New Strolenyear Resolutions

[MysticMoon]

Tomorrow is my birthday. Much more important, however: today marks the end of my third year here at the Citadel. With the fourth year just around the corner, I feel I should make some New Strolenyear resolutions for myself:

• Write up a series of subs coherent enough to be compiled into a sourcebook (a detailed plot, setting, bestiary, or something similar.)
• Start a fiction blog and post to it at least twice weekly (not strictly something for the Citadel, but I'm including it here anyway.)
• Clear out my in-work (I know there's only a couple subs there, but 30 settings is going to kill me )
• Fully participate in a game (forum or chat based.)
• Write a sub for every Quest.
• Use every Friday Freetext in subs.
• Write part 3 of the pumpkin quest series, relating how I dealt with being a corpse.
• Read and comment on at least 5 subs per week (added 2015-01-06)

I will set a reminder for myself for a year from now and see how well I've done against this list. In the meantime, I must decide what kinds of rewards/punishments are appropriate for success and/or failure.

[Scrasamax]

Nice resolutions

[Strolen]

Awesome!

[MysticMoon]

So far I seem to be falling short of... well, all of it. And not that many months to go (3?). I refuse to give up, though, and I hereby restate my intent to do at least some of the above.

Step one? Write some Quest subs. First up: What Makes a Weapon Magic.

[Scrasamax]

Real life, and personal issues have a way of dealing with the goals we set. 

 

You just have to keep getting back up, and trying again.

[MysticMoon]

Gotta use something from this Monster Brains post for that sub: Jan Parker - Paintings of Witchcraft and Black Magic, 1971.

[MysticMoon]

Ok, so last year was a total fail.

Still, new year, new attempt.

• Write part 3 of the pumpkin quest series, relating how I dealt with being a corpse.

Started this last week. Let's see how far I get.

[Strolen]

Better to try and fail than to succeed!!

nO, Wait...

Better to succeed than f...

No...

Small, measurable goals of flour and 2 eggs lightly folded.

um.

Oh, hell. At least you tried something. Even if you didn't meet your very ambitious goals, you were hugely active. Having you part of the Citadel is all that matters!!

[MysticMoon]

This year I'm trying something new, very experimental and cutting edge: I'm dedicating 1-2 hours of each weekday morning to writing. To test the effectiveness of this quite novel approach, I am keeping a log of my creative word count, with a stated goal of 20,000 words per month. I may fall short of *that* goal, but odds are it will help me with my real goals, as stated above.

Madness, no doubt, yet I shall persevere anyway.

[MysticMoon]

Making some steady progress, posting regularly to the pumpkin quest thread. It'll be a long one (over 7,000 words so far and I'm not even 1/9th of the way through it...)

I've written over 8,200 words already this month. That may be shy of the 13,636 (based on words/weekday that would get me to 20,000 by month's end) I should currently be at, but I am still pleased.

I thought I could start in on the fiction blog at the same time, but no go, so that will have to wait until my quest for humanity has been recounted in full.

Instead of writing 2 stories at once, I'm going to try 1 story and 1 gaming project. In that vein, I intend to expand Refuge Beneath the Waves into a full Region. My intent, once completed, will be to have a fully fleshed-out, system-neutral setting that I could probably release as a full book.

Also, going to do my best to make good on reading/commenting on at least 5 subs a week.

[MysticMoon]

And, yes, I know I'm navel-gazing in this thread, but it helps me keep my ideas organized and my plans somewhat coherent 

[Moonlake]

Great to hear your plans, I think your choice for a focused approach is a prudent one. I've found out through the hard way that going back half way to rewrite previous Chapters and then coming back to the place I was while do editing on the side nearly paved the road towards me becoming schizo. So yes, one thing at a time (or a thing of each category at a time in your case) is the way to go, I think.

[MysticMoon]

I read once that you should never edit a book before you've finished the rough draft, and I've had enough failures to agree that that is sound advice.

I'm going to take this a step further and temporarily put on hold all other sub writing challenges and commitments while I focus on fleshing out RBtW. At least until I get to the first stage of having a playable region.

[Moonlake]

Actually I think I read such advice too before I dipped my hands into the novel but it's an old habit of mine from writing in general (granted, they weren't for a book but much shorter writings, now I guess I learnt that length does make a difference) that I find hard to break. Also, I guess I was just sorta impatient with the versioning. What I posted out on Strolen is sorta half ready for public consumption and I just wanted the feedback. And when Axle pointed out a major flaw in it, I just had to go back and fix things.

Anyway, good luck with it.

[MysticMoon]

Ok, so I finished January with 11,391/20,000 words. Certainly not at my goal, but a helluva lot more than I was writing before.

February has not been going nearly so well. As of today, I'm at 3,504/12,142 and most of that was written before the 5th. So more like 1/4 rather than 1/2 of my goal.

Time to step it up and get back to growing my word count. How?

• Space and Time: Spend an hour each day in a room with no/limited Internet access
• Get back to specific goals: Continue my Humanity Quest tale, work on the Art Quest with Moonlake, add content to Refuge Beneath the Waves (starting with some city and alternate history stuff), and write game material (GotC, plus planning for my other games).