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December 2024 Writing Journal: 2024 Year Wrap-up!
10 months ago
Well folks, the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 are upon us! You know what that means! Time for the Super Turbo Deluxe Writing Update Journal: Yearly Wrap-Up Edition!
Before we go right into the breakdown for the year though, how was my December? Unsurprisingly, it was rough.
Remember last month when I said I was hoping I'd get all the overtime at work that my supervisor had promised, which would be every single weekend, but perhaps get some extra time off around Christmas? Well I got MOST of what I wanted. Namely, I got every weekend but one filled with overtime... but I also got no extra time off other than the holidays themselves. Only one weekend was off work the entire time between Thanksgiving and now, and I was basically on a constant death march of working every single day with no days off until christmas. This was basically the most optimal outcome for my financial situation, which I am VERY grateful for as my horrible nightmare of bills is continuing and I can still afford to maintain that while buying art comms. But it was the worst possible outcome for my writing.
Needless to say, that means I definitely did not hit my stretch goal for the month. I only just BARELY made my basic minimum quota goal, and the vast majority of that was finished LAST SECOND on the evening of December 31st, lmao
I don't regret taking all that overtime of course. There's no way in hell I could have afforded to score all the kickass meshpet art I've been getting lately if I hadn't. But after basically a month solid of working with no days off at all, I can say I will be glaaaaaaaaaaaad to have a fucking break from the overtime for awhile.
I know that work is almost certainly stopping the overtime now that the financial quarter is over, so I may have to start tightening my belt again in January and reducing my art purchasing significantly again. But at least I can get back to having the energy to write again on my weekends without overtime shifts vampire-sucking the life out of my poor dessicated corpse. So let's break down the numbers!
DECEMBER 2024 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Hair of the Dog Part 2: FINISHED! Wrote 11,322 new words!
❌ -The Arinafiction of House Inagaki: Wrote 0 new words
❌ -Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4: Wrote 0 new words
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: Wrote 0 new words
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER 2024: 11,322 words!
Well, I may not have even come close to the 45K I wanted to write, but at least the 11K finished pushing me over the finish line for my primary yearly goal! I didn't make my yearly stretch goal this year, but I'll take what I can get. This year was fucking crammed full of historical events and life-altering events for me, especially compared to last year, so I'm really not going to beat myself up over writing less this year than I did last year. I certainly haven't had overtime like this in a fucking long time too. I'm just going to count my blessings, be glad I hit my main goal, and move right on to the yearly summary.
2024 IN REVIEW
To start with, let's continue our tradition of beginning the wrap-up with my content goals. Here's the updated list with everything I added over the course of the year:
[ PRIMARY GOALS ]
-Initial-
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 4 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Arina is All - Chunk 12 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Arina is All - Chunk 13 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Arina is All - Chunk 14 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 3 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-The Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 2 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-The Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 3 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Steel Apotheosis ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy - Chunk 1 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy - Chunk 2 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy - Chunk 3 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Added During the Year-
-Granddaughters of Din (Nanowrimo 50K Chunk): ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
PRIMARY GOALS REACHED: 9 out of 14!!!!
[ SECONDARY GOALS ]
-Initial-
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 5 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Added During the Year-
-Bound In Steel ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Into The Hive ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Demigoddess Lessons ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Hair of the Dog Part 2 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
SECONDARY GOALS REACHED: 4 out of 6!
TOTAL GOALS REACHED: 13 out of 20!!! Completion rate of 65%!!!
Well, overall that's a lot better than I expected! Last year I hit 13/19 content goals, this year I hit the same amount on just one more overall goal. That means my percentage completion rate this year is only 3% less than last year! Considering how much fucking harder this year was than last year in terms of writing-derailing bullshit, I'd say this isn't bad at all. The only thing I really heavily regret is neglecting Arina is All so badly. I got a comment last month that they miss that story a lot, so I'm gonna make an effort to refocus on it more this year once my comms are all done.
