February 2016 Production Recap · 6:51pm Mar 6th, 2016
Howdy do, folks!
Some of y’all might remember that I used to do weekly production recap blogs, that then became irregular, then nonexistent as my presence on the site piddled away. I don’t think many ever really cared about them, but I liked them because they lit a small fire under my ass to actually have something to show in them once a week, and I’ve been contemplating starting them up again to add that small motivation. I’ve been reluctant to go for weekly, because this current back-and-forth schedule between pony and original fiction limits how much relevant material I have to share per-week. I suppose some folks might care to hear about where I’m at with the original fiction, too, but y’know, pone site. Pone site’s for pone, and I don’t feel right that there would probably be weeks where a production blog would only mention original fiction writing. Feels like it’d be obnoxious at worst, and vaguely disappointing at best. So I’m settling on going for a monthly recap instead. First Sunday of the month is gonna have a production recap blog from now on. That feels like a meatier chunk of time where I can go over stuff done and stuff to come with a little bit of info for everyone. Everyone who cares, that is. Survey says: not that many. Anyway, February in review!
8,921 words written total (Fimfiction and MSWord word count) between two projects.
So here we are looking at the big picture, and it ain’t lookin’ so big. February was a really rough month for me. It’s my least favorite month at the best of times, and this last one was plagued with depression that ate up a good two weeks of it. Which in hindsight makes it a kind of successful month considering that, and even not considering it, it’s on-pace for a 100k+ words written year. Can’t complain about that. Okay, I totally could complain about that, but not gonna.
Works in Progress:
In the future, if I have partially finished chapters between months these sections will be a touch more complicated, but for now we can just look at the overall progress:
10,566 words drafted (Fimfiction word count) out of 30,000 (estimated finished length).
I’m always super reluctant to guess at story lengths for ongoing projects, because I am terrible at estimating. I’ve been off by at least 30k words before. These estimates are to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Texas. That said, I think 30k total is a reasonable guess on this one. That’s what the story feels like for me at the moment. It will likely change as more chapters are written, but we’ll see.
Anyway, this is the current fanfic project that’s getting the majority of my horsewords attention. I had a feeling going into writing it that it wasn’t going to be that attention-grabbing a story to write, since it’s technically a sequel of a sequel of a sequel of a story I wrote three years ago, so I’m not really surprised by the modest reception it’s gotten so far. That has the added unfortunate truth to it that I made this announcement that I was back writing fanfic, and then apparently fell silent again for most people as I slowly worked on a thing they weren’t interested in checking out. Ah well.
38,648 words drafted (MSWord word count) out of 70,000 (estimated finished length).
Ditto on the grain of salt for that estimated length, though I’d put a teensy bit more money on this being close to accurate than I would on the Basil Bones estimate. This work has taken much too long to write, and I’m super disappointed in myself that it’s not done yet. I have no real excuses for why that’s true, because it’s not difficult to work on and I’m enjoying myself with it. I’m hoping the juggling act with fanfic is going to see a bit of increased output on it so I can get through that second half-ish faster than the first half, even with the split attentions. February wasn’t exactly a stellar example of that in action, but some progress is better than no progress, and I’ve had a good truckload of no progress on this throughout the time I’ve been working on it.
The final verdict on February for me: better than nothing, but not that much better. March hasn’t started out super well just yet, either, seeing as I had a bit of a stumble getting through the edits and publishing of the second chapter of Basil Bones, and I’m also coming down with a cold. At minimum, I’d like to at least match February’s output of one chapter each of Basil Bones and the original fiction novel, but I’d like to aim for more than that.
I’m also planning on sneaking a one-off pony project inside the margins in March/early April. I’m going to dedicate the bulk of my fanfic focus on getting Basil Bones finished (if only so I can say I goddamn finished something again, I’m forgetting what that feels like), but as I said earlier, it’s an unfortunate reality that Basil’s niche and I might as well still be in semi-retirement as far as the majority of people care, and that’s rubbing me the wrong way. I have a rolodex of fic ideas for what that one-off could be to choose from and I’m not at the point where I’m ready to get to it, so look for more information on that later on.
Anyway, that’s what’s been going on with me. Looking forward to a (fingers crossed) productive March. TTFN.
You actually keep track of what you work on? I'm amazed. I tend to kinda wander through my ramshackle collection of in-process work and put a few words in here and there as the muse strikes me. Good work!
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I'm a bit too neurotic to hop around like that. I tend to stick with a thing until I'm at a good stopping point before I can switch gears, which makes keeping track of how much I've written in a time period a less demanding affair. Even so, I find keeping track and having figures to look at over time can be a good motivation tool, since you can look back on it and get a sense of accomplishment which might not feel readily apparent when you're inside the writing and feel like you're just picking away at something. I try (and usually fail) to write something every day, and if that only amounts to a couple hundred words at a time, it can seem like you're not getting anywhere, but looking back over a month and seeing your couple hundred words turned into 10,000 by the end of the month, and there's a nice little boost there, you know? Also, as mentioned, I'm neurotic, and keeping track of stuff like this is soothing for me.
well, regardless of your pace, i look forward to reading what you've got comin.
I always enjoyed reading the weekly production blogs. I'm happy to see them back in action, even if on a different scale--I'll take as much bats content as I can get!
These graphs are still the worst thing ever.
Good to hear from you, and good luck with both stories.
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YOU'RE the worst thing ever! You're not my real dad!