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July 2025 Writing Journal: Vacation = Sometimes Success?
3 months ago
Hah, this writing journal entry is gonna be a weird one. After last month's failure to meet goals despite being on vacation, this month's is an even stranger twist.
I went into July fully expecting to meet or even exceed my goals thanks to having tons of time off for Fireworks Day. Well I did end up meeting and exceeding my goals this month, but it was in spite of my vacation.
You see, I've been really really fucking stressed lately over a lot of different issues stacking up. I've been struggling to get a minor health problem under control ever since I got home from my June Vacation and it's been a significant source of stress. I also discovered that I needed to update my insurance info before I could address this health issue so I didn't get slammed with the usual "Fuck you for being poor" massive medical bills that murica is known for. And on top of that I still haven't worked up the courage to get my car diagnosed. In addition, two of my friends going into deep deep crises. I will not reveal their identities out of respect for their privacy, and I will say that I absolutely DO NOT BLAME THEM for needing my help. I am glad to help them and feel very priveliged to be able to offer them such help, it's just hard to emotionally cope with on top of all the other stressors.
So when I got to Fireworks Day for time off, I hardly wrote a word the entire time. I instead used that time off from work to simply relax and de-stress. And then after that came my usual favorite summer distraction, the Summer Games Done Quick Marathon, which dominated my attention for another week. By the time the holiday and SGDQ were both over I was halfway through July and had barely wrote 5K words.
What followed was a Christmas-in-July Miracle. Despite the massive mounds of stress crushing down on me I managed to go hogwild, even managing to slam out 15K words over just one weekend. It's honestly baffling to me how this happened.
I guess the lesson we can take out of this is that my personal muse is a fickle, capricious, and mercurial little goblin that just does whatever the fuck she wants.
JULY 2025 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: FINISHED! 8,363 new words written
❌ -Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: 0 new words written
❌ -Arina is All Chunk 12: 0 new words written
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: FINISHED! 15,893 new words written
✔️ -The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: FINISHED! 16,957 new words written
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 7: 2,149 new words written
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN JULY 2025: 43,362 words!
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN JULY 2025: 0 words
You know what? That may not be a full Nano's worth of words (50K), but damn that's pretty friggin' good considering my late start and the sheer buttloads of stress I've been dealing with, as previously mentioned. I easily beat my monthly quota and normal stretch goal, and then some. I exceeded the baseline by 15,584 words, which will reduce our previous deficit of 37,636 words down to a much more manageable 22,052 words of deficit instead. That's still not something I can easily slam out all in one month on top of a monthly quota output, but it's WAY less scary. If I can match my output from July in August then I'll be well on my way to fully catching up.
And yeah I know I did STILL neglect AiA and MO again this month. Big zeroes on them after making them a Primary Objective does suck a little. But I think the main reason was that all that constant stress kinda forced me to work on something purely self-indulgent this month or else I wouldn't have written much of anything at all. I think maybe my last few failures this year have been for similar reasons; I've been trying to push out commission work when my stress is just so damn high from shit that I should have been self-soothing with self-indulgent stories instead.
Thankfully I am starting to see signs that I might finally be getting the health issue that I mentioned before a little bit under control now, and my friends in crises are getting help. I'm... tentatively optimistic. Not full-throatedly, but cautiously. Let's cross our fingers that things continue to improve.
AUGUST 2025 WRITING GOALS
So, one of the other reasons I have for feeling optimistic is that I had a bit of a breakthrough, both about my writing in general and with Mutagen Origins specifically. I realized that when I write a rough draft, there's often a strange effect where I am FAR more self-critical about my work right after freshly writing something. If I give myself some distance by setting the draft down and then waiting for a few weeks to months, then that self criticism and hatred toward my writing slowly fades away. I often need to let my writing sit so I can clear my mind, reset my expectations, and flush out a lingering issue I have with perceiving pacing.