As for the wordcount breakdown for this year, I think it's gonna show just how insane some of this crap was!
[ JANUARY ]
-Steel Apotheosis: 26,671 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 3,723 words
TOTAL: 30,394 words
[ FEBRUARY ]
-Fabricating A Rubber Renatoy: 16,070 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 2,436 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 7,232 words
TOTAL: 25,738 words
[ MARCH ]
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 611 words
-Demigoddess Lessons: 10,308 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 116 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 9,730 words
TOTAL: 20,765 words
[ APRIL ]
-Steel Apotheosis: 473 words
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 6,005 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 178 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 2,720 words
TOTAL: 9,376 words
[ MAY ]
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 24,804 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 1,180 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 2,164 words
TOTAL: 28,148 words
[ JUNE ]
-Rebirth of Lightest: 6,963 words
-Mutagen Origins: 13,974 words
-Arina is All: 4,065 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 7,724 words
TOTAL: 32,823 words
[ JULY ]
-Rebirth of Lightest: 6,323 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 4,372 words
-Mutagen Origins: 1,716 words
TOTAL: 12,411 words
[ AUGUST ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 1,382 words
-Bound in Steel: 20,797 words
-Mutagen Origins: 5,222 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 15,127 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 15,423 words
-Into The Hive: 8,247 words
TOTAL: 66,198 words
[ SEPTEMBER ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 464 words
-Into The Hive: 23 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 1,457 words
TOTAL: 1,944 words
[ OCTOBER ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 3,542 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 2,573 words
-Bound in Steel: 21 words
-Arina is All: 3,753 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 715 words
TOTAL: 10,604 words
[ NOVEMBER ]
-The Granddaughters of Din: 51,339 words
TOTAL 51,339 words
[ DECEMBER ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 11,322 words
TOTAL 11,322 words
FINAL YEARLY WORDCOUNT TOTAL: 🎉🥳 301,062 WORDS! 🎉🥳
Welp, not bad! Last year I wrote 340,223 words on a goal of 225,000, meaning I beat my goal back then by 115,223 words. I also beat that year's stretch goal of 250K by 90,223
By comparison, this year I wrote 301,062 words on a goal of 300,000, so I beat it by just 1,062 words. I missed my stretch goal of 333K by 31,938
This tells us a few things: Last year's baseline goal was WAY TOO LOW, and this year's baseline goal was a lot more in line with reality. I wrote 39,161 fewer words this year than last year, which puts me on a bit of a downward trend in totals, but at least still holding steady on meeting my baseline goals. I'm also on a downward trend on my stretch goals, going from a 90K stretch goal surplus last year to a 31K stretch goal deficit this year.
I think that means that overall I simply underestimated myself severely in 2023, and mostly was spot on for myself in 2024. Therefore, I think it's gonna be prudent to make my next set of goals a biiiit more modest. I jumped by 75K from 2023's goal to 2024's goal, so I'm gonna shoot for a much smaller jump in 2025. Before we do that though, let's do the per-series breakdown:
PER-SERIES BREAKDOWN:
- Crossing of the Paths: 56,822
- Granddaughters of Din: 51,339
- Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 47,490
- Rebirth of Lightest: 33,334
- Steel Apotheosis: 27,144
- Mutagen Origins: 20,912
- Bound in Steel: 20,818
- Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 16,710
- Demigoddess Lessons: 10,308
- Into The Hive: 8,247
- Arina is All: 7,818
Huh, this year my work is WAY MORE evenly split across projects than it was last year. Last year nearly 1/3 of my output was on COTP, this year only about 1/6 was. Granddaughters of Din holds steady as my WriMo story of choice, and again it still won't be posted here until COTP is complete. This year I had 5 commission series works on my list compared to last year's 4, so that shows how much more time I've spent on comms this year. Also, last year, 81,728 of my 340,223 words were on comms, a percentage rate of about 24%. This year I wrote 122,470 words of commission content out of my 301,062 words, making for 40% of my yearly output done for others.
