December 2024 in Review

[rowyn]

I want to say that the reason I keep doing these every month, including in the absolutely terrible months, because I genuinely love these reviews. They help me remember my life and they help me align my perspective with reality. If I had to rely on my memory alone, I would have such a weirdly skewed perspective from reality. 

But also, I just really like writing these. I woke up this morning and was like "aw yeah it's a new year I get to do my year in review!" And then when I sat down to do it, I remembered I have to do a month in review too, and was like "Great!"

I don't think I can explain why I enjoy this tradition so much. Part of it is that I have such a long history of accomplishing whatever goals I set that by this point I associate the review with a sense of accomplishment even if I didn't get things done. Maybe another part is that I have prompts for the reviews (the section hearders) and it's comparatively easy to write to prompts. Anyway.

Woohoo! Another time-period-in-review!

Health & Fitness

Exercise remains mediocre at best, in the 1-2 times per week range, I'd guess. During the week-long visit to my parents over Christmas, I got myself to use their exercise bike exactly once. Eliyahu came to cat-sit and visit on the 19th, and we walked together on the 20th before I left, and on the 29th and 30th. We didn't go out on the 31st because it was below 40 F and breezy. I teased Eliyahu, "I won't make you walk today in deference to your delicate northern Canadian constitution."

Today's high is slightly above 40F and no wind to speak of, so I think I'll make them walk today, though. After they're done with morning prayers and the grocery delivery has arrived.

Writing

Because of 4thewords' 250k-in-44-days challenge, my usual November push continued well into December. I wrote another 55k from December 1-11. Most of that was dictation word salad, journal entries, and notes for The Secret Dragon, which I finished outlining. 

My total fiction drafted for December was 7237 words on The Secret Dragon. Most of that was after the challenge ended. It's not a huge amount, but I am pleased that my fiction writing didn't grind to a total halt after November like it usually does.

The Business of Writing

I set my books to 75% off for the Smashwords annual sale and mentioned this once or twice on the Fediverse. I didn't do anything else business-related.

Art

I kept up with daily Apothecaria illustrations in December, completing 31. The buffer is at zero now (after posting Jan 1's entry), and is not likely to get much above that because there's only 11 entries left to illustrate and post. Unless I add some material or revise where the breakpoints are, final Apothecaria entry will go up on Jan 12. Woohoo! I am excited to finish this and also to have "illustrate and post Apothecaria entries" off the mental to-do list.

Reading

I finished the audiobook for The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in December. It was fine. Maybe I'll write a review for it eventually. It had many good qualities but did some things that rubbed me the wrong way so my overall impression was very much "that was a book, yup."

I finished three manwha: I Accidentally Saved the Male Lead's Brother, The Lost Stiletto Affair, and The Flower That Devoured the Sun. These were all pretty good. The Flower That Devoured the Sun is somewhat unsatisfying as a romance but makes up for it by having such a delightfully unusual protagonist. I mentioned this story in my July review (https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/694078.html) ; because the main character is the female reincarnation of an ultra-powerful male sorcerer; she chose to reincarnate, remembers her past life with as much clarity as her current life, and still thinks of herself as the same person. The gender aspect here is largely unexamined -- it comes across as cosmetic more than anything else, of no more importance than the change in her hair color (previously black, now silver). She gets a little more connected to her current life and the people in it as the story progresses, but retains the sense of detachment and analytical thinking that makes her compelling. 

Social

Eliyahu flew in on December 19 and cat-sitted from December 21-28 while I visited my parents and also my North Carolina friends. Friends-visit was Dec 22-23 and Dec 27, while I spent the rest of the visit with my parents. For Christmas, my brother refrained from giving me any chores to do for my parents while I was there, which was very kind of him. My mom asked me to change the batteries in all the smoke detectors, though, so I did that. I have done this once before but, surprisingly, did not remember that two of their smoke detectors take two AA batteries instead of one 9-volt, like every other smoke detector in their house (which has this strange wired-in-place system so they all use what look like identical detectors) and also literally every other smoke detector I've ever seen anywhere. What. Why. 

