How I Edit

The one month for a Works-In-Progress project is working fairly well, even if February update the BookWorm’s Library bled into March. March is dedicated to Star Wars, so while I was finishing the last of the coding changes, I opened up the Scrivener project holding all the Star Wars fanfics.

Me: “Okay. Sororal Lineality: Miha is with my beta. Have to remind her I need that edited this month. Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command needs to go through ProWriting Aid and then sent to my beta. And last but the largest, I finished the first draft of Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban and it’s ready for me to edit. What do I need to do first?”

Brain: “…”

Me: “Look, I have done novels. I even remember editing those. What was done? What are the steps?”

Brain: “…”

Me: “The hell?”

Brain whispers: “I think I deleted that.”

Basically I have been so caught up in first draft creation and brain-dumping outlining, I couldn’t remember any of the steps I had used to go to a second draft. And when that happens, I go to others for advice. Namely, the craft books I have collected over the years. And getting my own process for this ironed out will help me with another WIP project that needs rewriting and I have no idea at what stage I left it in.

First book I consulted was 2,000 to 10,000: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron. What is largely a book on plotting and increasing your daily word count, she does have a whole chapter titled “Editing for People Who Hate Editing.”

Editing is writing. If you like writing, you like editing. Editing is just the part of writing that comes at the end when you’re weary and things are hardest, which earns it a lot of bad press. However, what most people fail to realize is that editing, like writing is a skill. … The same skills that make you a good storyteller make you a good story perfecter, you just have to stop hating the process and start treating your editing like you treat your writing—something you strive to be good at, something you do every day, and something you want to make a career out of.

Necessary pep talk because my editing skills haven’t completely withered away to dust but have grown weak from not using them enough.

Rachel Aaron breaks her process down into multiple steps.

• Step 1: Change the Way You Think about Editing
  • “What is the point of all this work? … Answer: Reader experience. … You’re asking ‘How can I prepare the reader for what happens next?’ and ‘How can I make them love it?’”
• Step 2: Editing Tools
  • The Scene Map = a very quick jot down of what happens in the book broken up by scene and chapter. Make a new list (don’t depend on something made in the outlining stage) to reflect what you actually wrote
  • The Time Line = a list of all the relevant events that happen in the novel and what characters were doing off screen too
  • The To-Do List = a list of things that need to be addressed organized by how hard the problems will be to fix.
• Step 3: Actually Editing
  • Fixing the big stuff = “I edit from biggest problem to smallest, not from first page to last.” This keeps you from burning out going over the manuscript multiple times because you jump to the spots where the problem is in the manuscript and focus on only that.
  • The Read-Through = “Now I go back to page one and start reading, putting things in order as I go. This is my line edit.”
• Step 4: Activating the Reader Brain = Aaron moves her manuscript to her Kindle device to create separation to enjoy the story as a reader with a notebook nearby just in case she catches a new problem. Only when there are no more problems does she send the manuscript off to a beta reader or hired editor.

Once I started rereading this chapter, I had a memory jolt. This is technique I used to edit Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation. It worked extremely well since I had multiple POV characters and I needed to take note of what they all were doing when not on stage and account for time using different hyperspace traveling speeds. (Time is spent in hyperspace was a thing, granted glossed over by the Original Trilogy and the Prequels, but everything being done by Disney has forgotten it exists and hyperspace must act just like a Stargate wormhole only with spaceships. And yes, I am digressing because it is MATH and I made it work and you are WELCOME.) Looking back at my files for that novel, I used Scrivener’s index cards and compiled an outline from them to create the Scene Map, the Time Line format that made sense was a table: columns for the different POV characters and the rows were what was done at what time and date, and the To-Do List, which was so useful keeping the changes I needed present while editing.