That's a significant growth in commission content when measured by wordcount! This makes the part of me that was eager to become a professional furry writer much more excited! Statistically, that's a big step in being an "Official Furry Career Writer", if anything like that actually exists.
Granted, most furry writers do like, several comms PER MONTH and often do them in smaller bite sized chunks so their incomes can be more consistent. But I love to go for quality in long story chunks over quantity of many tiny stories. Granted, I know I can never ever make a full blown living off of being a furry writer, my bills are just too fucking huge for that and I still only have a small little following compared to actual professional furry writers like Hellkat, but it's progress! This is now firmly in the territory of solid side-gig, especially since I already have another nice big line-up of more people in my friend group asking me for comms.
The only part that sucks hard here is seeing poor Arina down at the bottom of the list, beneath even that tiny little oneshot Into The Hive. Ironically, Into The Hive has actually grown to become my most-faved single individual uploaded piece of writing here on FA. Y'all really like Sedalia and drones huh? Either way, it's become clear to me that I have severely neglected poor Arina and I need to push her up my priority list. I also should try to avoid letting comms continue to grow too much and take over the majority of priority list by percentage. I love having a decent amount of demand but if I let it overtake my passion projects too much then it risks turning my writing into a job, and I know BAD THINGS happen when it gets to that point. So let's get our goals for the next year set up!
WRITING GOALS FOR 2025
Alright you lovely nerds, here's a nice layout of personal goals! I set these up last night but I may tweak them as I go through the year again like always. Personal stuff I can predict, but new comms less so!
[ PRIMARY GOALS ]
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 7
-Arina is All - Chunk 12
-Arina is All - Chunk 13
-Arina is All - Chunk 14
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 5
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 6
-The Arinafication of House Inagaki (Commission)
-Unnamed Comm story for Precious Nidoqueen (Commission)
-Unnamed Comm story for DredfulArtist (Commission)
[ SECONDARY GOALS ]
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 1
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2
-COTP: Darkness & Light: However many more words the ASD Hyperfocus monster decides it wants to do
-Any Additional Commissions
Ok, this seems very reasonable! I have a nice little commission queue here, and I'm adding "Tellurium Chains" as a new personal project to replace the finished Rebirth of Lightest. Tellurium Chains is meant to be the next story in Lilith's villain arc, acting as a sequel to Steel Apotheosis and going after the villain ending branch. It's meant to also act as an origin story for the Sylvanite Lucariobots in that villain continuum too, hence the name. (Sylvanite is a mineral that contains Tellurim, heh /nerd )
I've put Arina higher up above Mutagen too, and now I'm setting my new formal wordcount goal for the year!
NEW WORDCOUNT GOAL FOR 2025: 333,333 words!
OPTIONAL STRETCH GOAL FOR 2025: 350,000 words!
NEW MONTHLY QUOTA: 27,778 words!
MONTHLY STRETCH GOAL: 29,167 words!
Making last year's stretch goal into this year's main goal may be a little bit ambitious, given I failed to meet that stretch goal in 2024. But this is still only an increase of 33,333 from the main goal last year. That's MUCH less of an increase compared to the 75K increase from the main goal from 2023! I think this makes a good degree of sense, especially since my monthly quota only goes up by a few thousand. This way, if 2025 goes as shitty as I fear it might...
*nervous laughter*
Anyway let's not think about that. Instead let's wrap up this wrap-up and get to our new monthly goal!
