In mid-November I crashed and stopped writing. This held on until mid-December, when I started feeling like I was back to myself. One of the key things I did this month was to remove my daily “you’ve got to write” prompt from my to-do list.
Three days later I stared writing.
Turns out that I don’t work well when I combine creativity with punishment or negativity. I’ve still got my Habitica stuffed with positive reinforcements for my creative work (like “write 250 words”, or the ever optimistic “write 6 000 words in a day”), but now I’ve removed all the negative ones.
Here’s what happened last month:
Fiction
- 3 950 new words of fiction (ouch)
- 1 completed story, for a total of 700 words (ouch again)
- Stories sold: 0
- Stories submitted: 11
- Stories rejected: 11 (not the same as the submitted ones)
I can’t really complain, at least not more than what I already did. Trying to force my writing with a daily schedule proved to be a bad experiment that burnt me out (coupled with not selling anything in November and December, but since I shifted to selling only to pro markets, as Douglas Smith recommends, my rejection rates are way up).
Non-Fiction
- 7 950 new words
- 8 new blog posts
I’ve got a slightly more than one month buffer on the blog, I’ve made plans for what I need to accomplish with it in the next few months, and I feel that things are rolling on. I still don’t know what I’ll use it for, more than as something fun to do.
Project Whiteboard has moved forward more slowly than I hoped. I wanted to have a prototype up and running by the end of December but that is not to be, and it will probably not be before the end of March for the first prototype.
I’m lining up a schedule for my interviews next year. Starting with April, I intend to have one writer/gamedev/editor interview per month, which should be doable.
Game Design
- New prototypes: 0
- Playtests: 0
Still on hold with my game designing and gaming. I’m not putting this on the shelf just yet, and want to finish my current prototypes for the Göttingen meeting in June, but I don’t see how I’ll have any time before March. So zeros all across the line.
