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Writing Goals/Calendar: August 2025
Aug. 1st, 2025 10:07 pmThis year has not been great for writing. That really started to get to me around the end of June/beginning of July, ending up moving from frustration to a sort of apathy regarding writing in general. I'd reached a point where I didn't really enjoy anything about the process: I wasn't having fun planning things, I wasn't inspired by any of the things I'd been trying to work on, the actual writing felt like a miserable grind, and I wasn't even struggling through enough to create anything that I was happy about in the end.
I trimmed back my expectations for what to do in July pretty significantly, hoping that maybe focusing on some media intake or other things would start to make me feel a bit better about writing in general, if this was primarily a case of burnout.
Mixed success!
The goals I'd set for myself in July were:
- Finish the current WIP's chapter
- Finish snowflake part 3 for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity fic
- Take a break until something else feels exciting
How that went:
- I didn't work on the WIP
- I didn't work on the snowflake outline
- I *did* mostly take a break
Tangent that I promise feels relevant: I basically never experience much of an effect from caffeine, though I drink it fairly frequently, whether as coffee or tea or as energy drinks. Despite rarely noticing an effect, I always *hope* it'll wake me up at work, and the primary effect it does have when I do notice it is a slight improvement in my ability to focus. (Common ADHD self-medication usage.)
I was solo at work one weekend day mid-month, and I bought myself an energy drink in the hopes of focusing better while on my own for a long stretch. For some reason, the caffeine actually hit me, and gave me a burst of energy and focus (bordering on anxiety, but not actually ever quite tipping over badly.) I immediately turned that focus toward the entirely wrong thing: the desire to plan out a bunch of potential writing under a pseudonym.
Not gonna lie, the focused enthusiasm was a pretty enjoyable experience. It's been a really long time!
While that caffeine-fueled excitement wore off pretty fast (and I really do not know why it happened in the first place), part of that core idea seems solid to me. Writing under a name that isn't actually connected to my own has some appeal. One of the many issues I've had is the inability to get out of my own way, or ultimately becoming paralyzed over thinking that something I'm writing feels a little too personally revealing, or a bit too catered to my id... Not having to tie that writing to me as a person might be a bit freeing, haha.
Unfortunately, the interest in doing that hasn't really made it to the "actually motivated to work on things" stage, beyond a couple short bursts. Time management is still a lot of it, as always. It just feels like there aren't enough hours in the day, and it's almost always the thing that's shuffled to the bottom of the priority list. We've been spending so much more time hiking and things this year, I don't really have time even on my days off. That's not a complaint - I'm delighted not to be wasting the summer weather - but it does mean that time isn't going toward other things. Perhaps once the weather turns?
As always, it is primarily the need to reprioritize things, or make peace with this not being the priority for me right now. It may be the latter: I don't want to do less on my days off, I don't want to cut back on the reading that I'm actually managing, I want to keep posting photos from the stuff we go do even though that's time-consuming too.
If it never gets to become a priority, it's never going to *happen*, and I of course always have the option to reshuffle what I want to be spending my time on, but for now... I want to try to fit it in, but we'll see how much time I can actually carve out for it.
Goals for August:
- get a sort of intro blurb done for the pseudonym
- do some prioritizing and assessment of ideas
- I swear, I've got to get that stupid outline done, this is just silly
- maybe the WIP chapter
We'll see how things go. I'm at least feeling more optimistic about the idea of writing as a whole concept this month, compared to last, haha.
I trimmed back my expectations for what to do in July pretty significantly, hoping that maybe focusing on some media intake or other things would start to make me feel a bit better about writing in general, if this was primarily a case of burnout.
Mixed success!
The goals I'd set for myself in July were:
- Finish the current WIP's chapter
- Finish snowflake part 3 for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity fic
- Take a break until something else feels exciting
How that went:
- I didn't work on the WIP
- I didn't work on the snowflake outline
- I *did* mostly take a break
Tangent that I promise feels relevant: I basically never experience much of an effect from caffeine, though I drink it fairly frequently, whether as coffee or tea or as energy drinks. Despite rarely noticing an effect, I always *hope* it'll wake me up at work, and the primary effect it does have when I do notice it is a slight improvement in my ability to focus. (Common ADHD self-medication usage.)
I was solo at work one weekend day mid-month, and I bought myself an energy drink in the hopes of focusing better while on my own for a long stretch. For some reason, the caffeine actually hit me, and gave me a burst of energy and focus (bordering on anxiety, but not actually ever quite tipping over badly.) I immediately turned that focus toward the entirely wrong thing: the desire to plan out a bunch of potential writing under a pseudonym.
Not gonna lie, the focused enthusiasm was a pretty enjoyable experience. It's been a really long time!
While that caffeine-fueled excitement wore off pretty fast (and I really do not know why it happened in the first place), part of that core idea seems solid to me. Writing under a name that isn't actually connected to my own has some appeal. One of the many issues I've had is the inability to get out of my own way, or ultimately becoming paralyzed over thinking that something I'm writing feels a little too personally revealing, or a bit too catered to my id... Not having to tie that writing to me as a person might be a bit freeing, haha.
Unfortunately, the interest in doing that hasn't really made it to the "actually motivated to work on things" stage, beyond a couple short bursts. Time management is still a lot of it, as always. It just feels like there aren't enough hours in the day, and it's almost always the thing that's shuffled to the bottom of the priority list. We've been spending so much more time hiking and things this year, I don't really have time even on my days off. That's not a complaint - I'm delighted not to be wasting the summer weather - but it does mean that time isn't going toward other things. Perhaps once the weather turns?
As always, it is primarily the need to reprioritize things, or make peace with this not being the priority for me right now. It may be the latter: I don't want to do less on my days off, I don't want to cut back on the reading that I'm actually managing, I want to keep posting photos from the stuff we go do even though that's time-consuming too.
If it never gets to become a priority, it's never going to *happen*, and I of course always have the option to reshuffle what I want to be spending my time on, but for now... I want to try to fit it in, but we'll see how much time I can actually carve out for it.
Goals for August:
- get a sort of intro blurb done for the pseudonym
- do some prioritizing and assessment of ideas
- I swear, I've got to get that stupid outline done, this is just silly
- maybe the WIP chapter
We'll see how things go. I'm at least feeling more optimistic about the idea of writing as a whole concept this month, compared to last, haha.