JANUARY 2025 WRITING GOALS
This year I'm gonna be starting off sliiiightly on the back foot with Crossing of the Paths. Over the course of the last couple of months I've been kinda floundering on the latest chunk, and decided to revamp how it's been progressing. Therefore I decided that at the start of the month I needed to chop out 5,351 words from D&L Chunk 5 and replace them with an entire different bit. That's put me 5,351 words in debt on that chunk, which I want to write in order to break even. If I succeed then I'll be wordcount neutral on COTP, but ideally I'd like to get at least a little more than that so I have some positive addition to the count this month. On top of that, I wanna try and bang out my next comm, if things go smoothly and no fresh new hell events hit my life.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: At least 6,000 words to break even on the -5,351 debt and have a positive outcome
-The Arinafication of House Inagaki: Expected 25,000 words
-Untitled Comm for DredfulArtist: Expected 2,778 words minimum to reach the rest of monthly quota
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Arina is All Chunk 12: ANY words the muse will give
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for January 2024: 27,778 words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for January 2024: 0 words
Here we go, now Arina is going to be getting more love this month! The Arinafication of House Inagaki is a commission I'm writing for my dear friend Hyo Inagaki, who you may know as the cute fox femboi who got assimilated by Sedalia in my most popular pic comm series, "The Assimilation of Hyo." He loves Arina too and wanted to get in on the action here too. His story isn't TECHNICALLY a part of Arina is All canon as of yet, but depending on how things shake down, if I manage to write it in a way that's compatible, I might find a way to slot it in eventually. This House Inagaki comm story is set significantly further in the future where Arina has a huge presence, compared to where we are in Arina is All now, where Arina's clone group is small and just starting. If AiA continues to play out to a degree where House Inagaki fits in then I'll slot it in later.
Either way, House Inagaki gets a primary objective slot since it's a paid comm, whereas AiA is secondary since it's a personal story. I'm putting COTP as a primary too since I'm really feeling excited to work on it again after finally straightening out my problems with D&L Chunk 5. Chunk 5 is also not too far away from being finished once I get that 5K word debt repaid, so keep an eye out for that!
Let's just... really fucking hope and pray that 2025 doesn't turn out to be the dumpster fire that I fear it may be. Please, pray for normality. Pray tariffs don't make me lose my manufacturing job. Pray my bills situation gets better before the money from overtime runs out. Pray my car doesn't break AGAIN. I want this year to be a year of writing success, not another year of me being stomped on again and again by life.
Thanks again, and Happy New Years to you all! <3
Before we go right into the breakdown for the year though, how was my December? Unsurprisingly, it was rough.
Remember last month when I said I was hoping I'd get all the overtime at work that my supervisor had promised, which would be every single weekend, but perhaps get some extra time off around Christmas? Well I got MOST of what I wanted. Namely, I got every weekend but one filled with overtime... but I also got no extra time off other than the holidays themselves. Only one weekend was off work the entire time between Thanksgiving and now, and I was basically on a constant death march of working every single day with no days off until christmas. This was basically the most optimal outcome for my financial situation, which I am VERY grateful for as my horrible nightmare of bills is continuing and I can still afford to maintain that while buying art comms. But it was the worst possible outcome for my writing.
Needless to say, that means I definitely did not hit my stretch goal for the month. I only just BARELY made my basic minimum quota goal, and the vast majority of that was finished LAST SECOND on the evening of December 31st, lmao
I don't regret taking all that overtime of course. There's no way in hell I could have afforded to score all the kickass meshpet art I've been getting lately if I hadn't. But after basically a month solid of working with no days off at all, I can say I will be glaaaaaaaaaaaad to have a fucking break from the overtime for awhile.
I know that work is almost certainly stopping the overtime now that the financial quarter is over, so I may have to start tightening my belt again in January and reducing my art purchasing significantly again. But at least I can get back to having the energy to write again on my weekends without overtime shifts vampire-sucking the life out of my poor dessicated corpse. So let's break down the numbers!
DECEMBER 2024 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Hair of the Dog Part 2: FINISHED! Wrote 11,322 new words!
❌ -The Arinafiction of House Inagaki: Wrote 0 new words
❌ -Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4: Wrote 0 new words
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: Wrote 0 new words
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER 2024: 11,322 words!
Well, I may not have even come close to the 45K I wanted to write, but at least the 11K finished pushing me over the finish line for my primary yearly goal! I didn't make my yearly stretch goal this year, but I'll take what I can get. This year was fucking crammed full of historical events and life-altering events for me, especially compared to last year, so I'm really not going to beat myself up over writing less this year than I did last year. I certainly haven't had overtime like this in a fucking long time too. I'm just going to count my blessings, be glad I hit my main goal, and move right on to the yearly summary.
