bout of the plague and somehow STILL managed to pump out a solid 12K words! That's... an achievement all on its own. Hell, I talked about it on the /r/fanfiction subreddit and someone replied to me and said "If you can still hit "a few thousand words" while you're in the middle of moving, you might be unstoppable." That comment was a uniquely wonderful shot in the arm that made me smile for hours afterward.
So let's go for it. I'm gonna spend the first half of the month on fun stuff like COTP and Mutagen, and the second half on HotD and Nimbus's comm. And if I can hit my quota, that'll be cause for celebration. If I can even go far enough to hit my stretch goal, that'll be mega party time. Wish me luck!
