I'm slowly trying to edge my way towards an earlier posting time, so I'll get around to going to bed earlier as well. Today I'm all of five minutes earlier than yesterday!

Today's Writing

I took some time during the day to work on my novel a bit. I continued writing a chapter I'd started last week. I'm not sure how happy I'm with the voice in it, but well, I'll be feeling it out, I guess! Plus, it's always easier to edit something that has been written than something not written.

I had thoughts about writing more on the characters and plot of Ambush Project #2, but I never managed to make time for it. I did think about it, though, so maybe I'll get to set those thoughts down on another day.


Tally

( Days 1-14 under the cut )

Day 15: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 16: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 17: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 18: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 19: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, yasaman, ysilme

Day 20: auroracloud, china_shop

Let me know if I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet! You can join in or drop out any time.

All right, my little Easter break is about to be done, but I guess I really needed it! I do feel good about having taken some extra time "off" (in quotation marks because my schedules are so very self-determined at the moment, not because it wasn't time off). Guess if I did any of the cleaning I meant to do, beyond routine maintenance? No!! Uh, I really do need to get to that soon.

By the way, the posts have recently gotten too large to crosspost on LJ anymore, but nobody's been checking in there, so I'm just not going to crosspost. I'll try to make a note about the fact there, in case someone does need it, but it's too much hassle to make it crosspost when nobody seems to need it.

Today's Writing

I ended up doing a lot of non-fiction writing by hand. Memories and such. They might just be practice, or I might some day want to do more purposeful non-fiction about those topics - doesn't matter now, the important thing was writing them. I really enjoyed it. Later I typed up some more handwritten stuff for my novel. I didn't add and edit as much as I did for yesterday's scene, but some, anyway.

I kind of meant to do more, but then I spent a lot of time writing a podcast recommendation e-mail to a friend. Which reminded me that I've promised to do one over here... Will try to do it soon! (Can't just copy-paste since it was in Finnish and I'd ideally like it to be useful for more than two of my readers.)


Tally
(edited days 1-12 for the updates from comments to this post)

( Days 1-10 under the cut )

Day 11: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, yasaman, ysilme
Day 12: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, yasaman, ysilme

Day 13: auroracloud, china_shop,

Let me know if I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet! You can join in or drop out any time.

The first day of my mini-break, and I think I definitely need it, I've been soooo tired today. But I managed to have a nice long walk outdoors. And I finally took out the time to take out my journal, the pen-and-paper one, which I hadn't got around to writing for quite a while, and definitely not since all this *gestures at the world* started. It took the time out of the early part of the day I would otherwise have taken for my creative writing, but that's fine, because I really needed it and it felt good. (I could, of course, count journalling as my writing for this, but I don't usually, unless I'm travelling.)

Today's Writing

I had my creative writing time in the evening, then, and now again it got taken by something I hadn't planned - and this time a different one. I just meant to set down this image/idea of a character that kept persistently floating in my mind, and the next thing I knew, I had several handwritten pages of something approaching a story/novel synopsis. But it was fun!

Tally

( Days 1-7 under the cut )

Day 8: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 9: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 10: auroracloud, china_shop

Let me know if I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet! You can join in or drop out any time.

I'm not yet doing all that great yet at following the more reasonable schedule I set for myself, like going to bed early and not leaving writing and posting until I'm half asleep. But hey, at least thinking about it and stuff is a step in the right direction. On the upside, I slept okay last night and I wasn't particularly cranky today. I was awfully tired, though; in the evening, when I was done with everything else, I just kind of hid under the covers for an hour and a half. You wouldn't think just staying home is so exhausting, but when you're still making yourself plenty busy on most days, it turns out it is... I may need to actually take a bit of an Easter break, rather than just the regular two days of weekend. Anyway, nothing more profound today, as I need to go to bed!

Today's Writing

I didn't manage to make time for writing in the morning, so I've just written some in the evening. No new manuscript words this time, but I did some planning work around the novel: I went to the character files of the project and took a look at what I had on certain supporting characters, and changed quite a bit and added things. It seems my thoughts about some of these characters have developed a lot, and that's good!


Tally

( Days 1-4 under the cut )

Day 5: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman

Day 6: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 7: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 8: auroracloud, china_shop

Let me know if I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet! You can join in or drop out any time.

Today's kind of gotten away with me, but I suppose weekends can do that. I meant to do more writing, and I really need to get around to some non-WED posting in my journal again, but might be too tired for that tonight. I generally meant to do more things, but I was rather tired. On the other hand, I did a fair amount of walking again, I did grocery shopping (with appropriate hygienic precautions), and I cooked. A delicious pasta sauce that is even further improved by the fact that I found it in a delicious piece of fanfic. Yes, for real. Fandoms are amazing.

Today's Writing

Another day when I did my writing fairly early, and that felt good. I did some more free-writing, which then segued into some surprise poetry, and writing down notes/ideas for a novel idea I've been nursing for a while. After that I did some more writing on the current novel, again longhand in the notebook. I'm thinking I should soon go through what I've actually got in the notebook and type it up, or at least the parts that feel like I can use them.

