HIVVER|W1NTER|XEIΜΏΝ

  • Daily Writing – March

    I swear….. every month has started on a weekend so far. Here’s a new post for the new month~!

    RULES REMINDER:

    • 500-1000 words a day
    • weekends are skippable
    • don’t miss more than 3-5 days a month
    • editing doesn’t penalise

    OK LET’S GO~

    MARCH 2025 PROGRESS:

    • MAR 01:
    • MAR 02:
    • MAR 03:
    • MAR 04: TAKE OUT — 1,102
    • MAR 05: TAKE OUT — 937
    • MAR 06:
    • MAR 07: TAKE OUT — 816
    • MAR 08: TAKE OUT — 792
    • MAR 09: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 10: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 11: THE POST!! — 1,587
    • MAR 12: TAKE OUT — 712
    • MAR 13: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 14: TAKE OUT — 755
    • MAR 15:
    • MAR 16: TAKE OUT — 268
    • MAR 17: TAKE OUT — 824
    • MAR 18: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 19: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 20: TAKE OUT — 2,183
    • MAR 21: TAKE OUT — 568
    • MAR 22:
    • MAR 23:
    • MAR 24: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 25: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 26: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 27: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 28: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • MAR 29:
    • MAR 30:
    • MAR 31: TAKE OUT — 411

    TOTAL WORD COUNT: 10,955

    MAR 08

    We’re having a sloooow writing month to start with because byGODDD it’s been BUSY (figures… we have a lot of con prep and Kickstarter organising) but we’re getting there!

    I really want to finish TAKE OUT this month so we’re going to be working really hard these next couple weeks on wRITING the dang thing!

    MAR 29

    I sure meant to do a few more updates here about my writing process but things got HECTIC and busy and I’ve had my brain space elsewhere (fixing up my other website) and thinking a lot about stories (new and old) that I’m working on. I’ve stepped back from a few things and got a bit of a breath of fresh air lately. I don’t know. Sometimes you get a bit too close to something and things get cloudy for a while.

    Anyway.

    I’m getting really excited to work on some more things. Maybe a few shorter things haha. It’s kinda funny to start a writing challenge to get more words out in an attempt to get more first drafts going and here I am full-on editing the first project to hit my fingers just before posting it to my webbed site. A project that should have been a fleeting week or two turning into almost four months! And I’m not even upset at myself for it?? Idk. Wild.

    I’m having fun. It’s been nice. I’ve got 4 episodes left of Take Out and then we get to move on to something ~new~

    Hopefully I decide what I want to work on by the time I get there LOL.

    OVERALL THORTS

    This month was crazy and all those days I did editing DID have some wordcount added to them BUT there was so much copy-pasting it was honestly hard to keep track!

    We’ve been busy but I’ll take roughly 11k for the month all things considered!

  • Daily Writing — February

    Huh… its February. Time for a new post~

    It was the weekend so I’m late to the party but heeeeeyyyy here I am, new month new post new WC tally.

    RULES REMINDER:

    • 500-1000 words a day
    • weekends are skippable
    • don’t miss more than 3-5 days a month
    • editing doesn’t penalise

    OK LET’S GO.

    FEBRUARY 2025 PROGRESS:

    • FEB 01:
    • FEB 02:
    • FEB 03:
    • FEB 04: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 05: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 06: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 07: TAKE OUT — 446
    • FEB 08: SFD NOTES — 3,600
    • FEB 09:
    • FEB 10: ~EDITING, ~500 wds~
    • FEB 11:
    • FEB 12: TAKE OUT — 2,377
    • FEB 13: TAKE OUT — 751
    • FEB 14: TAKE OUT — 1,087
    • FEB 15: SFD NOTES — 2,682
    • FEB 16: I WANNA CROWDFUND blog post — 3,786
    • FEB 17: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 18: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 19: NARCISSUS — 244
      >>>>>>>> TAKE OUT — 353
    • FEB 20: TAKE OUT — 1,182
    • FEB 21: TAKE OUT — 2,990
    • FEB 22: RESOURCES FOR CANADIAN AUTHORS PAGE — 2,151
      >>>>>>>> TAKE OUT — 573
    • FEB 23:
    • FEB 24: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 25: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 26: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 27: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • FEB 28: ~EDITING, NO WC~

    TOTAL WC THIS MONTH: 22,722

    FEB 17

    It’s been one hell of a weird month emotionally and stress-related so, to hell with it I’m counting things like tabletop notes because I DO edit them to be legible for Recaps the next day for our team! The last two sessions have been Downtime so extra care goes into note taking because THAT’S when all the juicy bits happen.

