October 2020 in Review

Health/Fitness
Avg calories eaten per day: 1,894*
Avg exercise per day: 194
Weight: 171.3
So the asterisk is for this reason: I have been eating the same meal for breakfast almost every day for the last year or two: cream of wheat mixed with nutella. I'd been estimating the calories in it because measuring nutella is annoying, and realized this month that my nutella consumption per meal was much higher than I'd accounted for. And my count for the calories in the milk had been wrong, too. The whole meal was 180 calories more than I was recording, which over the course of a year is a lot of error. Anyway, last month's adjusted calorie count is 1976 rather than the 1793 I put down.

In light of my revelation about the number of calories in my breakfast, I cut the portion size in half. This didn't save that many calories because I started snacking a little more, but it was still an improvement. Regardless: calories are down, exercise slightly up (which amazes me, because I felt as if I was never exercising anymore in October -- I went outside so rarely because it was cold and gloomy and sometimes snowy, and I am so little interested in Pokemon Go that I no longer even open it most days. But somehow I still managed to get some exercise on most days.) And weight is about the same. I am content.

Writing

I finished the outline for Angel's Grace and am happy with it, yay! That was important for my Nanowrimo goals.

After wrapping up the outline on October 9th, I returned to writing Demon's Alliance and got in another 15,600 words on it. Book is two-thirds done now.

I made notes for a couple of new ideas that I haven't started yet: one is an Alien Peace Lord Romance that I'd been threatening to do. There is a romance subgenre featuring Alien Warlords, and the premise is essentially the same as for the Scottish Laird and werewolf (and the old racist "Jungle Fever" one that I thankfully do not see these days) romance subgenres: you have a sexy alpha male who's all growly and untamed, and a woman who loves him and maybe tames him or maybe gets topped by him, very likely both for one definition of "topping" and "taming" or another.

Anyway, I am not very interested in the basic "sexy, wild, dangerous dude who always needs to be in charge" concept; the trope retains its sexist and racist roots. But I am amused by the idea of doing an "alien peace lord" as a variant on this concept, and making him a civilized member of a functional, sophisticated, high-tech society. I thought up a hook for it one night and wrote it down. I don't have a full outline for it yet, but it's something I might get to eventually. Or not, because honestly my "I'm tired of this Very Popular trope and would like to do something completely different" is 99% Just Me and a few of my friends, so the market for this is probably tiny.

Of course, I thought the market for my most successful book would also be tiny, so what do I know. Nothing. I am bad at marketing, y'all, gonna just write whatever I feel like and you can buy it or not, it's cool.

The other idea was inspired by the new dress-up game I started playing this month, and the working title is "The Twin-Souled Empress", about a young empress with various personal problems and oh also the empire is falling apart and she is not doing anything to prevent that. She turns to religion for help and gets possessed by a saint. It does not get less complicated from there. This would be a fantasy polyamorous romance with a lot of politics to it, a little like The Princess, Her Dragon and Their Prince but without any problems that can be conveniently solved by sufficient application of violence. Lots of thorny political problems that will be very challenging to solve at all, and an aura of impending doom. I am looking forward to this one.

The Business of Writing

I did some editing of The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady. I started an editing list, and completed two points on it. I still have nine to go. If I'd thought this all the way through, I would have finished editing in October instead of working on both editing and writing, since I'm unlikely to do much other than Nanowrimo in November. On the other hand, this Nano is going to have far more free time than I usually do -- no con in the middle, and no vacations either, just one staycation to kick off the month. So I might be able to do both? But probably not.

Art

I finished the portrait of Raven! It's nice. I should post it to Flickr so I can link it.

I did a little more work on the cover for Lord, and I also did some more random doodling. One of them is a semi-abstract tree that I rather like. I am trying to figure out if I can do something with the same kind of approach that would make for a good cover, or at least the backdrop for the cover, on some future book. Or existing book: I'd like to do new covers for the Etherium books in a different style, because I don't feel like the existing covers are good at drawing readers. Especially for The Moon Etherium, which is bad because The Moon Etherium is the first book in the series and therefore most needs a good cover.

Maintenance

My house is mostly painted! Work continues sporadically. I think he needs a taller/better ladder to reach some of the areas that are not yet painted, and the trim still needs to be done. It's slow progress, but pretty much all the old peeling spots now have new paint over them, so I'm not worried about it.