Tally

( The first days under the cut )

Day 3: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 4: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 5: auroracloud, china_shop

If I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet, just let me know and I'll add you! You can join in or drop out any time.

Today rather got away with me, with various things to do, so this post is again later than I thought it would be and I'm half asleep at the keyboard... So if I write any nonsense or forgot or mistyped someone's name, I apologize, and feel free to notify me about any errors.

I'll try to occasionally include writing-related topics in these posts, but right now I'm too sleepy to come up with any, so on with the post!

If you missed what this is about, please see yesterday's welcome post.

Today's Writing

I got into the writing itself quite late, and then was heavy on resistance, which is why I took so long to get to anything else either. But eventually I did manage to write almost 250 words, so I'm pretty proud of myself, considering how hard the words were in coming. Triumphing over your own internal resistance is satisfying!


Tally


Day 1: auroracloud, badly_knitted, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 2: auroracloud, china_shop


If I missed you, or if you didn't check in but you did write, just let me know and I'll edit the tally. You can join or drop out any time!

Good luck to anyone starting NaNoWriMo today! I'm not doing it, but I signed up for mini_wrimo to write at least 100 words each day during November. (You can set the word count you want to sign up for; 100 words is the minimum. The sign-ups are on until November 10 if you're interested.) I've lately been able to break through my post-CampNaNo slump with my novel by writing at least 100 words of it every day, no matter what else I write. I decided to use the community to help me stick to this practice for all of November. 100 words is such a low word count that it's not much pressure to at least do that, and that seems to be the key for me - and most of the time it turns into more, anyway.

I'm working on my Yuletide sign-up. The sign-ups still go on for a few more days, check yuletide_admin for the schedule and other info. I'm contemplating whether I'm going to do all my requests in 2010s awesome diverse scifi books fandoms, or if I'll include a historical/old book fandom or two. But this is the first year I could do all of the sign-up in 2010s awesome diverse scifi books, because I've actually read and finished enough series I super much want to read fic for. The ones I'm thinking of requesting are The Imperial Radch series, This Is How You Lose the Time War, the Machineries of Empire series and my old staple, the Wayfarers series (where I have so much trouble narrowing down which characters!). There's also other great stuff in the tag set, like A Memory Called Empire, the Murderbot novellas, and my currently-reading book Empress of Forever. And that's just the 2010s awesome diverse scifi I know! Let's not even get into the other books, the podcasts, the historical RPF (I could request Mary Anning!! I kind of want to, but I have to think about how many requests I want to have).

Also, Write Every Day is hosted by silveradept in November!

Okay, I'm too tired to continue, so that's all for tonight!

Seems I need the tired kitty icon again today... I actually slept quite well last night and have felt much better on that respect, but I did some Proper Productive Stuff and then some Proper Sociable Stuff and as a result have been utterly drained. More detailed postings will have to wait until tomorrow!

Today's Writing

Once I picked myself off the bed, I spent much of the remaining evening writing my Second Doctor Era manifesto for tardis_library, but in the end I had to ask to move my posting day until tomorrow, because I was getting too tired. I should be able to get it done tomorrow okay, though. Anyway, for the sort of writing that I actually count for this challenge (I could count fannish writing, I just tend to not to...), I just managed a couple of sentences. At least they were for starting another fic for the Genprompt Bingo, this one being gen, too.

How was your writing day?

Tally

Day 1: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, luzclarita, shopfront, silveradept, sylvanwitch, used_songs, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme

Day 3: alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, silveradept, sylvanwitch, talkingtothesky, used_songs, ysilme

Day 4: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, sylvanwitch, tinx_r, ysilme

Day 5: china_shop

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. You can join in or drop out any time!

It turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that being on all day on a research trip is tiring. Since I don't have a surfeit of spoons anyway (the figurative kind; though mind you, I'm also low on tea spoons), I ended up being very tired today. Especially since I also slept poorly, brain being overwhelmed or something. So I've sort of puttered about all day, mostly not getting the things done that I should have done. But I figured I need a quiet day, and hopefully tomorrow I'll feel well-rested. Means I'm giving you all just a quick no-frills check-in post now.

Today's Writing

I also didn't get around to writing until quite late - though I did do some writing on writing. Anyway, eventually I managed to edit my second Fluff Bingo ficlet according to beta comments, and I created a draft for it on AO3. I didn't post it yet, because I'm hoping that I'll come up with a better title and/or summary once I've slept properly.


Tally

Day 1: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, cassini, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, luzclarita, shopfront, silveradept, sylvanwitch, used_songs, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, falkner, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, ysilme

Day 3: china_shop
(the rest of you are to check in at this current post, don't worry, china_shop simply lives in the future)

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. You can join in or drop out any time!

Welcome to Write Every Day! This month, we're at my journal.