    Otherwise, there’s a lot of editing on TAKE OUT right now because I really want to Finish this project before I hop onto the next thing and get distracted. Its hard though, I’m in the trenches on some of the really sweet stuff with JD & FRANKIE in this chapter so I’m struggling trying to figure out how much is Too Much and when to pull back vs really illustrating what these characters are all about.

    We’ll get there, we’ll get there.

    FEB 26

    How is it already the last week of February….

    Wow time sure does fly when you’re doing things and being productive huh! Safe to say, this month feels a little bit more indicative of what a normal month with a daily wc is going to look like.

    I have to say…. that despite my slow-down this month (missed days and distractions), I sure feel like I’m brimming with even more ideas and inspiration than I have in a long time.

    You’ll maybe notice that um…NARCISSUS has made it up there in the roster. I think that’s going to be my next MYTH RETOLD… we’ll see were it takes me though. It’s also a bit of a proof of concept for my XENIA draft. I’ll be back for her… some day.

    Its been nice. I don’t remember the last time I was feeling this Charged with inspiration. I’m trying to channel it into actually Finishing TAKE OUT before I fully jump into something new.
    It’s getting there, though! I’m working on the next chapter and that one’ll take me to just about the half way mark!

    FEB 28

    I swear I blinked and here we are at the end of the month. Admittedly I spent a lot of it editing TAKE OUT (as mentioned above) 2 episodes were really giving me grief ….because they were both episodes that, as i was writing the whole first draft, I pretty much told myself ‘i’ll go back and fix it in post’…. well here we are in post huh.

    I’d like to think it’s all uphill from here for me…. but we’ll see…… either way I’m having fun hehe.

    REGARDLESS. I’m having a lot of fun fine-tuning and editing. I’m kind of itching to start a new draft soon, though. Maybe March will give me a bit more flexibility. Maybe I can wrap up this story–

    ANYWAY I STILL MANAGED LIKE 22k WORDS this month which I’m happy about! Lots more spurts.

    This new sprinting group’s made writing much easier lately. Sometimes you just need a little push haha.

    Well. That’s all for Feb~

  • Daily Writing – January

    New year? New month? New daily writing post. I’m scribbling this up the day after the first because everyone takes the day off so why shouldn’t I?

    I was up till 4am playing board games the night before, being very responsible.

    Alright lets get this tracker started.

    RULES REMINDER:

    • 500-1000 words a day.
    • Weekends don’t count UNLESS I’m IN IT
    • Missed days do NOT need to be ‘made up’
    • But try not to miss more than 3-5 per month.

    JANUARY 2025 PROGRESS:

    • JAN 01: 2024 — A Retrospective Blog Post — 2,710
    • JAN 02: TAKE OUT — 1,059
    • JAN 03: TAKE OUT — 897
    • JAN 04: TAKE OUT — 915
    • JAN 05: TAKE OUT — 786
    • JAN 06: TAKE OUT — 712
    • JAN 07: TAKE OUT — 517
    • JAN 08: TAKE OUT — 1,599
    • JAN 09: TAKE OUT — 229
    • JAN 10: TAKE OUT — 564
    • JAN 11: TAKE OUT — 620
    • JAN 12:
    • JAN 13: TAKE OUT — 403
      >>>>>>>> PARHELIA — 119
    • JAN 14: TAKE OUT — 674
    • JAN 15: TAKE OUT — 745
    • JAN 16: TAKE OUT — 2,533 END.
    • JAN 17:
    • JAN 18:
    • JAN 19: PARHELIA — 1,072
    • JAN 20: PARHELIA — 320 END.
    • JAN 21: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • JAN 22: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • JAN 23: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • JAN 24: ~EDITING, NO WC~
    • JAN 25: THE COMIC PROCESS: AUGUSTINE — 2,921
    • JAN 26:
    • JAN 27: TAKE OUT — 1,578
    • JAN 28: TAKE OUT — 423
    • JAN 29: TAKE OUT — 753
    • JAN 30: TAKE OUT — 380
    • JAN 31: TAKE OUT — 1,342

    TOTAL WC THIS MONTH: 23,551

    JANUARY 16

    I finished a DRAFT today!! Wow!!! This is so fun and exciting! Since starting this adventure (with NaNo) I’ve finished 2 drafts and I’m starting to feel really great about it.