Novelist’s Boot Camp: 101 Ways to Take Your Book From Boring to Bestseller by Todd A. Stone is another craft book of the entire process that I have incorporated into my process before. The Comprehensive Concept (page 41) helps me write online summaries as well as giving a focus for the whole novel. A Character Matrix (page 112 – 114) has helped me tame a sprawling cast and how they relate to each other and how they function in the novel. (That I then proceeded to make every scene they are in isolated from the other characters and made that novel excruciating to write is a different problem.) And up to my last outline that became a sprawling rough draft to get all the dialogue and character actions out of my head, the Master Story Summary was how I focused my outlines.

So surely his editing technique has transferred over to mine since I use so much already. Not so much. I don’t think I have used any of “Battle Plan Echo” since 2008 (Discipline Under Fire: BMFM: Evil Jack 20, Discipline Under Fire: BMFM: Evil Jack 21, Discipline Under Fire: BMFM: Evil Jack 22).

“Battle Plan Echo” is the overall name for the editing process in Novelist’s Boot Camp, a multiple pass system.

Stage 1. Perform scene triage. Conduct a scene-level evaluation of your work, placing each scene into one of three categories:

1. cut
2. rework
3. improve

Stage 2. Execute seven revision passes. Read through your manuscript seven times, focusing on a different story element with each pass. You’ll look at:

1. character
2. objectives
3. dialogue
4. narration and description
5. action
6. logic
7. miscellaneous items.

Stage 3. Rewrite. In this final stage of revision, you’ll follow your notes from the triage and revision passes and make the necessary changes by rewriting your work line by line, scene by scene.

I think why didn’t carry this process forward into things I had written after that novella is that it is so many passes. The questions to consider are very good, I don’t want to lose them. But how can I keep them?

The next book I consulted was Stein on Writing by Sol Stein. He also called his method of revision ‘triage.’ He wants to avoid working from first page to last and “working on trivial corrections and next coming up against a major problem.” So his guide “gives priority to those matters that are the principal causes of rejections by editors.” (Stein 278)

That sounded promising until he started detailing his steps for the triage part and the general revision part. After coming from Stone’s neatly formatted questions to apply to your manuscript, I was annoyed by Stein’s meandering antecedents about his novels and the questions taking multiple paragraphs to get the point across. There was no clear delineation between the triage part and the general revision part, which I suppose does support Stein’s assertion that you can check for these things in any order as long as you start fixing the big problems first.

Moving on for what I can use now, Self-Editing For Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King is probably the first book I bought on how to edit and I have highlighted and flagged something on almost every page of it. But it is designed to teach you what the common problems are and how to fix them with exercises to practice on. So I put this book aside from this project.

The Complete Guide to Editing Your Fiction by Michael Seidman is set up like Self-Editing For Fiction Writers explaining the common problems and showing examples of revisions. But he at least consolidated everything you should examine your manuscript into a checklist. See this post for the questions: Discipline Under Fire: Editing Your Fiction Checklist by Michael Seidman.

Last book consulted because eventually this has to come to an end and I get to work on editing, the Story Grid by Shawn Coyne. If your novel doesn’t make sense or feels flat, this method will identify the problem. But once your analysis leaves the Foolscap Global Story Grid, the breakdown becomes large and mathy to make the spreadsheet and graph. Not every story needs this level of breakdown, so I’m not going beyond the Foolscap Global Story Grid for what I’m making here. I’ll save it for when the novel is completely broken.

The Foolscap Global Story Grid is a one-page diagnostic tool that answers the Editor’s Six Core Questions.

Global Story	External Genre:
	External Value at Stake:
	Internal Genre:
	Internal Value at Stake:
	Obligatory Scenes and Conventions:
	Point of View:
	Objects of Desire:
	Controlling Idea/Theme:
Beginning Hook		External Charge	Internal Charge
	Inciting Incident:
	Complication:
	Crisis:
	Climax:
	Resolution:
Middle Build		External Charge	Internal Charge
	Inciting Incident:
	Complication:
	Crisis:
	Climax:
	Resolution:
Ending Payoff		External Charge	Internal Charge
	Inciting Incident:
	Complication:
	Crisis:
	Climax:
	Resolution:

Now for some definitions. Coyne divides genre into five types that tells the reader what to expect: Time Genre answers how long the story will, Reality Genre answers how far the audience will have to suspend their disbelief, Style Genre answers how the audience will experience the story, Structure Genre answers how the global telling of the story will be, and Content Genre answers what the theme/controlling idea of the story is. It is this last one that everyone thinks of when they think of genre.