What is this, you may ask, dear reader? Why, just what it sounds like! It's a challenge to write something, even just a tiny little bit, every day - or failing that, however many days happens to work for you. We don't judge. There's no competition, no ranking, no consequence for not actually writing every day. We're just aiming for that, and supporting one another in the endeavour. Participation is entirely voluntary, so just because you see this, I'm not pressuring you to take part; but if you want to give it a go, feel free to join in even if you haven't done it before or aren't sure if you can really do it. You can always drop out for any reason, no need to say why, and we don't judge you for missing however many days.

Also, you choose what kind of writing you want to do and what you count. Some only count and report writing (and editing) fiction, some may be working on non-fiction, count blog posts or beta-reading, etc. I personally focus on fiction, both original fiction and fanfic. I tend to mull around and research on my original projects a good while before I start writing, so I report that sort of preparatory work as writing, too.

This is how it works: every day, I make a post for checking in, and you write a comment if you wrote that day. You can just say you wrote, or you can talk about what you worked on or how much you wrote or how it's going or whatever else you please. I tend to ramble a bit about other things in the beginning of the post, sometimes related to writing and sometimes not (I'm known to report on the weather or what I baked that day), because I like it - it feels like it grounds the writing-related post a bit. It hopefully means it's a bit more interesting for non-participating followers to keep seeing these posts on their feed every day for a month.

Anyway, I do my best to respond to everyone and to keep a tally of who's written on which day (when it gets long, I put the beginning under a cut). These posts crosspost to LiveJournal, so you can comment on either Dreamwidth or LJ, though be aware that these days the majority of the discussion etc. happens on DW. I'm known to make mistakes on the tally, so if you're missing when you shouldn't be, or you see some other error, just let me know! And if you miss a check-in or a few but you did write, feel free to report later, it's no huge problem to go back and add you to the tally later.

The challenge has been going on for a few years (I'm not even sure how many), hosted by different users every month. I've been doing it for, hmm, almost three years, and it's had an enormously great effect on my writing, because it makes me keep writing, and write even if I have doubts about myself and what I'm doing - and that, I've found, is the key. I've written every single day since I joined in, but you don't need to feel pressure if that doesn't work for you. It's just that 1) I can be really dogged about things like this, 2) I know I benefit from regular writing, so I try to keep at it. But we have a term "alibi sentence" for the sentence you write just for having written that day. The sentence can be one or two words if that's how things go for you. It still keeps up the habit, keeps writing in your mind, and makes you more likely to write more on a day when things go better. Or that's how it goes for many of us, anyhow. It doesn't necessarily work for everyone, and that's all right.

If you've got any questions, drop me a comment! You don't need to formally sign up, and you can join in any time, not just in the beginning of the month. Feel free to say hi if we haven't talked before or if this is your first time doing it or any other reason. And feel free not to, if you don't want to. :-)

Also, I should add that with all the icon space DW recently gave to paid users, I've got several new writing icons, so hosting this gives me a chance to use them, whee! (If you're on LJ, sorry, you're not seeing the nifty icons, I can't afford to keep paid accounts on both.)

What are you working on now?

Many start the month by asking if you've got any particular writing goals this month etc. I'm having a day when my head turns all goals and timelines etc. into terrible pressure, so I'm not asking that. I'm just asking: do you want to mention what kind of writing you're working on these days, or if you've got any particular hopes or plans for your writing in the near future? No pressure to talk about it if you don't want to, though!

I've been planning an original novel for a while, and I've said for a couple of months now my goal is to start actually writing this month, and then I don't, because I've still got some things to work out so I won't grind to a halt in the early chapters. But anyway, I'm really hoping it won't take much longer to start really writing it. I'm trying to prioritize it now, and so I don't want to sign up to any fanfic events in the next few months - that sort of deadline pressure and the need to write to someone else's prompts/requests isn't working for me at the moment. I still want to work on my fanfics, but on my own terms. I do have a bingo card from genpromptbingo that I hope to get something done with, but I do my best not to stress about it.

How about you?

Today's Writing

How's the writing going? Have you written today?

As mentioned before, I've had a day when my brain turns just about anything into pressure and stress. I spent quite a while in the afternoon making detailed plans about how to go on about getting started on my novel - what to do which week etc. Well, it was partly useful to set down which are the final pieces I still need, both in research and in planning/notes, and what can wait until the writing or the editing phase. But it also made me terribly stressed out and then I couldn't actually write. Ah, head. It has flawed chemistry sometimes.

I managed to feel better by the late evening, though, and then I took a big sheet of paper and drew sketches of where one of my main character lives. That was fun. I'm terrible at drawing and at sketching houses, so there was no pressure to be good at it, and I got some ideas down. Then I spent quite a while writing about that place. I feel it's good for me to set out details of the important locations before I start writing, because I like grounding my fiction in places when I can, and it's easier to be specific if I actually know what rooms are in the house or how the yard looks and sounds like.

That's all for me - feel free to let me know how your writing's going!