2024 IN REVIEW
To start with, let's continue our tradition of beginning the wrap-up with my content goals. Here's the updated list with everything I added over the course of the year:
[ PRIMARY GOALS ]
-Initial-
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 4 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Arina is All - Chunk 12 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Arina is All - Chunk 13 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Arina is All - Chunk 14 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 3 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-The Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 2 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-The Rebirth of Lightest - Chunk 3 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Steel Apotheosis ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy - Chunk 1 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy - Chunk 2 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy - Chunk 3 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Added During the Year-
-Granddaughters of Din (Nanowrimo 50K Chunk): ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
PRIMARY GOALS REACHED: 9 out of 14!!!!
[ SECONDARY GOALS ]
-Initial-
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 5 ❌ INCOMPLETE! ❌
-Added During the Year-
-Bound In Steel ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Into The Hive ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Demigoddess Lessons ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
-Hair of the Dog Part 2 ✔️ COMPLETE! ✔️
SECONDARY GOALS REACHED: 4 out of 6!
TOTAL GOALS REACHED: 13 out of 20!!! Completion rate of 65%!!!
Well, overall that's a lot better than I expected! Last year I hit 13/19 content goals, this year I hit the same amount on just one more overall goal. That means my percentage completion rate this year is only 3% less than last year! Considering how much fucking harder this year was than last year in terms of writing-derailing bullshit, I'd say this isn't bad at all. The only thing I really heavily regret is neglecting Arina is All so badly. I got a comment last month that they miss that story a lot, so I'm gonna make an effort to refocus on it more this year once my comms are all done.
As for the wordcount breakdown for this year, I think it's gonna show just how insane some of this crap was!
[ JANUARY ]
-Steel Apotheosis: 26,671 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 3,723 words
TOTAL: 30,394 words
[ FEBRUARY ]
-Fabricating A Rubber Renatoy: 16,070 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 2,436 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 7,232 words
TOTAL: 25,738 words
[ MARCH ]
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 611 words
-Demigoddess Lessons: 10,308 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 116 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 9,730 words
TOTAL: 20,765 words
[ APRIL ]
-Steel Apotheosis: 473 words
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 6,005 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 178 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 2,720 words
TOTAL: 9,376 words
[ MAY ]
-Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 24,804 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 1,180 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 2,164 words
TOTAL: 28,148 words
[ JUNE ]
-Rebirth of Lightest: 6,963 words
-Mutagen Origins: 13,974 words
-Arina is All: 4,065 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 7,724 words
TOTAL: 32,823 words
[ JULY ]
-Rebirth of Lightest: 6,323 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 4,372 words
-Mutagen Origins: 1,716 words
TOTAL: 12,411 words
[ AUGUST ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 1,382 words
-Bound in Steel: 20,797 words
-Mutagen Origins: 5,222 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 15,127 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 15,423 words
-Into The Hive: 8,247 words
TOTAL: 66,198 words
[ SEPTEMBER ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 464 words
-Into The Hive: 23 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 1,457 words
TOTAL: 1,944 words
[ OCTOBER ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 3,542 words
-Crossing of the Paths: 2,573 words
-Bound in Steel: 21 words
-Arina is All: 3,753 words
-Rebirth of Lightest: 715 words
TOTAL: 10,604 words
[ NOVEMBER ]
-The Granddaughters of Din: 51,339 words
TOTAL 51,339 words
[ DECEMBER ]
-Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 11,322 words
TOTAL 11,322 words
FINAL YEARLY WORDCOUNT TOTAL: 🎉🥳 301,062 WORDS! 🎉🥳
Welp, not bad! Last year I wrote 340,223 words on a goal of 225,000, meaning I beat my goal back then by 115,223 words. I also beat that year's stretch goal of 250K by 90,223
By comparison, this year I wrote 301,062 words on a goal of 300,000, so I beat it by just 1,062 words. I missed my stretch goal of 333K by 31,938
This tells us a few things: Last year's baseline goal was WAY TOO LOW, and this year's baseline goal was a lot more in line with reality. I wrote 39,161 fewer words this year than last year, which puts me on a bit of a downward trend in totals, but at least still holding steady on meeting my baseline goals. I'm also on a downward trend on my stretch goals, going from a 90K stretch goal surplus last year to a 31K stretch goal deficit this year.