Coyne further divides Content Genre into External (stories driven by a global external value) and Internal (stories drive by the nature of the protagonists’ inner conflict). Each of these have subgenres to further drill down. In order to deepen your story, you should have both working. Each has a Value at Stake that is a convention for the larger genre. For example, the core value of the Crime Genre is justice/injustice and that would be the Value at Stake.

Obligatory Scenes and Conventions are what readers expect from the genre you have chosen. For example, a romance needs

1. Lovers found.
2. Lovers split.
3. Lovers reunited.

You still have to innovate what happens to your characters and how they react to it but if you leave out one of these necessary scenes, the readers will be disappointed in how your book doesn’t work.

Point of View is the point of view that the story is told from and how it is structured (first, second, or third person, free indirect style, etc.).

Objects of Desire is plural because the major characters will have two objects of desire: the conscious one that spurs the external actions taken during the Story to achieve it and the subconscious one that spurs the internal actions during the story. It can be best figured out by asking:

• What does my character want? (External)
• What does my character need? (Internal)

Controlling Idea/Theme is the takeaway message the writer wants the reader to discover from reading their story. This is where I would slot in a Comprehensive Concept that I created when plotting the story.

The rest of the Foolscap Global Story Grid is filling out a distilled skeleton of your story. External Change and Internal Change is tracking if the scene is a positive or negative result for the protagonist to achieve their external and internal objects of desire.

My Editing Process Going Forward

So what am I going to do?

1. Open up a new Scrivener text document for the To-Do List.
2. Fill out the Foolscap Global Story Grid.
3. Tweak the Master Story Summary to a Scene Map.
4. Fill out the Time Line with who is doing what and when.
5. Create a Style Sheet
6. While going through the manuscript to create these tools, add any issues noticed to the To-Do List. Also keep in mind Seidman and Stone’s questions while doing this.
7. Work the To-Do List from largest problem to smallest.
8. Run manuscript through ProWriting Aid.
9. Send manuscript to my beta.
10. Edit according to those suggestions.
11. Publish.