That pacing problem is pretty simple now that I've realized it. Writing takes a lot more time than reading. This means that when I write, it makes the pacing of the scene often feel WAAAY slower than it actually is. Going back and re-reading it much later after a bit of a mental cleanse then allows me to perceive the pacing correctly from the perspective of a reader who is reading it at natural reading speed, and then the pacing suddenly feels smooth and natural again rather than AGONIZINGLY SLOW.
That's the general realization I had, and it often applies to many of my writing projects. I've had this happen to many stories and I think it's a significant contributing factor to my episodes of writer's block. It certainly contributed to my block on Mutagen Origins that I've been fighting to break through. Just connecting the dots on this as I re-read Mutagen Origins this month was a huge shot in the arm for my muse and gave me a lot of strength to break the block. It wasn't the only contributing factor though! There was also one specific to Mutagen that I figured out too. I had felt a really overpowering feeling that I had been over-rushing the plot of that story too, not just the pacing. I needed to re-frame my ideas and preconceptions of the next part of the plot, and once I'd done that I no longer felt that the unfinished chunk that I've had hanging is trash that needs to be deleted and rewritten from scratch. Once I shook that off and decided to keep what I'd written, new ideas began to flow again.
So! With that good news in mind, I'm going to keep Mutagen Origins on my Primary Objective list. I'm also going to TRY to do at least one comm this month again, since I'm tentatively feeling better and less stressed as I write this, though I won't blame myself if I fail at it again.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Untitled Comm for ah1987: Expected 7,500 words
OR
-Untitled Comm for lateinshowing: Expected 15,000 words
OR
-Untitled Comm for Kimil Shadewing: Expected 12,000 words
OR
-Untitled Comm for dreadfulart: Expected 15,000 words
PLUS
-Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: ANY wordcount
-Editing of The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: 18,243 words to edit
-Editing of Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: 17,541 words to edit
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: 34,715 words to edit
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 7: ANY wordcount
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 3: ANY wordcount
-Arina is All Chunk 12: ANY wordcount
-The River in the Valley - Chunk 3: ANY wordcount
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for August 2025: 27,778-30,000 words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for August 2025: 35,784-70,499 words
Ok, the writing alone may not be hugely ambitious, I mostly just wanna be realistic and aim toward the minimum quota. It's the writing taken together with the editing that may prove to be a bit challenging. 70K words of editing is a pretty big ask. That being said, I did say earlier that I'm starting to feel a bit better now. On top of that, I have one other reason to be cautiously optimistic: There's five weekends total this month and if I use them all to their fullest, that's a lot time to finish a lot of writing. Moreover, this month we're gonna be doing Inventory Week at work again on the week of the 25th, and work has already said we're going to be allowed to take unpaid excused time off and just skip Inventory to stay home on two days if we want to, maybe even three days. I DEFINITELY plan on taking advantage of this. The time off that is being offered is adjacent to a weekend and that means I get a juicy sweet 4 day weekend for sure, with the possibility that it might even become a 5 day weekend. If my stress levels stay low and I can manage to use that extended weekend to write then that's A LOT of potential extra writing time! So I may be able to manage to make August just as successful as July was and delete another huge chunk of my wordcount debt!
I will also leave myself some grace if this plan falls through or my stress rises again of course.
Also, you probably noticed my comm queue has grown yet again, lol. I guess I have done a pretty good job at impressing my friends and slowly curating a group of friends who can understand my slow-ass writing speed and struggles to maintain focus, so they've all been super patient with me and continued being interested despite delays, while more continue showing up. I will try to clear at least ONE of these comms in the rough draft stage, but if I can manage to slam out two then I certainly won't refuse or complain about my muse's sudden unexpected cooperation, lol.
So there it is. Cross your fingers for me folks. I am still in the game for this year's goal, I feel confident I can clear the debt and get back on track. And again, deep deep thanks to my commission buying friends for being so understanding and patient with my failures. Y'all are the best.
See you next month!