I think that means that overall I simply underestimated myself severely in 2023, and mostly was spot on for myself in 2024. Therefore, I think it's gonna be prudent to make my next set of goals a biiiit more modest. I jumped by 75K from 2023's goal to 2024's goal, so I'm gonna shoot for a much smaller jump in 2025. Before we do that though, let's do the per-series breakdown:
PER-SERIES BREAKDOWN:
- Crossing of the Paths: 56,822
- Granddaughters of Din: 51,339
- Fabricating a Rubber Renatoy: 47,490
- Rebirth of Lightest: 33,334
- Steel Apotheosis: 27,144
- Mutagen Origins: 20,912
- Bound in Steel: 20,818
- Hair of the Dog Pt. 2: 16,710
- Demigoddess Lessons: 10,308
- Into The Hive: 8,247
- Arina is All: 7,818
Huh, this year my work is WAY MORE evenly split across projects than it was last year. Last year nearly 1/3 of my output was on COTP, this year only about 1/6 was. Granddaughters of Din holds steady as my WriMo story of choice, and again it still won't be posted here until COTP is complete. This year I had 5 commission series works on my list compared to last year's 4, so that shows how much more time I've spent on comms this year. Also, last year, 81,728 of my 340,223 words were on comms, a percentage rate of about 24%. This year I wrote 122,470 words of commission content out of my 301,062 words, making for 40% of my yearly output done for others.
That's a significant growth in commission content when measured by wordcount! This makes the part of me that was eager to become a professional furry writer much more excited! Statistically, that's a big step in being an "Official Furry Career Writer", if anything like that actually exists.
Granted, most furry writers do like, several comms PER MONTH and often do them in smaller bite sized chunks so their incomes can be more consistent. But I love to go for quality in long story chunks over quantity of many tiny stories. Granted, I know I can never ever make a full blown living off of being a furry writer, my bills are just too fucking huge for that and I still only have a small little following compared to actual professional furry writers like Hellkat, but it's progress! This is now firmly in the territory of solid side-gig, especially since I already have another nice big line-up of more people in my friend group asking me for comms.
The only part that sucks hard here is seeing poor Arina down at the bottom of the list, beneath even that tiny little oneshot Into The Hive. Ironically, Into The Hive has actually grown to become my most-faved single individual uploaded piece of writing here on FA. Y'all really like Sedalia and drones huh? Either way, it's become clear to me that I have severely neglected poor Arina and I need to push her up my priority list. I also should try to avoid letting comms continue to grow too much and take over the majority of priority list by percentage. I love having a decent amount of demand but if I let it overtake my passion projects too much then it risks turning my writing into a job, and I know BAD THINGS happen when it gets to that point. So let's get our goals for the next year set up!
WRITING GOALS FOR 2025
Alright you lovely nerds, here's a nice layout of personal goals! I set these up last night but I may tweak them as I go through the year again like always. Personal stuff I can predict, but new comms less so!