Editing Your Fiction Checklist by Michael Seidman

Editing Your Fiction Checklist by Michael Seidman

• Is your novel right for the market to which you want to sell it?
• If you’re taking risks, have you maintained the form of the category, even if you’re ignoring the formula?
• Is the language appropriate to your market?
• Have you created minor characters and subplots?
• Do you spend too many time on them, distracting the reader from the main story?
• Do you spend too little time on them? If they’re not important to the story, should they be removed?
• Are you showing, and not telling?
• Do your characters express their feelings, or do you tell us what they are?
• Do you let your characters and their actions tell the story, or are you stopping to bring the reader up to speed?
• Are your characters as clear to the reader as they are to you? Have you maintained their character in dialogue and in actions?
• Are all the motivations clear to the reader, or are things happening because you need them to?
• Have you spent too much time giving the reader the characters’ biographies? At the same time, does the reader know enough about the characters?
• Are characters telling each other stories simply as a way of giving the reader information? (If a character says to another, “Well, you know Billy did this…,” the conversation shouldn’t be taking place.)
• Do character descriptions come naturally, in the course of dialogue or action?
• Are you describing people in terms of icons or idols? Will enough of your readers know what Michael Stipe looks like?
• Have you offered full descriptions (naturally) of your major players? There’s nothing more aggravating than have a series of characters through the novel introduced by one or two features. It might work once, but by the time we get to the third or fourth “he was a tall man with reddish hair and a brusque voice,” it becomes an annoying pattern.
• Speaking of iconic descriptions, does your manuscript read like the advertising pages of a magazine, with a product plug on every page? Does it matter than the stereo’s an Aiwa rather than a Sony? (It does matter if it’s one of the really high priced systems. It tells us something about the character.) Same with most cars, clothes and other products. Unless the brand is telling detail, leave it out.
• Is interior monologue realistic? Are they thoughts the character would actually have?
• What point of view have you chosen? Why?
• Have you maintained the point of view throughout each scene, or jumped into another character’s head in the middle of events?
• If you’re writing in first person, is this someone the reader will want to spend time with?
• Unless you’re writing in an omniscient point of view, have you made sure your first-person character does not learn things in the course of the story that the reader didn’t become aware of at the same time. (This refers to information; interpretation of the information does not have to be revealed until you’re ready.)
• Is your point-of-view character clear from the beginning? If there are shifts, do you make the new point of view obvious soon enough?
• Is narrative in each scene true to the character seeing it? A man and a woman won’t see the same room in the same way; they’ll describe people differently.
• Have you avoided editorializing, commenting or events in your voice rather than that of the characters?
• Does your dialogue say what you want it to say?
• Are your conversations serving any purpose at all? Are they serving more than one purpose: describing things, adding to character developing, expressing ideas important to the story?
• Does your dialogue stand on its own? If you cut explanations, dialogue tags, and anything else used as a crutch to support the words, does the conversation still hold up, saying what you want it to? If not, change the dialogue, not the tags.
• Do adverbs follow quotation marks? This means the dialogue or scene does not express what you said.
• Does your punctuation work as part of conversation? A dash represents an interruption; an ellipsis, a pause or gap.
• Is there any action interspersed through the conversations, or is the dialogue, unnaturally, only words?
• Are your characters giving speeches or actually talking to each other?
• Have you used dialogue to show off your research, allowing characters to give detailed explanations of things that do not make a difference to the story? (We don’t need the principles of rocketry to accept space flight.)
• Do the conversations sound natural? Read your work aloud; even better, have someone read it to you. Does the exposition flow easily or does the reader have to stop, either to catch her breath or figure out pronunciation?
• Have you used contractions, slang, idioms and regionalisms both to ease reading and to give a sense of character and place?
• Does your dialect disrupt the reading? Can you achieve the sense of place without “creative” spelling?
• What does your manuscript look like? Are there unrelieved blocks of text? Can any of your paragraphs be broken into shorter ones? Long paragraphs can also be broken up with dialogue. It helps the pace and also makes the manuscript (and the printed page in the book) easier to read. As in life, sometimes we’re judged by how we look; if a page appears intimidating, the reader is going to be intimidated.
• Does your dialogue look like long paragraphs? Can the talk be broken up by action?
• Are you repeating words, phrases, bits of business because you like them too much or because it was easier to just go with what you know rather than create something new?
• Have you looked at every word, making certain it is the only right word?
• Have you checked for anachronisms, words that weren’t in use at the time the novel is set, products and events that are out of time, if not out of place?
• Have you used adverbs and adjectives sparingly? Like italics and exclamation points, these modifiers are fine seasonings and have to be used delicately.
• Are you using trendy words for effect… or through habit?
• Have you used “which” incorrectly? Go on a “which” hunt. Nine times out of ten, the word should be “that.”
• Have you turned to the dictionary to check spelling and definitions, or simply trusted instinct and a computer program?
• Is your thesaurus near you as you work? Is it well thumbed?
• Did you chart your characters and story lines, to be certain that neither disappears inexplicably?
• Are details all the same at the end of the manuscript as they were at the beginning? Continuity counts, whether it concerns eye color, clothing or reaction to events. If you’re working on a series, continuity still counts. Has your character been injured, had an epiphany, taken a lover? Anything that’s happened has an effect on the character in the next adventure.
• Have you done your fact checking? If you’re writing with freedom, you’re going to have some details wrong: distances, historical facts, a multitude of problems. With the work finished, and research no longer something to be done to avoid writing, check. Get the details you may have missed. No one has to know how much research was done.
• Did you make notes as you read, marking the manuscript, so that when you begin to retype, you know what you have to do? Are you going to do it? When?

