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June 2025 Writing Journal: Vacation ≠ Writing Success
2 months ago
Yeah here we go, another journal update about not hitting my goals. I think I've somehow managed to get really good at coming up with new titles for these journals that convey the exact same meaning without repeating themselves, given how often this happens.
This month I really don't have many excuses either. I spent about 10 days of June on vacation visiting my family in order to attend my parents' big wedding anniversary bash and I thought I could spend a decent amount of off-time down there writing. After all, one of the common ways my dad and I spend time bonding is to sit together with our laptops and work on our writing projects in parallel. But the trip just turned out to be far too busy; we had to prep for the party, do the party, clean up after the party, then my mom paid me to help her replace and set up a new computer, and we did a shitload of other stuff besides. I barely had time to breathe, let alone write.
And sure those 10 days were crazy, but the other 20 just kinda turned into nothingburgers. Especially the week before the trip, which I spent packing and prepping, and the week after where I was coming down from it and resting and cleaning my apt.
I think I've just been stuck under some serious writer's block this month. I still got SOME writing done again at least, but nothing publishable yet. Hence this journal being late again as I struggled to conjure up the willpower for the self-accountability.
JUNE 2025 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: 11,333 new words on a goal of ANY
❌ -Untitled Comm for ah1987: 0 words written
❌ -Untitled Comm for lateinshowing: 0 words written
OR
❌ -Untitled Comm for dreadfulart: 0 words written
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: 1,648 new words on a goal of ANY
✔️ -The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: 1,286 new words on a goal of ANY
❌ -Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: 0 words written
❌ -Arina is All Chunk 12: 0 words written
❌ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN JUNE 2025: 14,267 words!
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN JUNE 2025: 0 words
Oof. Missed my quota by a big ol' 13,511 words. That makes my new year-on deficit a nasty 37,636 words. That's uh... uh oh. That's starting to get more than a little bit out of hand now. We're now well beyond a month of deficit, we're beyond even a stretch goal month of deficit. This is gonna take a lot of work to salvage.
The only thing I can really smile about this month is that my next chunk of COTP is actually coming along nicely. With the new 11K I wrote on it this month, it's now passed the 26K mark. There's still probably another 10-15K left to add to it, but at the rate I've been going it'll be done sooner rather than 7 months later. That is, unless I can manage to regain control of my muse and steer it back toward my other projects, anyway. I had been making excellent progress on that for awhile, up until this year derailed me.
It's almost like something happened in 2025 to fuck up my mental health. Hmmm... 🤔
Anyway the one thing I'm gonna allow myself to chuckle about here is that I was still able to put a green check mark next to my editing total. I set out to edit 0 words this month and damnit, I met THAT goal at least! 😂
JULY 2025 WRITING GOALS
Well, how's this one gonna shake down? July's traditionally been a very productive and successful month for me, primarily because of my union-mandated large vacation from work for Fireworks Day. If I use all 5 days off for Fireworks day to go to my local coffee shop and blitz writing I can get a ton done. The question is if this will help me get past the writer's block?
Traditionally, commissions also tend to exacerbate my writer's block too. So I think I'm gonna just Backburner all my queued comms for now, apologies to my friends for it. I've tried and tried and tried to milk words out for precious and dreadful and the tap's just dry. I think I need to give that part of my brain a break and go fully into self-indulgence.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: ANY wordcount
-Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: ANY wordcount
-Arina is All Chunk 12: ANY wordcount
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: ANY wordcount
-The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: ANY wordcount
-ROULETTE SPIN SLOT!!! - Any wordcount!
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for July 2025: 27,778-65,414 words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for July 2025: 0 words
Yeah, this is almost all self-indulgence now. The only bits I feel are really not quite as shameless about are bringing Arina is All and Mutagen Origins out of cold storage to try and finish some chunks of them, since they've been stuck on the wayside for so long. Even that may be a little rough until I can figure out how to break the writer's blocks that have been obstructing me on those stories too.
And yes, the maximum value on that expected monthly wordcount is a bit silly. I basically added the total deficit on top of the minimum quota to get that number. It's very unrealistic, but damnit I want to TRY. Just as always, I always set my goals high and then forgive myself for not hitting them, because sometimes I do manage to hit those goals.
And yeah, this may be optimistic since the day I'm writing this journal is already Day 1 of the five day marathon, and I've spent a good portion of the morning today on trying to force myself to write this journal entry instead of spending that brain juice on an actual story. And I know that SGDQ is coming next week too, which will be an additional distraction.
BUT, I also realized that I kinda fell off of using Stimuwrite and Sprinto the last few months, and that might have contributed to losing so much productivity. That and all the painstaking rewrites I had to do to COTP, The Other Path, and Granddaughters of Din were very very demotivating. Now that the COTP edits are done and I've decided to put Granddaughters and TOP back into cold storage again I won't have to worry about demoralizing edits getting me down. Let's hope that using Stimuwrite and Sprinto some more in conjunction with refusing to do edits will help me juice my brain up properly this month. Wish me luck!