[ PRIMARY GOALS ]
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 7
-Arina is All - Chunk 12
-Arina is All - Chunk 13
-Arina is All - Chunk 14
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 4
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 5
-Mutagen Origins - Chunk 6
-The Arinafication of House Inagaki (Commission)
-Unnamed Comm story for Precious Nidoqueen (Commission)
-Unnamed Comm story for DredfulArtist (Commission)
[ SECONDARY GOALS ]
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 1
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2
-COTP: Darkness & Light: However many more words the ASD Hyperfocus monster decides it wants to do
-Any Additional Commissions
Ok, this seems very reasonable! I have a nice little commission queue here, and I'm adding "Tellurium Chains" as a new personal project to replace the finished Rebirth of Lightest. Tellurium Chains is meant to be the next story in Lilith's villain arc, acting as a sequel to Steel Apotheosis and going after the villain ending branch. It's meant to also act as an origin story for the Sylvanite Lucariobots in that villain continuum too, hence the name. (Sylvanite is a mineral that contains Tellurim, heh /nerd )
I've put Arina higher up above Mutagen too, and now I'm setting my new formal wordcount goal for the year!
NEW WORDCOUNT GOAL FOR 2025: 333,333 words!
OPTIONAL STRETCH GOAL FOR 2025: 350,000 words!
NEW MONTHLY QUOTA: 27,778 words!
MONTHLY STRETCH GOAL: 29,167 words!
Making last year's stretch goal into this year's main goal may be a little bit ambitious, given I failed to meet that stretch goal in 2024. But this is still only an increase of 33,333 from the main goal last year. That's MUCH less of an increase compared to the 75K increase from the main goal from 2023! I think this makes a good degree of sense, especially since my monthly quota only goes up by a few thousand. This way, if 2025 goes as shitty as I fear it might...
*nervous laughter*
Anyway let's not think about that. Instead let's wrap up this wrap-up and get to our new monthly goal!
JANUARY 2025 WRITING GOALS
This year I'm gonna be starting off sliiiightly on the back foot with Crossing of the Paths. Over the course of the last couple of months I've been kinda floundering on the latest chunk, and decided to revamp how it's been progressing. Therefore I decided that at the start of the month I needed to chop out 5,351 words from D&L Chunk 5 and replace them with an entire different bit. That's put me 5,351 words in debt on that chunk, which I want to write in order to break even. If I succeed then I'll be wordcount neutral on COTP, but ideally I'd like to get at least a little more than that so I have some positive addition to the count this month. On top of that, I wanna try and bang out my next comm, if things go smoothly and no fresh new hell events hit my life.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 5: At least 6,000 words to break even on the -5,351 debt and have a positive outcome
-The Arinafication of House Inagaki: Expected 25,000 words
-Untitled Comm for DredfulArtist: Expected 2,778 words minimum to reach the rest of monthly quota
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Arina is All Chunk 12: ANY words the muse will give
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for January 2024: 27,778 words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for January 2024: 0 words
Here we go, now Arina is going to be getting more love this month! The Arinafication of House Inagaki is a commission I'm writing for my dear friend Hyo Inagaki, who you may know as the cute fox femboi who got assimilated by Sedalia in my most popular pic comm series, "The Assimilation of Hyo." He loves Arina too and wanted to get in on the action here too. His story isn't TECHNICALLY a part of Arina is All canon as of yet, but depending on how things shake down, if I manage to write it in a way that's compatible, I might find a way to slot it in eventually. This House Inagaki comm story is set significantly further in the future where Arina has a huge presence, compared to where we are in Arina is All now, where Arina's clone group is small and just starting. If AiA continues to play out to a degree where House Inagaki fits in then I'll slot it in later.
Either way, House Inagaki gets a primary objective slot since it's a paid comm, whereas AiA is secondary since it's a personal story. I'm putting COTP as a primary too since I'm really feeling excited to work on it again after finally straightening out my problems with D&L Chunk 5. Chunk 5 is also not too far away from being finished once I get that 5K word debt repaid, so keep an eye out for that!
Let's just... really fucking hope and pray that 2025 doesn't turn out to be the dumpster fire that I fear it may be. Please, pray for normality. Pray tariffs don't make me lose my manufacturing job. Pray my bills situation gets better before the money from overtime runs out. Pray my car doesn't break AGAIN. I want this year to be a year of writing success, not another year of me being stomped on again and again by life.
Thanks again, and Happy New Years to you all! <3
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