Novelist’s Boot Camp Editing Checklist by Todd A. Stone

Novelist’s Boot Camp Editing Checklist by Todd A. Stone

• Scene Triage Questions
  • Is the main character present (Present can mean the character is being discussed)?
  • Is the window character present?
  • Is the villain present?
  • Are the minions/other opposition present?
  • Four no answers, mark the scene as a cut.
  • Is the protagonist, opponent, window character, or minion taking action?
  • Is the protagonist, opponent, window character, or minion having an external conflict?
  • Two no answers, mark the scene as a cut.
  • Is one or more characters pursuing his/their story objectives?
  • Is one of more character pursuing his/their personal objectives?
  • Two no answers, mark the scene as a cut.
• Character Pass Questions
  • Does everyone get on stage quickly?
  • Is your protagonist in the scene?
  • Is each character pursuing her objectives?
  • Is each character consistent?
  • Is each character growing?
  • Where can you trim your cast?
  • Are you characters rehearsing or playing their parts?
  • Are the bit players stealing the show?
  • Is the point of view consistent?
• Objective Pass
  • Are the objectives clearly visible in the beginning?
  • Are the objectives clearly visible in each scene?
  • Are the characters taking action to achieve those objectives?
  • Are objectives in conflict with each other?
  • Can you track the progress as you go along?
  • In what ways can you raise the stakes?
  • Do the objectives get resolved in the end?
• Dialogue Pass
  • Are your characters using words as weapons?
  • Is the dialogue only there to show something?
  • How could this dialogue more strongly reveal the character?
  • How could the dialogue work harder?
  • Is the speaker's identity clear?
  • Does the dialogue contain beats to punctuate it?
  • Is there a better arrangement?
  • Does the dialogue fit?
  • Does it feel real?
• Description and Narration Pass
  • What description can be cut?
  • Does the description do its job?
  • Does the description convey a mood?
  • How can more variety be introduced?
  • Is it part of the scene?
  • Is there a better arrangement?
  • Seek out excess summarizations.
  • Use word-level cues to help you identify extra narration.
• Action Pass
  • Is the amount and type of action appropriate for the genre?
  • Is there action on every page?
  • Does the action have the right purpose?
  • How well is the action recounted?
  • Does the action grow?
• Logic Pass
  • Is the first bang big enough?
  • Is there cause and effect?
  • Does logic work for the characters?
  • Do events follow each other logically in time?
  • What are the effects of changes?
  • Can you work backwards?
• Miscellaneous Pass
  • Are genre consideratons addressed?
  • Are the technical details correct?
  • Visually examine the pages for signs of weakness in your writing.
    • Too much black.
    • Too much white.
    • Too much of the same.

2022 My Year In Fic

2022 Fiction Word Count:

478128 / 177267 words. 270% done!

Insights To Not Forget: Narrowing my focus to one WIP per month the whole month before going to another WIP gave me results I am proud of. Proud enough to use this prioritizing against in 2023. Look, I finally managed to cross-post old stories at Ao3, which I have been planning on doing for years, but this is the first year I have managed any headway on doing it.

Stories I Posted at Ao3 Finally:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Bloodlines: The Turtles are used to being blamed for the crimes they stop in the Big Apple. But they aren't murderers--despite what Chief Sterns says. And the quest to clear their names is complicated by the arrival of the victim's younger siblings needing protection from the Shredder. Takes place about ten months after the present day parts of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ronin: Three years after Bloodlines, Allie's beginning college coincides with the appearance of a new vigilante on the streets. The Turtles name her the Ronin, but is she really master-less or is her hatred for the Shredder an Oscar-winning performance?

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Family, Friends, and Foes: Val Tech discovers the Turtles and now they're on the run. But things really explode once they reach Chicago. A crossover with Biker Mice From Mars. This story takes place in 1995, one week after Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Reunions and three months after Oroku Nagi's death in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ronin.