This month I really don't have many excuses either. I spent about 10 days of June on vacation visiting my family in order to attend my parents' big wedding anniversary bash and I thought I could spend a decent amount of off-time down there writing. After all, one of the common ways my dad and I spend time bonding is to sit together with our laptops and work on our writing projects in parallel. But the trip just turned out to be far too busy; we had to prep for the party, do the party, clean up after the party, then my mom paid me to help her replace and set up a new computer, and we did a shitload of other stuff besides. I barely had time to breathe, let alone write.
And sure those 10 days were crazy, but the other 20 just kinda turned into nothingburgers. Especially the week before the trip, which I spent packing and prepping, and the week after where I was coming down from it and resting and cleaning my apt.
I think I've just been stuck under some serious writer's block this month. I still got SOME writing done again at least, but nothing publishable yet. Hence this journal being late again as I struggled to conjure up the willpower for the self-accountability.
JUNE 2025 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: 11,333 new words on a goal of ANY
❌ -Untitled Comm for ah1987: 0 words written
❌ -Untitled Comm for lateinshowing: 0 words written
OR
❌ -Untitled Comm for dreadfulart: 0 words written
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: 1,648 new words on a goal of ANY
✔️ -The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: 1,286 new words on a goal of ANY
❌ -Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: 0 words written
❌ -Arina is All Chunk 12: 0 words written
❌ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN JUNE 2025: 14,267 words!
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN JUNE 2025: 0 words
Oof. Missed my quota by a big ol' 13,511 words. That makes my new year-on deficit a nasty 37,636 words. That's uh... uh oh. That's starting to get more than a little bit out of hand now. We're now well beyond a month of deficit, we're beyond even a stretch goal month of deficit. This is gonna take a lot of work to salvage.
The only thing I can really smile about this month is that my next chunk of COTP is actually coming along nicely. With the new 11K I wrote on it this month, it's now passed the 26K mark. There's still probably another 10-15K left to add to it, but at the rate I've been going it'll be done sooner rather than 7 months later. That is, unless I can manage to regain control of my muse and steer it back toward my other projects, anyway. I had been making excellent progress on that for awhile, up until this year derailed me.
It's almost like something happened in 2025 to fuck up my mental health. Hmmm... 🤔
Anyway the one thing I'm gonna allow myself to chuckle about here is that I was still able to put a green check mark next to my editing total. I set out to edit 0 words this month and damnit, I met THAT goal at least! 😂
JULY 2025 WRITING GOALS
Well, how's this one gonna shake down? July's traditionally been a very productive and successful month for me, primarily because of my union-mandated large vacation from work for Fireworks Day. If I use all 5 days off for Fireworks day to go to my local coffee shop and blitz writing I can get a ton done. The question is if this will help me get past the writer's block?
Traditionally, commissions also tend to exacerbate my writer's block too. So I think I'm gonna just Backburner all my queued comms for now, apologies to my friends for it. I've tried and tried and tried to milk words out for precious and dreadful and the tap's just dry. I think I need to give that part of my brain a break and go fully into self-indulgence.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: ANY wordcount
-Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: ANY wordcount
-Arina is All Chunk 12: ANY wordcount
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: ANY wordcount
-The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: ANY wordcount
-ROULETTE SPIN SLOT!!! - Any wordcount!
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for July 2025: 27,778-65,414 words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for July 2025: 0 words
Yeah, this is almost all self-indulgence now. The only bits I feel are really not quite as shameless about are bringing Arina is All and Mutagen Origins out of cold storage to try and finish some chunks of them, since they've been stuck on the wayside for so long. Even that may be a little rough until I can figure out how to break the writer's blocks that have been obstructing me on those stories too.
And yes, the maximum value on that expected monthly wordcount is a bit silly. I basically added the total deficit on top of the minimum quota to get that number. It's very unrealistic, but damnit I want to TRY. Just as always, I always set my goals high and then forgive myself for not hitting them, because sometimes I do manage to hit those goals.
And yeah, this may be optimistic since the day I'm writing this journal is already Day 1 of the five day marathon, and I've spent a good portion of the morning today on trying to force myself to write this journal entry instead of spending that brain juice on an actual story. And I know that SGDQ is coming next week too, which will be an additional distraction.
BUT, I also realized that I kinda fell off of using Stimuwrite and Sprinto the last few months, and that might have contributed to losing so much productivity. That and all the painstaking rewrites I had to do to COTP, The Other Path, and Granddaughters of Din were very very demotivating. Now that the COTP edits are done and I've decided to put Granddaughters and TOP back into cold storage again I won't have to worry about demoralizing edits getting me down. Let's hope that using Stimuwrite and Sprinto some more in conjunction with refusing to do edits will help me juice my brain up properly this month. Wish me luck!
Lots of repetations and procrastination.
Now i just gotto raise and succeed with ym creative goals... XD
Its silly but i know the winning formula to my own creative energies... sadly its easier to stay awake surfing the net, eat bad food and lack exercise :S Oh and also refuse to do entirely NEW things like Games, places to go, topic videos to see while going outside to said new places and so on. But when i do i could easily pump out 30 or even 50 k words per week! :D