Christian Brothers Roofing did finally manage to cash my check, too. :D It cleared on October 6, I think.

Reading

Amazon's app tells me I missed one day this month, so "read at least a little of something new, almost every day" goal was accomplished. And I even finished a book!

In addition to finishing The Duke Who Didn't, I've read another 83 pages of India After Ghandi, which I will finish in another six months at this pace. c_c But I will probably pick another work of fiction to try. I have some Bujold novellas that I haven't read yet, for instance.

Gaming

Maggie, who got me hooked on Love Nikki a year and a half ago, got a new phone and her Love Nikki account password did not transfer over to it (unlike almost every other app). Love Nikki support responded with "that sounds like a 'you' problem." As far as we can tell, Love Nikki has no account recovery system whatsoever: lose your password (or get banned by Facebook, if your account is tied to Facebook), that's it, you're locked out forever.

I have not yet been locked out of Love Nikki, but this still substantially lowered my interest in playing Love Nikki, especially since I can't even remember setting a password for it, much less what that password is.

I have followed Maggie to a new, similar game: Dress Up! Time Princess, which I absolutely adore. Time Princess has some issues, which mostly boil down to "we have no clue how to monetize our product and are flailing around wildly in an effort to figure this out." So they do things like "oh no, it's too easy to progress in our game, people are leaving because they finished all the content. MAKE IT WAY HARDER!" and then "oh no, people are leaving because it's TOO HARD to progress in our game, what do we do??" They have far fewer clothing items than Love Nikki, and the purchasable clothing is rare and for the most part absurdly expensive. They had a single suit that was $400. Some people bought it. I can't imagine.

After a few days, I bought the $15 two-month "season pass", on the grounds that I love the game far more than Love Nikki and $7.50 a month is a perfectly reasonable entertainment value. Today, I spent another $5 because their wild flailing meant they put out a package that was obviously meant to be priced at $40 for $5, and I failed my resist roll.

In any case, I love the stories in this game (as evidenced by being inspired by one of them!) and I wish the devs success. And will not be spending $400 for a pixel outfit. Y I K E S.

Goal Scorecard for October: Assist Lut: Done! Did have a little more medical stuff this month. He had to go for a skeletal survey to see if his bones have gotten any weaker since the last one. Also had an annual check-up with the neurologist who manages the bi-pap for his sleep apnea. In one of those rare good moments of the pandemic, we were able to do that appointment by Zoom, so we didn't need to haul ourselves out of the house at 7:30 in the morning to get there. And the pre-check-up list of medications went much better with me doing it at home, because I could go into the kitchen and look at the bottles. I used to have all the names and doses in a list, but a few things have changed and the list is out of date now.
Finish Outline for Angel's Grace: Aw yiss I did it!
Reading Streak: I did that too!

Stretch Goal Scorecard for October

Oh wow I totally forgot I'd made this long list of stretch goals. Dear self, your list of things you want to do will probably be more useful if you glance at it now and again. Let's see how I did anyway!

Think about what to write after Angel's Grace: Hey, I did that one! Cool!
Make an editing list for Lord: Did that one too!
Sketch/draw once a week: I will give myself an honorable mention here. I missed one week, but I did finish a picture and I did some other drawing, so good work, me.
Finish the portrait of Raven: I did that too!
Keep up on reading Dreamwidth: I'm a few days back, but I haven't missed any posts because I fell more than two weeks back, so I'm counting this as successful.
Start keeping a to-do list: Eh, technical success? I've been making one and glancing at it now and again. I do not reliably do everything that's on it.

So the ones I didn't make at all are:

Finish editing The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady
Post a few times to Dreamwidth
Finish the cover for The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady

This strikes me as a pretty good stretch goal completion rate, given my "I'll just lard on more stretch goals, why not?" attitude last month.

Goals for November
~ Assist Lut
~ Win Nanowrimo by writing 50,000 words: This will probably be "finish Demon's Alliance and start Angel's Grace" but if I hare off on a different book mid-month, that's fine. I am well past the point where I have anything to prove to anyone about focus and/or writing speed. n_n

Stretch Goals

None. Winning Nano is enough goal for any month. If I happen to do some other things, I can add them in as bonus accomplishments when I do my November write-up.