Tin Man: Dragons and Ninjas: Five months after the Eclipse, Longcoat attacks and dragon sightings terrorize the population, so DG and her companions set out to save the O.Z. again and cross paths with a Slipper on a mission of his own.

Tin Man: Where Did That Come From: How did Glitch and Cain get to the Sorceress' Tower so quickly?

Tin Man: Don't Know What the Other Hands Are Doing: What happened to Airofday when the Longcoats dragged her away?

Tin Man: Victory Ball: None of this was worth a lousy medal.

A Mist of Prophecies: A Storm of Things Forseen: Queen Titania has a mission for Cassandra that can bring the halfling gargoyle to a clan that will accept what she is. But can Cassandra trust the Queen that destroyed everything she knew?

A Mist of Prophecies: Shivers the Heart to Hear: Every sorcerer's apprentice has to learn not to mix magics. Now is Angela's turn.

A Mist of Prophecies: The Party: A Gargoyles: TimeDancer Fanfic. Brooklyn and Sata find themselves in the future, just in time for the MidSummer's Eve party given by some members of the Manhattan Clan. Members they have never met before. Well, all except one.

A Mist of Prophecies: Regrets: What compelled the trickster Puck to create the role of Owen Burnett? Second place winner in the 2001 Gathering's Writing Contest, Category: Pucking Around.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Shatter Your Illusions: Limburger is scheming, the Biker Mice are thwarting, and a new player is riding into Chicago--on a Martian bike. What do you believe and who can you trust? This story takes place in 1995, a few months after "Once Upon a Time on Mars." It is the first story in Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare series.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Put Me Back Together: Now that Throttle has lost Carbine, he feels that he has nothing left. Can Charley help him realize who still cares for him? Or will Limburger's goons confirm Throttle's worst fear? This story takes place in 1995, three weeks after Shatter Your Illusions.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Reunions: Limburger's latest attempt to kill the Biker Mice results in transporting the bros and Charley to the Olympian Fury, a refugee ship reported destroyed during the Martian-Plutarkian War. But this new hope for the future is dashed by a threat worse than the Plutarkians. This story takes place in 1995, one week after Put Me Back Together.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Let Us Give Thanks: Sparks wanting to celebrate Thanksgiving sets off a mystery from Charley's past. Can the Biker Mice find the answers? Fifth in the Wars Are Won by Those Who Dare series. This story takes place in November 1995, five months after Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Family, Friends, and Foes.

Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Turbo: Turbo arrives in Chicago, and secrets Throttle has kept buried for most of his life now threaten Charley. Sixth in the Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare series. This story takes place in May 1996, six months after Let Us Give Thanks.

Evil Jack: Domestic Bliss: Charley is married to Jack, and they have a four-year-old daughter. But why can't Charley remember anything from the past four years? And why do three bikers keep following her? First in the Evil Jack series. This story is set in 1996.

Evil Jack: In Sickness: Hannah is in the hospital with an unknown disease. How can Throttle save her from that? Sequel to Evil Jack: Domestic Bliss. This story is set in 1997.

Evil Jack: For Worse: Jack returns to Chicago determined to use Charley and Throttle's drunken mistake to destroy the Biker Mice. Third in the Evil Jack series. This story is set in 1997.

Tin Man: Not His Kink: Zero knew her weakness. And he would make her help torture Cain. She wouldn't let herself cry. She had to get Cain out of this. This wasn't his kink.

Stories I Posted:

Nothing new this year. Oops.

Stories I Finished:

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Word count = 61,382 (8093 written in 2019 + 14,789 written in 2020 + 22,252 written in 2021 + 16,248). So it took many more months than I initally planned on, but the first draft was finished on November 19, 2022.