I went into July fully expecting to meet or even exceed my goals thanks to having tons of time off for Fireworks Day. Well I did end up meeting and exceeding my goals this month, but it was in spite of my vacation.
You see, I've been really really fucking stressed lately over a lot of different issues stacking up. I've been struggling to get a minor health problem under control ever since I got home from my June Vacation and it's been a significant source of stress. I also discovered that I needed to update my insurance info before I could address this health issue so I didn't get slammed with the usual "Fuck you for being poor" massive medical bills that murica is known for. And on top of that I still haven't worked up the courage to get my car diagnosed. In addition, two of my friends going into deep deep crises. I will not reveal their identities out of respect for their privacy, and I will say that I absolutely DO NOT BLAME THEM for needing my help. I am glad to help them and feel very priveliged to be able to offer them such help, it's just hard to emotionally cope with on top of all the other stressors.
So when I got to Fireworks Day for time off, I hardly wrote a word the entire time. I instead used that time off from work to simply relax and de-stress. And then after that came my usual favorite summer distraction, the Summer Games Done Quick Marathon, which dominated my attention for another week. By the time the holiday and SGDQ were both over I was halfway through July and had barely wrote 5K words.
What followed was a Christmas-in-July Miracle. Despite the massive mounds of stress crushing down on me I managed to go hogwild, even managing to slam out 15K words over just one weekend. It's honestly baffling to me how this happened.
I guess the lesson we can take out of this is that my personal muse is a fickle, capricious, and mercurial little goblin that just does whatever the fuck she wants.
JULY 2025 WRITING SUMMARY
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: FINISHED! 8,363 new words written
❌ -Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: 0 new words written
❌ -Arina is All Chunk 12: 0 new words written
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: FINISHED! 15,893 new words written
✔️ -The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: FINISHED! 16,957 new words written
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 7: 2,149 new words written
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN JULY 2025: 43,362 words!
✔️ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN JULY 2025: 0 words
You know what? That may not be a full Nano's worth of words (50K), but damn that's pretty friggin' good considering my late start and the sheer buttloads of stress I've been dealing with, as previously mentioned. I easily beat my monthly quota and normal stretch goal, and then some. I exceeded the baseline by 15,584 words, which will reduce our previous deficit of 37,636 words down to a much more manageable 22,052 words of deficit instead. That's still not something I can easily slam out all in one month on top of a monthly quota output, but it's WAY less scary. If I can match my output from July in August then I'll be well on my way to fully catching up.
And yeah I know I did STILL neglect AiA and MO again this month. Big zeroes on them after making them a Primary Objective does suck a little. But I think the main reason was that all that constant stress kinda forced me to work on something purely self-indulgent this month or else I wouldn't have written much of anything at all. I think maybe my last few failures this year have been for similar reasons; I've been trying to push out commission work when my stress is just so damn high from shit that I should have been self-soothing with self-indulgent stories instead.
Thankfully I am starting to see signs that I might finally be getting the health issue that I mentioned before a little bit under control now, and my friends in crises are getting help. I'm... tentatively optimistic. Not full-throatedly, but cautiously. Let's cross our fingers that things continue to improve.
AUGUST 2025 WRITING GOALS
So, one of the other reasons I have for feeling optimistic is that I had a bit of a breakthrough, both about my writing in general and with Mutagen Origins specifically. I realized that when I write a rough draft, there's often a strange effect where I am FAR more self-critical about my work right after freshly writing something. If I give myself some distance by setting the draft down and then waiting for a few weeks to months, then that self criticism and hatred toward my writing slowly fades away. I often need to let my writing sit so I can clear my mind, reset my expectations, and flush out a lingering issue I have with perceiving pacing.
That pacing problem is pretty simple now that I've realized it. Writing takes a lot more time than reading. This means that when I write, it makes the pacing of the scene often feel WAAAY slower than it actually is. Going back and re-reading it much later after a bit of a mental cleanse then allows me to perceive the pacing correctly from the perspective of a reader who is reading it at natural reading speed, and then the pacing suddenly feels smooth and natural again rather than AGONIZINGLY SLOW.
