I am barely creeping earlier in the month with these. At least this one is (barely) within the first half of the month!

I did very little writing from January to March, then spent April catching up on a friend's project. I returned to my own writing in May, finishing fics that were lingering from summer of 2023. June - August were supposed to be devoted to inventorying my various story ideas, but it went slower than hoped. September I finally got through that part!

My goals were:

• Look into different outlining methods

I did look at different outlining methods! I am mostly sticking with a modified version of the seven point structure, which has helped me address things like "sagging middle" issues, while also being a fairly easy framework to plug a story into. So far, I've tended to stop after the part where you come up with the scene plan, and not ventured into the scene-by-scene questions/background/etc. stuff - the roadmap is really what I'm most interested in. I may try to utilize the more in-depth scene planning if I run into areas where I get stuck, but for now that strays a bit into the "overplanning" feeling that bogs me down.

I also did look into the "snowflake" method, which is a LOT more in-depth and labor-intensive, but I've heard really good recs from (like from vriddy!) I think I may try that one for my enormous "worldhopping fairytale monstrosity" fic, since it seems to be really helpful for coordinating multiple subplots and character arcs, which is what I most want out of that fic.

• Come up with a rough plan for how I plan to handle multiple projects going forward

I did come up with a tentative "to-do" plan on how to bounce between different projects. I even did a good chunk of that in the October goals post. Unfortunately, a lot of it is also something I know I can't fully plan in advance, since the whole aim of getting multiple things going is to allow flexibility in what I want to work on based on interest, or what "stage" of working I have the mental energy for.

• Look into some options for progress tracking (since I'll no longer be participating in NaNoWriMo, but their word count tracking was one of the most helpful things about the site, for me.)

I did start using TrackBear for my word count tracking! I like it - it allows you to set up different projects as well as different goals. The goals can be tied to a specific project or just in general, and can be set for certain spans of time. They can also be edited at any point, which was helpful for me when I overestimated how many words my outlines were going to be. I've only been using the word count metric for my goals, but they also have a habit tracking option, I believe. (Much like GYWO here!) I also liked that I could import all of my old NaNoWriMo projects to it, so I still have a record of all my wordcounts from the many Novembers and "Camp" challenges I did.

• Outline as many things as possible, with four things I wanted to prioritize, and two that I wanted to definitely get through

As far as outlining went, I did make it through the two projects I'd had as highest priority. The other two I was hoping for I did not get to yet, but at least I got through those two!

My goals for November

Well, the primary one was "Novella November" - to write 30k for the month. My intent was to do this on the Kingdom Hearts Angels and Demons AU. (Two angels and one demon are sent to influence a pair of humans. Some other people involve themselves.)

Unfortunately, I hit a major wall with it.

I did work on it, and got a few thousand words into it at the beginning of the month. Back when I first selected this one as one of the "yes" ideas for fics, I'd expressed a few reservations. The biggest one was sort of an issue with the premise as a whole, that I do get tired of running into overtly Christian ideas in everything, and it feels like I'd just be sort of adding to that sort of hegemony. Even though I'm a mostly-atheist, and my fic would have far more in common with 90s and 00s anime tropes and aesthetics (thinking of Earthian, Wish, stuff like that) more than any sort of biblical accuracy, and would probably fall strongly to the blasphemous side. Lots of queer three or more-somes and all.

Post-election, I think the whole "I'd rather not hear anything about the will of god or religion at all actually, thanks" feeling has just been intensified, and I'm having a hard time having fun with the premise at all. I'm not going for serious subversion or deconstruction or anything a la Good Omens or something, which makes it feel... unnecessary. It's not supposed to be deep, just a romance! But I was already lacking a bit of the "spark" that made the story feel like something I desperately wanted to tell, and now I'm not finding said spark at all.

I was also already really feeling dissatisfied with the writing quality in what I'd gotten done, which I was trying to push through because I was hoping this would be just "shaking the rust off," but with nothing about the fic feeling worthwhile... I think this one needs to go back into the "maybe someday" pile.