Trigun 3 Outline Word Count = 157,526 (83,769 written in 2021 + 73,757). This is the longest and most detailed outline I have ever created and I finally finished it on October 24, 2022. It is practically a first draft of the future novel, and has the heft of words to be a novel. I don't think I will copy this method in future outlines. I'd rather have the words in something closer to publication. But it might happen again.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Strix: Forget the Sun: Word count = 51,890 (26,588 written previously + 4279 written in 2019 + 279 written in 2020 + 15,328 written in 2021 + 5416). I had a breakthrough on why this novel is so hard to write: all my characters are separate and doing things by themselves. I had set aside April, June, and November to work only on this novel and could barely work on it in June and November. I'm only planning to give it one month in 2023. And I hope I get more of the characters together so it's not as hard to write.

Trigun: Three of a Kind: Word count = 20,838. I started the novel from Trigun 3 Outline after I finished Mission on Mimban's first draft. While December 2022 was set aside to work on Zackverse projects and I forgot to continue uploading my older works to Ao3, I discovered its website is not playing nicely with IT settings at my paying job which makes it so hard to edit saved drafts. I needed something else to do and this is the story not leaving me alone.

What I Think About My Stories:

My favorite story this year: Judging from how easy the words are coming, Trigun: Three of a Kind.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Strix: Forget the Sun.

Most fun story: Trigun: Three of a Kind.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: Trigun: Three of a Kind.

Hardest story to write: Strix: Forget the Sun. Every word is precious but I really shot myself in the foot separating all the characters like I have. That was real plotting fail.

Biggest disappointment: That it took three months to finish Star Wars: Mission on Mimban's first draft. I thought I'd get more Star Wars projects done this year but not with how long I took on this one story.

Biggest surprise: How well the monthly focus kept me on track with everything.

What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? From Trigun: Three of a Kind

And just when he thought he had failed protecting the sandsteamer, failed saving the insurance girls from the hostage situation the other passengers and crew were in, up they popped to stop Brilliant Dynamite Neon from shooting him. Introducing herself with that insurance society’s name and giving herself an outlaw moniker. And she had surprised him again by getting under his duster after the duel while he was distracted trying to encourage Kaite to do the right thing over his transmitters. Vash had reared back and smashed his head against a wall. “I do not paw you!”

“Permission granted to paw if I’m bleeding out!” Meryl yelled back.

What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? From Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban:

Obi-Wan peeled the one on her stomach free. Charred flesh pulled off the unconscious young woman with it causing the slash to ooze blood. The separation of her tissue didn’t go deep but it looked excruciating. Obi-Wan frowned. Both Luke and Mara were proficient enough with a lightsaber to avoid self-inflicted wounds like this. And Luke would not strike Mara.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? For starters, let's subtract the Library totals from my word count of the year. Library total = 346,120. 2022 total words = 478,128. So brand new words = 132,008. That is only 74% of my 2022 goal of 177,267, which is not a disappointment at all! But here's hoping I can get more words next year that equals finished project.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I don't know if the focus on one thing a month was a risk, but it did help. I got to projects that I have planned to do but never had reached time to work on them because everything else is more important. So eventually I will get backlog done! I think I managed more days of writing than previous years, but I will track this next year to find out.

Number of Days I Wrote or Edited: 311 days.

Number of Days Meeting or Exceeding the daily 600 word count: 113 days.

Did you meet last year's goals? Wow, I am so bad at guessing how much I can get done in any time frame. So very bad. The goals from my 2022 one-page business plan are: Spend one month on a writing project instead of doing the juggling thing. If I finish one early, then I'll figure out what to do next. These projects are going into the Weekly Planner that I look at every day so I don't forget as well as the one-page business plan.