That's the general realization I had, and it often applies to many of my writing projects. I've had this happen to many stories and I think it's a significant contributing factor to my episodes of writer's block. It certainly contributed to my block on Mutagen Origins that I've been fighting to break through. Just connecting the dots on this as I re-read Mutagen Origins this month was a huge shot in the arm for my muse and gave me a lot of strength to break the block. It wasn't the only contributing factor though! There was also one specific to Mutagen that I figured out too. I had felt a really overpowering feeling that I had been over-rushing the plot of that story too, not just the pacing. I needed to re-frame my ideas and preconceptions of the next part of the plot, and once I'd done that I no longer felt that the unfinished chunk that I've had hanging is trash that needs to be deleted and rewritten from scratch. Once I shook that off and decided to keep what I'd written, new ideas began to flow again.
So! With that good news in mind, I'm going to keep Mutagen Origins on my Primary Objective list. I'm also going to TRY to do at least one comm this month again, since I'm tentatively feeling better and less stressed as I write this, though I won't blame myself if I fail at it again.
-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Untitled Comm for ah1987: Expected 7,500 words
OR
-Untitled Comm for lateinshowing: Expected 15,000 words
OR
-Untitled Comm for Kimil Shadewing: Expected 12,000 words
OR
-Untitled Comm for dreadfulart: Expected 15,000 words
PLUS
-Mutagen Origins Chunk 4: ANY wordcount
-Editing of The River in the Valley - Chunk 2: 18,243 words to edit
-Editing of Tellurium Chains - Chunk 2: 17,541 words to edit
-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 6: 34,715 words to edit
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 7: ANY wordcount
-Tellurium Chains - Chunk 3: ANY wordcount
-Arina is All Chunk 12: ANY wordcount
-The River in the Valley - Chunk 3: ANY wordcount
Total Expected Writing Wordcount for August 2025: 27,778-30,000 words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for August 2025: 35,784-70,499 words
Ok, the writing alone may not be hugely ambitious, I mostly just wanna be realistic and aim toward the minimum quota. It's the writing taken together with the editing that may prove to be a bit challenging. 70K words of editing is a pretty big ask. That being said, I did say earlier that I'm starting to feel a bit better now. On top of that, I have one other reason to be cautiously optimistic: There's five weekends total this month and if I use them all to their fullest, that's a lot time to finish a lot of writing. Moreover, this month we're gonna be doing Inventory Week at work again on the week of the 25th, and work has already said we're going to be allowed to take unpaid excused time off and just skip Inventory to stay home on two days if we want to, maybe even three days. I DEFINITELY plan on taking advantage of this. The time off that is being offered is adjacent to a weekend and that means I get a juicy sweet 4 day weekend for sure, with the possibility that it might even become a 5 day weekend. If my stress levels stay low and I can manage to use that extended weekend to write then that's A LOT of potential extra writing time! So I may be able to manage to make August just as successful as July was and delete another huge chunk of my wordcount debt!
I will also leave myself some grace if this plan falls through or my stress rises again of course.
Also, you probably noticed my comm queue has grown yet again, lol. I guess I have done a pretty good job at impressing my friends and slowly curating a group of friends who can understand my slow-ass writing speed and struggles to maintain focus, so they've all been super patient with me and continued being interested despite delays, while more continue showing up. I will try to clear at least ONE of these comms in the rough draft stage, but if I can manage to slam out two then I certainly won't refuse or complain about my muse's sudden unexpected cooperation, lol.
So there it is. Cross your fingers for me folks. I am still in the game for this year's goal, I feel confident I can clear the debt and get back on track. And again, deep deep thanks to my commission buying friends for being so understanding and patient with my failures. Y'all are the best.
See you next month!