So that leaves me scrambling to find a new project in order to get something done with this month. I've written almost nothing since the election, so I am likely too far behind to accomplish the Novella November goal, but I want to at least try.

Three possible projects:

• I could jump to the iddy romance. This is the other story that I did get outlined, so it's pretty fresh in my head. I also discovered that I'd written more on it than I thought (about 25k words!) on a previous attempt. While there's a lot that I plan to change, having done a better outline and changed a few key parts, it's farther along than I remembered. The downside is that I'd really hoped to work on something that would be shareable by sometime early next year, and I'm not sure I want to share any of my original stuff at this point. (Especially the iddy romance stuff.) Maybe under a different username, ha.
• If I wanted to still do a fic, I could do that silly Kingdom Hearts holiday rom-com. 30k is about how long I planned for it to be. It's another one that's supposed to be pretty lighthearted and fun. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much "lighthearted and fun" I have in me at the moment. This is a good time to be working on it in terms of seasonality (and we did just have a pretty big snowstorm and all), but "cozy holiday feelings" is deeply not the vibe of my life right now. It also doesn't address the issue of wanting a story to share early next year. I wouldn't have it quite ready to go by this December, so I'd end up sitting on it until the end of next year. Which is at least plenty of time to get it done and postable.
• Another Kingdom Hearts AU: the cyberpunk one. That one definitely does feel like more of The Vibe right now, which makes it very appealing. It's something I want to write. But the reason I hadn't put this one higher on the list before was that I really wanted to write another ongoing fic before it, for practice reasons, in the hopes of making this one better. I'd also wanted to look a bit more at the cyberpunk genre. I'd consider myself like... "medium-read" within the genre. I've read Snowcrash and some William Gibson, and a few other things here and there, but I'm not an expert on the genre, particularly what the genre is doing now, if anything. I don't want to stumble over big pitfalls, and want to fall in an acceptable margin as far as cliches vs. expectations for the genre. Plus I'd be back to having to do another outline. Plus-plus... I haven't quite figured out how I want it to end, lol.

I thought I was pretty set on the cyberpunk AU, but on further consideration, I think I should go for the iddy romance. It's the thing that I actually have outlined, and can just get straight into writing it. If I'm really wanting to still hit 30k for the month, I probably need to go for ease.

This does mean that I likely won't have anything ready to share until closer to the middle of next year, assuming I focus on a fic after that, but oh well.

Plans for December and beyond:

• December: finish the first draft of the iddy romance
• December: outline the Cyberpunk AU
• January - February: rough draft of the Cyberpunk AU
• February - March: outline the first part of the worldhopping fairytale monstrosity (possibly working on the more in-depth snowflake outline method for the story as a whole)
• March: outline a different iddy romance
• April: work on the second draft of the Cyberpunk AU

The above is obviously pretty tentative. It assumes that I can make myself write at all, and also that I keep up a fairly steady level of productivity. As always, I'd love things to go faster than planned (if an outline only takes a couple weeks, I could start a rough draft earlier.) In all likelihood, things will go slower than planned, lol. Something will need to be reworked, or I'll get burned out, or something else will come up. I could also change my mind and decide that something else catches my interest more!

The biggest problem for me is the like... feeling of impending doom post-election. I've been stuck in "fuck it, I'd rather take a nap" for quite a while now. (It is also possible that this was in part because I was getting sick. I finally got sick Tuesday, so maybe some of the exhaustion and going to bed as soon as I got home was the lead-up to that instead of the depression, but.) My motivation to write is waaaaaaay at the bottom of the list of "all the reasons everything is fucked," obviously, but it's one more frustration. There's a large part of me that wants to just... give up completely and stop trying, because it's not like I'm working toward some future anyway, as I'm not convinced there is much of a future. At the same time, giving up feels like a bad choice, and if there is a future for me months or years from now, I would possibly regret it. But it does feel kind of like... why bother.