March in Review

[rowyn]

Health/Fitness

Back to eating when I’m not hungry, oops. I was still recovering from illness for the first week of March, so exercise was not great either. But I did manage 15 times of minimal aerobics plus 7 times of just stretching.

Writing

I finished the outline for The Jewel-Strewn Night, the unnamed SFF story I mentioned last month, and started writing it. It’s at 20% complete and was coming along well right up until I started playing Apothecaria. I should work on it tonight during CoffeeQuills. c_c

The Business of Writing

Editing on the first draft of Alien Peacelords is 88% complete! My goal was 80%, so this is pretty good. I finished most of the editing points, started on the final read-through before first readers, and am 85% through with that. I came up with a few more things I forgot to add to the editing list, and I decided I was underestimating the effort required for final read-through. I do the read-through using ProWritingAid now, which means I catch more little details, but it also takes longer. So I’ve added more points to the editing list and revised the estimate for the read-through, and I’m still 88% done. Woohoo! I will finish this in April.

Art

So, uh, apparently I did a lot of art during March?

• Ten character portraits for friends
• Two Veo cartoons for their Kickstarter for The Beautiful Decay (check it out!)
• Six illustrated journal entries for Apothecaria
• Sketch & flat colors for the cover for A Game to You
• A little more work on the Alien Peacelords cover.

I have this logged as 23 hours, which feels like it must be an under count because that’s a lot of color pictures. Granted, my current art style is “work quickly and don’t stress too much because it’s more satisfying to finish something kind of slapdash in an hour than to lavish ten hours on it and not be much happier with the result.”

checks through bullet journal

Okay, yes, looks like I didn’t log the time I spent on three of the character portraits or either of the covers. This should be more like 28 hours, I’d guess.

I really gotta start doing art posts on Dreamwidth because mastodon.art is not a good archive.

Social

Not very much here. Saw my local friends twice, which was nice.

Terry is still at the adult family care center, with no clear end in sight for when he’ll be fit enough to be discharged. :( He has all his electronics with him, at least. He’s been playing mostly single-player action games to keep himself engaged, and catching up on some shows he never got around to watching. We talk via Steam or Discord chat for a bit on most evenings.

Gaming

Terry and I learned a new game on boardgamearena.com, It’s a Wonderful World. I liked it pretty well, but we haven’t been playing together much and haven’t tried it again yet.

anke mentioned Apothecaria on Fediverse, describing it in a poll option as “whimsy village witch solo RPG”. I commented that it sounded so delightful that I wanted to play it now, and Anke pointed out that it was in an itch.io bundle. (Bundle has since expired, alas, but it’s worth full price. And there are community copies available if you can’t afford it.)

I love it. I went through the basics of the rules in a day or two, and have played it every day since. I’d always thought that “solo journaling game” would feel like “writing a book, except it’s all fanfic so I can’t publish it.” But it reminds me more of playing a PBEM and I kind of don’t care that I can’t publish it. I am surprised by how much it reminds me of PBEM, given that there’s no “here’s a bunch of replies from other people to keep the story going” aspect to it. But there are mechanical rewards for the things my character does -- she gets money/reputation/reagents -- so there’s some definite game aspects that I enjoy.

I should cross-post the Apothecaria entries here, too. I’ve illustrated eight fancy journal pages and written ... a lot more. So many more. That I haven’t gotten around to illustrating yet and making fancy. :D

The fancy illustrated journal entries are a thing I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve never been able to keep one up for either writing about my own life, or a fiction project. The game provides a good mix of structure and creativity, making it more fun for me to keep it up.

I should cross-post the Apothecaria entries here, too.

Reading

...I actually have a thing I want to read and enjoy reading, but it’s on a website instead of an e-reader app so I keep forgetting about it when I think of reading at night. Mph. I have not been reading.

March Goals Scorecard

• Help Lut: done!
• Keep in touch with Terry: done!
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic): done
• At least 7 more times of “exercise” that can be just stretching for five minutes: done
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: done
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally: done
• Get edits on Alien Peacelords to 80% complete: done!
• Finish outline for new WIP: done!
• Give new WIP a working title that I’m willing to share with other people: done!

March stretch goals completed:

• Consumption tracking: A bit sloppily as usual, but done
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month: I fell apart on this in the last week, but I basically reconstructed it so I’m gonna count it anyway.
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice): TOTAL VICTORY. So much arting.
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference: I didn’t love any of this month’s work but “complete a painting you love” is not the goal. I did this one.
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review: I actually did this! Amazing.
• Learn a new game: I learned TWO new games WHAT
• Start writing next WIP: 20% done already!
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney: I’m gonna give this one an honorable mention because I did actually look at it while working on one of the paintings I did in March. Not a lot of use! But a little.

April Goals

• Help Lut
• Keep in touch with Terry
• Exercise 13 times (aerobic)
• At least 7 more times of “exercise” that can be just stretching for five minutes
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days
• Look at goal list & schedule occasionally
• Complete edits on Alien Peacelords and send to first readers
• Get The Jewel-Strewn Night to 40% complete
• File taxes (I already did this one, this morning, but I still want to give myself credit for it. It was an important goal!)

Stretch goals:

• Consumption tracking
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
• Exercise 20+ times
• Complete a painting that isn’t just a copy of a single CC 0 reference
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
• Learn a new game
• Finish reading a story I haven’t read before
• Refine editing list for A Game to You.
• Work on edits for A Game to You. Make editing list for A Dragonling’s Family Work on edits for A Dragonling’s Family
• Get some use out of Color and Light by James Gurney
• Play Apothecaria
• Post more fancy journal pages for Apothecaria

Comments

[tuftears]

Truly March has been a pretty good month, when you put it all together like that. ^.^

Hope that Terry's health improves soon so he can get back home! There's no place like home, after all.