mistressofmuses | Writing Goals/Calendar: February 2025

January! It happened!

I wanted to get back to writing my iddy romance story.

I did this! My not-quite-a-goal-but-still-my-hope was to get the rough draft completed, which I did not. I'm only about at the halfway point. Even so, it's hard to be too frustrated by that, because the progress has been pretty steady.

I wanted to outline that holiday fic.

This did not happen. When I had time for writing, I wanted to put it toward the WIP, not work on the outline for something I don't plan to work on for quite a while. That's maybe not ideal, but again, I can't be mad at myself for making progress on the thing I most wanted to focus on.

I wanted to finish edits on a chapter of my friend's book.

I have started this, though I am not done. Hopefully I can finish up the first round tonight, and then I can let it sit for a day and do one more read through and get it back to her.

Mostly I'm impressed by the quantity of writing I managed. I agonized over yearly goals, and whether I thought I should aim for 150k or stick with the 75k. I passed 75k last year, but didn't hit 150k. Since I really wanted to focus on reading this year, I decided to go with the lower goal. ...Yet I'm already more than a third of the way to the 75k goal!

Not all of this was fiction writing; I also count some posts that I make here. It's a little bit vibes-based whether I count a post or not, but I basically always count reviews, and often count goal-setting posts as words. (In general, if it was work of some sort to write up and post, I'll count it. Stuff that's more like a diary entry - here's a work gripe, or here are my dogs - not so much.) January got a bunch of words counted due to those types of posts: intention-setting for the year, reviews of the books I read this month, plus my reactions to chapters of Never Say You Can't Survive, so it is likely that my general writing rate is going to drop as I have less of that sort of stuff. But still! That's a lot of words for a month that isn't some sort of challenge! Apparently I should have selected a steeper goal. Ah well.

I'd count the month as more of a success than not, even though none of the three goals were completely met.

My goals for February:

Continue working on the iddy romance. Maybe finish it this month? I don't think that's terribly likely: I will lose several days to a trip with mom and Taylor, and have also not been doing much with it yet this month. But perhaps! Maybe if I hit closer to 1000 words per day, I'll get close.
Definitely finish my friend's chapter. This should only take another couple of days at most.
Outline the Cyberpunk AU. I did read Trouble and Her Friends, which helped me get a bit of the right vibe for the genre, so now I just need to actually outline the story!

For March and beyond:

I haven't been great at interrupting what I'm working on to work on something else, which is a longer standing problem that I've been trying to address. Maybe this will be a baby steps sort of process, where instead of my previous preference, where I worked only on a single thing from initial outline until completion and posting, now perhaps I finish the rough draft of one project, and then feel able to do some outlining of other projects... I don't want to kill what momentum I have for writing the iddy romance rough draft by flipping to the outlining of a different project. So the Cyberpunk outline may get shuffled farther down the timeline as I focus on finishing the current rough draft.
Start attempting the snowflake method of outlining for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity fic. This is again, something that will happen once I get there.
Outline the second iddy romance.
Start the rough draft of the Cyberpunk AU.
Figure out how I want to split up the workload for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity, so that I can work on it in smaller pieces.
Re-outline and then rewrite the first iddy romance.

A little annoying that I feel like I've been working fairly steadily, but haven't actually gotten to strike anything off the list! Though like I said above, it's hard to be too frustrated when it feels like progress is at least getting made. Not sure if I expected a bit too much, or if I just delivered a bit too little in terms of wordcount... but I will be glad it's not been nothing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You made a lot of good progress. Reading/reacting to a book like Never Say is useful at least. I might go and just read the bit about ending since that tends to be my weakest point.

Yeah, it's frustrating to be productive but not have stuff kicked out the door yet. You'll get there!

Thank you! The reading and reacting to a writing-focused book has been nice. Vindicating in some ways, helpful reminders and ways to organize my thoughts and feelings... I did like the bit about endings, and how to try and help the rest of the story build up to it satisfyingly. I have a feeling I will go back to different chapters a few times as they become relevant to projects.

But ha, thank you! Yes, I want some of the things to get out the damn door! Just gotta keep chipping away until they get there.

Writing Goals/Calendar: February 2025

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