    I always get so weird & sentimental about finishing a draft. Especially ones I have so much fun writing. I think I struggle a bit with letting go of something that didn’t take me as long as I thought it might, to finish.

    And the trouble with that is that I tend to put off ACTUALLY finishing it until I completely forget about it and it collects dust in my hard drive somewhere.

    BUT NOT THIS TIME.

    So I’m taking a short break from it (1 week….or less idk we’ll see how long the short fiction draft takes) so that I can finish up a short fiction writing challenge I started up with friends earlier this month. And then spending the last week of January finishing it up before…

    POSTING IT HERE HAHAH.

    Yeah, no I mean it. I’ll be posting it in bits and pieces up here for folks to read. The plan is to be able to doodle things along with it before I post it on a more professional sphere I guess. We’ll see. Its a project I’m doing for fun so I’m trying to Let Go a little bit more.

    Look forward to that~

    JANUARY 19

    So I’ve gotten into a new Writing Challenge with some friends from one server: PARHELIA is part of that. I’ve decided to go with some Flash Fiction/Vignette of an OC of mine based on a photo I gave to our group as inspo to draw from~ It’ll be exciting to see how everyone interprets my prompt~

    BUT ALSO–

    I’ve started doing some quick 10 minute writing sprints with another group of writer colleagues in our agency’s discord! It’s been a really fun way to toss out the bad brain demons and just get straight to work on a wordcount. I used to do this a lot way back when and finished a lot of drafts that way just plundering through & not stressing about whether or not something works.

    We can always fix it in post~

    JANUARY 25

    I ran into my first issue with this word count sprint and its: Fuck What Do I Do About Editing?

    Because the goal here is to Finish More Stories and to use this writing challenge to encourage the finishing of said stories. I needed a little leeway when it comes to deciding I actually want to Edit and put the work into doing that too. Right now I’m editing TAKE OUT so I’m trying to chip away at 2-3 chapters per week. Thing is, once I’ve decided I’m editing for the day, its hard to switch my brain to another story and actively write that one.

    Also, like. I finished not ONE but TWO works this month so I’m giving myself a bit more flexibility this week and next~!

    Not to mention the weather’s been absolute whiplash so I’m battling more headaches than I usually do.

    TL;DR I’m still WRITING just not full-steam-ahead drafts!

    JANUARY 30

    So earlier this month I talked about potentially posting TAKE OUT up here and sure enough I DID. So far the first two episodes are up while I work on editing the third! It’s been interesting running through edits this fast but I’m glad I decided to just go for it instead of spending a bunch of time overthinking it.

    (which is ironic bc this particular main character has a habit of Overthinking hehehe)

    JANUARY 31

    AND THAT’S A WRAP! At least for the first month of the year! I’ve started adding my BIG TOTAL at the end of my big progress tracker at the top and hitting 23,000 WORDS feels like a huge win in my books (considering this ISN’T NANO and I’ve spent a good chunk of the month in editing limbo) It’s incredible how much I’ve gotten done.

    Yeah it was spread across various projects. There are a couple things I also didn’t even count up in there because it felt extra.

    But it’s incredible to see how a small goal snowballs into making MORE of something even EASIER.

    We’ll have to see if I can keep this up.
    And…. if there isn’t some way for me to translate a daily goal like this into some more personal drawing/sketching. Maybe I need a daily sketch goal this year…. hmm…

    Much to think about! ONWARD!

  • Daily Writing – December

    So here I am, sitting with half-eaten drafts and feeling almost dejected that NaNo is over and how (too) easy it was for me to stop writing the second I didn’t have…

    …Accountability.

    So I’m starting this thing now…

    instead of January because starting is always difficult and there’s enough pressure come January… the habit is already sitting in my brain as is, fresh from NaNo, so why not?

    I’m sitting on Many Many drafts and no accountability for finishing them. It’s not because I’m necessarily lazy or displeased with those drafts. I think my brain struggles to keep On Task with a project when it feels like the yield for it is just too far away. So I’m hoping that by chipping away at these things a little bit every day I can get a few of these Drafts, officially completed.

