rowyn

Mom

Mom passed away on January 5th. I still miss her. There's less for me to do in the house now, and it's nice to have more time for myself. But I miss her. It's the worst and also most significant thing that happened in January.

Health and Fitness

I did surprisingly well for exercise this month, even after Eliyahu left and I stopped going out for daily walks. I checked off exercise 28 times: there were only three days when I didn't exercise. Even with some of the "exercise" days being just 'I danced while watching a show' or 'I paced while on the phone.'

Also did a little better than usual about eating vegetables, courtesy of adding broccoli to potatoes. Ate lots of chocolate and candy in the first half of the month, courtesy of Christmas gifts, though. :9

Dailies

I kept up with this for the entire month! I forgot about it for a few days here and there, but not so long that I couldn't reconstruct it easily. My daily journal entries are detailed enough that I can get most of the details from

Writing

A Dragon's Secret is up to ~54,700 words, so 1500 words for January. I continued making notes for a new WIP, Kingslayer. It's up to 3300 words of notes, 2300 for January. I have a broad overview of the plot now, but I haven't written out any specifics. I only have a vague idea of what my protagonists are like. Lots still to do.

Business of Writing

I did some editing on A Game to You, mostly fixing small stuff like placeholder names, but also started on the timeline. Somehow the timeline for my stories is always a thing I end up sorting out in edits. The draft for A Wolf-Shifter's Pack had the timeline explicitly as part of the outline, and I still ended up futzing with it in edits. Time is hard.

Art

I finished another portrait of Olive, this one in a more femme version of her boymode outfit. I realized afterwards that I literally do Olive fan art just to share with Maria. Like I didn't bother even posting it to the Time Princess discord for a week after I finished it. I still haven't posted it to Fediverse. Or to the Downtown discord. Maybe I will but idk. Fediverse especially seems more trouble than it's worth, because my art there seldom gets a comment; a handful of likes, if I'm lucky.

Anyway, to the shock of everyone, I have started a painting that isn't of Olive. We'll see if I actually finish it.

Reading

I finished reading the main stories of For My Derelict Favorite and The Greatest Estate Developer; they're both running sidestories now, and I'm reading those as they come out. I also finished I Accidentally Tamed the Duke, which had a surprising 'let's wrap back to the romance angle' finale after dealing with the non-romance plot. So that was fun. Oh, and I finished The Grand Duke Is Mine. I enjoyed the first half of that one more than the last half. One problem with romance fantasy manwha is that most of it is a full-throated embrace of feudalism: you might have a monarch or a group of nobles who are bad, but the heroes are also nobles and no one ever goes 'maybe this is not the best system of governance?' And it's not that I hate this trope -- I have written at least a few books myself pitting the Good Royals/Nobles against the Evil Royals/Nobles. But after reading a lot of it, I'm like "can I just have some magic in my romance without all this monarchist crap?"

There's a reason the working title for my new project is Kingslayer, is what I'm saying.

Contrary to expectations, I didn't read through the last few available stages of Coming Calamities, a Time Princess story that's only half-released.

Social

M visited from January 4 to January 11, and Eliyahu was here until January 13. I only went out to Wyndsong twice: January 2 I cancelled because of how poorly Mom was doing, and January 9th was cancelled because Sophrani felt unwell, and January 30th was cancelled for potential snow. Still, twice a month is good.

January Scorecard

Provide care for parents: Done!
Pay January bills: Done!
Remind first readers that I'll edit book in mid-February: Done!
Do some creative things: Overachieved! I did little writing, but I made some progress on A Game to You, and worked on an idea I like for a new book.

January Stretch Goals

Edit A Game to You: Look I didn't say how much progress I'd make, and I worked on it a chunk.
Exercise 15+ times: So overachieved. 28 times. o_o
Work on outline/notes for next book: Aw yeah progress!
Do some art: I was better about this than any other creative activity in January.
Track reading: I'd actually recorded two of the manwha already in StoryGraph, and recorded the other two now. As long as I can reconstruct it, I'm counting it at tracked, though.
Visit friends: Done! Twice, even.
Spend some time with Eliyahu while they're visiting: Done!

February Goals

Provide care for Dad
Pay February bills & do withdrawal from brokerage
Look at comments for The Jewel-Strewn Night and make an editing list: This won't be until February 15, but "make editing list" doesn't usually take long.
Write 2000 words of A Secret Dragon: Let's not get too ambitious here.

February Stretch Goals