November wasn’t a good month for me, creativity wise. I did all right in October but come mid November I ground to a halt and didn’t write anything from November
Fiction
- Fiction: 5 500 new words
- Stories completed: 2 for a total of 2 800 words
- Stories sold: 0
- Rejections received: 14
My fiction writing stalled out. I felt like I was torn to pieces and drawing blanks all the time. It just was no fun to write and I was pushing to get more blog posts done, and more work done, and more time with the family and the effect was that everything broke down.
I also burned out on the rejections. In addition to getting a whole lot in a big pile early in the month I got a sad email from a market that had purchased one of my earlier stories that they wouldn’t be able to publish anything else as they had economic difficulties. They did ask whether they could hold my story for an anthology/Patreon launch strategy, which I did give permission for, but it still hurt.
This month I’m concentrating on doing what I feel like and doing the minimum for everything else. I even paused my daily writing reminder from the calendar.
Blog/Non-fiction
- Blog posts: 10 500 new words
- Post completed: 10
I cranked out a lot of blog posts in November and that felt good. But since I didn’t have a buffer I was writing and posting almost immediately, which stressed me out to no end. Now I’m working on creating a three month buffer instead of a one month one like I had before so that I can soak up this kind of dips in energy.
I’m very happy with how the interview with Mary Robinette Kowal turned out, and I’m quite happy that I finally started doing something about project Whiteboard. Hopefully it will either work out or pan out by the middle of next summer; I’ll let you know how it goes.
Game Design
- Playtests: 0
- New Prototypes: 0
- Rejections: 1
Not a good month for games either. I didn’t playtest anything, I wrote up a couple of ideas but didn’t have the energy to take them to the prototyping stage.
I got one, very polite and comforting, rejection from a company that’s been reviewing my game for a bit over a year. Still, this means that apart from two companies that are holding my games and for which I don’t have high hopes anymore, I’m out of game submissions. But I’m saving up for next years Göttingen Game Designer Conference so I’ll at least have a lot of prototypes to show.
