September 2024 in Review

Health & Fitness

I visited my parents and friends in the area for several days in September, and I basically didn't exercise during that trip. But otherwise I was good about daily exercise. Eliyahu was visiting for most of September and we went for an hour-long walk on almost every day. Even when they were gone for a few days at end of September, I

No improvement in eating habits, though. Arguably slightly worse, since we usually drive to the trail to walk and then get a bubble tea afterwards. On the other hand, it's common for me to have a Coke float if I don't go out, so changing to a different treat drink doesn't make much difference overall.

Writing

I finished one dramatic arcs I had planned for Apothecaria, so that was nice. Still feel like I'm winding down now, but don't know how many more entries before I declare it complete. I've been building up the buffer on entries after running it to zero during the trip to my parents. Right now, I'm at 12 illustrated entries, plus most of an entry written but not illustrated. So that's 37.5 entries written.

I played a bit of a new soloRPG, Lo/oper. I'll post what I've done of that at some point, though I haven't decided if I want to play it all the way through.

The Business of Writing

I finished illustrating the cover for A Dragonling's Family!

And that was about it for business-y stuff.  I read through part of A Game to You again for fun, because I love this extremely messy draft. But I can't claim I did any serious work or even thinking about edits for it.

Art

37 Apothecaria entries illustrated, woo. And the cover for A Dragonling's Family.

Social

Way more social in September! Visited my parents for three days, and Jared, Nicole and Paul for two during the September trip.  Eliyahu visited me for most of the rest of the month. Corwyn stopped by my house at one point to drop off my ice-dyed curtains, and we hung out for a few hours. This included going over to see his new house, which is dinky but, more importantly, affordable. He plans to build a gigantic garage on the property to house his business and let him get rid of at least one storage unit.

Reading

I read two novellas! One was All Downhill From Here, an alt-universe novella by Erin Ptah, about Leif & Thorne trapped by an avalanche. The other was Martha Wells' All Systems Red, the first of the Murderbot Diaries. I enjoyed both! There's a bunch more Murderbot stories, and I own the next three novellas thanks to a giveaway by Tor a while back. So maybe I'll get around to reading those. As usual, I read on the plane, which means my October trip will perhaps see another book or two read.

I also finished a completed "boy's love" manwha, Don't Touch Me. It ended abruptly and without much resolution on the non-romance plot. But the romantic resolution was satisfying and that's all I really want out of a romance.

Several days ago, I bought the rest of the completed fantasy romance manwha Contractual Marriage to a Surly Duke, but in token of how disappointing the last third or so of the story has been, I haven't actually finished reading it. The first two-thirds or so had the romance plot intertwined with a mystery plot and I enjoyed that part. Then they resolved the mystery plot and I thought "ah, the rest will be a leisurely denouement to resolve the romance plot."

...no.

The rest has been wandering around with a new plot that neither I nor the characters have any investment in, while the female protagonist makes various inexplicable choices for no reason other than "the author doesn't want to resolve the romance yet and can't think of any remotely intelligible way to keep it going." Like, I was going to try to explain what's happening but I can't, it just makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, "romance protags making bad choices instead of having a normal conversation" is a staple of the genre, but this goes an order of magnitude beyond "why don't you just talk to each other" into "this doesn't make sense from literally any possible perspective and your own actions contradict each other on, like, the same page, what is even happening, I can't tell."

I already paid for it and there's not much left, so I guess I'll finish it and see if there's anything fun left, but UGH.

Oh! And I finished another fantasy romance manwha, How Did I Become the Princess? This also featured some "what is happening" moments that made no sense. It was fine overall, but I can't enthusiastically recommend it.

I'm down to just two manwha that I'm reading daily installments of. There are several incomplete ones that I'm current on and enjoying, but I have to wait for weekly updates (or for the hiatus to end, sigh.) I picked up a few new ones but put them down again. I'm slowing down on consuming them; there's one that I could finish but haven't bought the rest of yet because I was waiting until I finished all the other episodes I'd purchased.

Goal Scorecard

• Pay bills: Done! In September, even.
• Finish illustration for A Dragonling's Family: Also done!
• Buy plane tickets for next trip to parents: and done!

Stretch Goals:

• Continued posting Apothecaria!
• Started a new soloRPG for the SoloRPGBookClub

October Planning

I am so fed up with NaNoWriMo-the-organization that I no longer want to even use the hashtag. Congrats, on thoroughly poisoned your brand there, folks. I'm not gonna rehash the problems with the org because there are Way Too Many. See here for write up: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1ae33g5/writing_discords_forums_and_a_decades_worth_of/ . Note: it's part one of two. Way Too Many Problems.

But the org doesn't have a trademark on "writing lots in November". 4thewords.com, the writing website I've used since 2016, is still having a big November event (also no longer affiliated with NaNo). It's actually overflowing November to run for 44 days, starting at the end of October and going until December 11. (Because 4thewords loves the number 4.) 

I expect the social media zeitgeist will still be focused on November, and I expect I will focus on that month, too. But I am moderately excited at the prospect of Writing Month post-retirement and with no other commitments. Maybe I could write 100k in a month finally! Probably not; I expect emotional concerns will continue to weigh upon me. But I'd like to set myself up for a month Focused On Just Writing as well as possible.

That means some things I want to complete in October:

Publish A Dragonling's Family: should be quite doable; all that's left out is layout and final read-through.

Get Apothecaria buffer to 30 by the end of October (or finish the story): I have Apothecaria entries through the 13th. So I need another 18 entries for October and then 30 for November. That's 48. So 48 illustrations and around 24000 words. This is pretty ambitious. I had been completing two entries per day for ten-ish days, but then fell out of the habit and even failed to do one entry on  a day. Anyway, not sure I can manage it, but I'd like to. November 2023 I just did illustrations every day while completing NaNoWriMo, and also counted Apothecaria for some of my 50k words.

Get one (or possibly two) outlines in shape for writing: I have one more-or-less complete outline, for "Be That Way", but I want to add more romance to it. I have another outline in progress for "Koysko and the Witch"  that's more like 60% done. "Outline two books" was one of my goals for 2024 so it'd be nice to do that. But I am formally giving myself a pass on completing 2024 goals. 2024 was a disaster of grief and medical crisis for me.  Some stuff is not happening. But I'd like to write in November and this will be more fun if I have good outlines to write to. This is more a "towards the end of month" goal. I probably want to work on these during the Halloween 4thewords event, running from Oct 25-31.

So I want to do all three of these things, but breaking it down to be more realistic and also to add the two little things that I will forget to do if they're not on the list:

October Goals:

• Publish A Dragonling's Family
• Pay October bills
• Buy tickets for next trip to see parents

October Stretch Goals:

• Write & illustrate 48 Apothecaria entries (or finish the story, if it doesn't take 48).
• Get one or two outlines in shape to begin writing