The first one I checked was AA and they didn't have any AA batteries at home because we'd ordered 9-volt batteries because that's what you put in smoke detectors. My mother suggested I check another before giving up and going out for 16 AA batteries, and thankfully I did since it was only two of the eight that used AA. I wrote an email to the rest of the family describing the situation, 5% in case they had to change smoke detector batteries in the future and 95% so that I'd remember when I had to change them. I will be moving to live with my parents so they have someone relatively able-bodied on the premises. Probably in March or April, possibly sooner if my mother gets hip surgery scheduled for sooner than that.

Goal Scorecard

• Finish an outline: I finished the outline for The Secret Dragon!
• Pay December bills: I very nearly forgot to do this, but took care of them at 10PM last night
• Call parents at least once before trip: I think I called them exactly once before the trip, but hey, that counts
• Visit parents: Sure did!

December stretch goals

1. Illustrate Apothecaria through end of December: Done!
2. Start writing something: I started The Secret Dragon!
3. I didn't have "journal entries" down as a stretch goal, but I posted 5 entries beyond the review in December, so that was cool.

January Goals

• Write some of The Secret Dragon
• Read through Be That Way
• Make an editing list for Be That Way
• Finish illustrating and posting my Apothecaria journal
• Make plans for next trip to parents
• Call parents a few times

January Stretch Goals

• Play a romance soloRPG
• Work on cover art or book illustrations
• Exercise 20+ times
• Track consumption
• Track what I read (maybe try Storygraph finally?)
• Make progress on clearing out stuff I no longer want
• Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed

Comments

[tuftears]

Secret Dragon is a great outline, I'm looking forward to the actual book. ^.^

Whew @ remembering to pay the December bills!

I kind of feel like the reading you're doing on Timecrossed Engineer should totally count as an accomplishment. ^.^

Romance SoloRPG - from the mentions of Apothecaria and the time-looping solo-RPG bits you did, these kind of feel like prompts for writing a book, is that how they're supposed to work?

[rowyn]

I get to count Timecrossed Engineer as a book I read in 2025! :) I should count writing all the comments for it as something, too, tho, true.

[tuftears]

*purrs* ^.^ Definitely an accomplishment!

[rowyn]

Most SoloRPGs are structured as "prompts for telling a story". They don't have to be book-length and they don't have to be written out. I've seen one where you draw a sort of map based on random prompts instead of writing a story. I saw another that was explicitly for writing novels and where the author explicitly said 'whatever you make from this is yours to do whatever you want with it, I don't claim any copyright over your use of the prompts'. I don't know how common that approach is. Apothecaria certainly feels like a game where the story you tell is gonna use a lot of Apothecaria-specific elements; I can't think of it as anything but fanfic.

[tuftears]

I see, I can understand that-- if it's basically set in a world someone else came up with, even if you decided specific parts like the local country or the people populating it, it doesn't feel *quite* as original as something you made up from whole cloth. And with Apothecaria, you've said enough that I think I have something of the gist of how the rules go, patients come to witch with problem, witch collects reagents, witch makes potions, witch treats patients, it either goes well or it doesn't based on how well those steps went...

I'm curious about Lo/oper but I'll wait for you to get back to that story, whenever that happens. ^.^

[rowyn]

Yeah, all the reaagent and illness names and descriptions are from Apothecaria prompts, as well as the different areas. The "missing witch that you've replaced" is a theme in all Apothecaria stories. Each journal will diverge wildly but there'll be a lot of commonalities because there's tons of prompts and they're pretty detailed. It's what I like about Apothecaria -- there's so much to work with that it feels like a game. It also has character advancement mechanics and loot/spending options, which help with the "it's a game" experience.

Lo/oper has very, very generic prompts so the stories from that aren't going to feel similar except in the "all time loop stories" sense. But generic prompts just feel like work instead of a game.

[tuftears]

Yeah, that definitely sounds like work... Annoying! x.x I'd rather something like what you describe with Apothecaria, if I was in need of some prompts/found it a fun setting to explore.