Trying to get back on track... any track... with writing!



January through March did not go well for me on the writing front. I started with setting a few goals, but making very little progress toward them. Then I set no goals and made zero progress on anything. There were some extenuating circumstances, like an unpleasant bout of illness, and then later a different art-related event that took up my time and creative energy. Even so, that was not a great start to the year!



At the beginning of April, I made it my goal to finish an editing project for a friend. This batch of chapters had been hanging over my head for months, and I really hoped that a) I could get them all back to her and stop holding up the project for her, and b) that finishing this would help me unblock my own writing by removing a source of guilt.

This went very well! I did complete all of what she had sent me! I edited over 15000 words of her work, which wound up being nearly 19000 by the time it included my explanatory notes and clarifying questions.

My goal was to complete all of the edits by April 24th, and I completed them on April 25th, which is pretty damn close!

I also set myself a plan to begin working on my own works again once I finished hers. In order to make it (maybe!) doable to finish the lingering incomplete fics from last year by the end of May, I wanted to finish the first of them by May 1st, and I also succeeded at this!

"Reconnection" was almost entirely completed on April 30th. The first E-rated fic I've ever shared, ha.

Plans/Goals for May:

- May 01 - Complete and post "Reconnection" This is done!
- May 08 - complete and post the "Royalty" AU
- May 15 - complete and post the "Dark" AU
- May 22 - complete and post the "Shipwrecked" AU
- May 29 - complete and post the "Pick Two" AU

This gives me one week per fic. As I mentioned last month, that feels a wee bit ambitious, considering how many months have passed without finishing any of them. However, these were part of a month-long challenge that would have been a fic per day, so a whole week should be more than enough time! Though as I also mentioned last time, this is largely my own fault because all these fics are intended to continue, and worse, conclude, series of their own, and that's made them more complicated in some ways.

With one week per fic, my intent is to spend one day rereading anything relevant to the fic and outlining/three days on a rough draft/two days on a rewrite/the last day doing a final SPAG edit and readthrough + posting.

Of course, as always it would be great to get ahead, but I'll be glad as long as I can keep making pretty steady progress.

For June and Beyond:

In June, I still hope to be able to treat myself to a much-belated birthday gift of Scrivener, and then my hope is to do a major "idea inventory." I want to check in on all of my original and fan fiction ideas and see which ones I actively want to work on, which are ideas I like but don't necessarily want to write, and any that I feel can be discarded for the time being.

Once I do that, I want to pick maybe four or so to focus on. Ideally, probably two fanfic and two original works. I'm not generally very good at switching between projects, but when it comes to some longer works, either I need to figure it out, or make peace with the idea of working on only one thing for months or years.

What I do in July and beyond will depend on what happens during June, and whether I find some project(s) to focus on.