    Maybe I’ll make an official page for those who want to keep up with my Saga as I go. The goal was to do this for (at least) a year but I would like to be able to keep this habit indefinitely.

    Parameters, The Goal, Yadda Yadda

    I’ve been writing for years now so I think I have a pretty good grasp of what should be feasible for me.

    So lets get into it:

    • 500-1000 words a day.
    • Weekends don’t count UNLESS I’m IN IT
    • Missed days do NOT need to be ‘made up’
    • But try not to miss more than 3-5 per month.

    Pretty simple. The idea is that there’s no Penalty for missed days. I think I beat myself up over this sort of thing Too Much & discourage myself otherwise & give up halfway. This is about longevity & encouraging progress. Every little bit counts and every little bit is a step towards completing something.

    ANYWAY– here’s December 2024’s progress so far.

    • DEC 11: TAKE OUT — 868
    • DEC 12: TAKE OUT — 515
    • DEC 13: TAKE OUT — 746
    • DEC 14: MYTH RETOLD BLOG POST — 1,480
    • DEC 15:
    • DEC 16: TAKE OUT — 813
    • DEC 17: TAKE OUT — 609
    • DEC 18: TAKE OUT — 530
    • DEC 19: TAKE OUT — 557
    • DEC 20: TAKE OUT — 571
    • DEC 21:
    • DEC 22:
    • DEC 23: TAKE OUT — 553
    • DEC 24: X-M — 291
      >>>>>>>>TAKE OUT — 782
    • DEC 25:
    • DEC 26:
    • DEC 27: TAKE OUT — 527
    • DEC 28: TAKE OUT — 585
    • DEC 29: TAKE OUT — 640
    • DEC 30: TAKE OUT — 575
    • DEC 31: TAKE OUT — 625

    MONTH RECAP

    Wowee, first month of the dang thing and we’re off to a great start. I’m already breaking my ‘take a break on weekends’ rule but I think that’s just because my current draft has me by the freakin throat. I’m just about finished that one, though. Weirdly enough I might just even jump straight into editing it when the draft is done. I know where I’d like to add a few scenes and tighten up others. It’ll be nice to reread it over now that I’ve got my big sprint in and see if my prose has suffered from my dire need to finish the thing before it escapes my brain.

    IDK why im like this I just am.

    Anyway, this first month was good. It wasn’t the FULL month but it might as well have been considering I’ve been writing straight through the holidays.

    I’m realising that maybe 500-1000 words is a pretty good sweet spot to be writing in. 500 ensures I get a good chunk of some scenes done. I’m surprised I’m playing conservative and hovering on the 500 words end these days, but I think weirdly enough that just comes with writing a script instead of strictly prose or walls of text. I know you cram in more WC with the number of times you repeat someone’s name for Dialogue but the scenes develop faster than they might with prose so I feel like I’m almost writing too fast, if that makes any sense?

    Anyway.

    I’m excited to keep this habit going. They say if you can hold onto a habit for 30 days, it really does stick so I’m hoping that’s the case.

    We’ll find out how I fare in the next few months, though those are the quieter ones, the habit shouldn’t be too hard to keep up!

    I’ll have to start thinking about what my next draft is going to be… hmmMM.

  • OC-TOBER 2023

    I’m not even trying to brag that much when I say that this might be my BEST set of OC-tobers yet. But hey this is also the first year since 2020 I’ve managed to complete the challenge~

    This is me retro-actively posting the results of a challenge I did years ago.

  • OC-TOBER 2022

    Ok so I LOVED doodling these but wow they (understandably) took a lot of time so I didn’t wind up finishing the month. I got pretty far though!

    This is me retro-actively posting the results of a challenge I did years ago.

  • OC-TOBER 2021

    Ok so I really tried this year but sometimes it doesn’t pan out. Some of these are a bit wonky and not quite right BUT some of them hit pretty hard so I’m posting them anyway~

    This is me retro-actively posting the results of a challenge I did years ago.

  • OC-TOBER 2020

    OC-tober is one of the //checks hand 500-ish (this is a real, not made-up number I swear) challenges that come up during October. Some folks do this in different ways. I like to sketch one of my ocs per day just to catch a lil recap.

    Suffice to say a lot of these guys have changed… a Lot over the years (and will likely keep changing every year after).

    This is me retro-actively posting the results of a challenge I did years ago.

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