• January = Trigun 3 Outline. 29 days only working on Trigun 3 Outline, the beginning of the month was shared with writing 2021 My Year in Fic.
• February = Star Wars: Mission on Mimban. 25 days only working on Mission on Mimban. Nothing else grabbed my attention that month.
• March = BookWorm's Library Update. My mother had a heart attack and I had dental implant surgery, but I still managed to focus this month on a revamp of my website, which hadn't been updated since 2017. That's how many years updates had fallen off the To Do list. And yes, I had put it on there to do. I probably put it on the My Years in Fic for those years too.
• April = Strix: Forget the Sun. 23 days working on this novel. I found a problem in the outlined plot and spent the first week fixing that. Then tried to split my attention between this novel and Trigun 3 Outline by the end of the month.
• May = Zackverse Upload to Ao3. Started with the stories in the Zackverse that I have already written and then kept going to everything I have written. Got 11 stories uploaded. Also kept working on Trigun 3 Outline during this month.
• June = Strix: Forget the Sun. Only 13 days of the month that I worked on this novel. 27 days were spent working on Trigun 3 Outline.
• July = BookWorm's Library Update. This July was a mess. I did work on updates that I didn't get finished in March, but I was rear-ended commuting to work on the 7th, my three nine-week-old void babies made it to my house on the 23rd, then I tested positive for Covid on the 25th and promptly forgot to upload all the updates I had made on the Library files. I also worked on Trigun 3 Outline 27 days.
• August = Star Wars. I thought I would be done with Mission on Mimban by this month when I set up this plan last year. I hadn't and then I only spent 16 days on it, compared to 19 days on Trigun 3 Outline.
• September = Trigun. Oh look the month I was supposed to work on Trigun and no other projects stole my attention the entire month. 26 days of work on Trigun 3 Outline.
• October = Star Wars. I was so close to reaching the end of Trigun 3 Outline I just kept working on it until it was done on the 24th. The last seven days of October were spent on just Mission on Mimban.
• November = Strix: Forget the Sun. Since I was so close to the end of Mission on Mimban, I kept going until I finished it on the 19th. Then I picked up Strix: Forget the Sun and finally realized how hard it was writing the character's scene when he was all solo and how I had done that to all the characters in it. I finally reached the end of that scene and then had a plumbing crisis on the 28th - 29th. I started updating Ao3 on the 29th while waiting on plumbers and continued with that, as well as starting Trigun: Three of a Kind on the 30th.
• December = Zackverse. I see now that I was supposed to start working on a Zackverse story, but I thought this was just more uploading instead since I still had old stories that need to go up. I could only upload and tweak the stories to Ao3 on the weekends when I was home, so I had to have something else to work on while at the paying job. I continued on with Trigun: Three of a Kind.

See how much I put under each of these categories? The goals from my 2021 one-page business plan are:

• Make real progress on the Strix series
  • April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft = still not finished
  • April, June, November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft
  • April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's third draft
  • April, June, November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor
• Progress on Star Wars fanfics
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft = finished
  • February, August, October: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
  • February, August, October: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Miha to second draft = finished
  • February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Miha to beta reader = finished
  • February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft
  • February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft
  • February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft
  • February, August, October: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story
• Writing Trigun
  • January, September: Finish Trigun 3 Crossover Outline = finished
  • January, September: Finish Trigun 1 Outline = didn't go back to this one
• Writing Zackverse
  • December: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul = forgot to do this
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a week = this doesn't happen so I really need to rethink this one
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance
  • March, July: Make sure the software is up to date
  • March, July: Add any files that need adding = did this once
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = this section is now in the Library
  • March, July: Create section
  • March, July: Make artwork
  • March, July: Code section
  • march, July: Upload files
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • May: Upload Zackverse in story order = Zackverse what I have finished is uploaded
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft after Mission on Mimban
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft
• Other publishing
  • March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
  • March, July: Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library = done
  • March, July: Upload Looking For Home: My Home Is You to the Library = done
  • March, July: Upload Looking For Home: Outcast to Library = done
  • March, July Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha
  • Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. = The yearly goal was 177,267 that I reached on March 16, 2022. The Library files are what got me there that quickly.
• Write and edit every day. = 311 days out of 365. 85% of the year.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM. = I still need to do more with meditation and the focus music options. My word amounts do go up more when I do use focus.
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently. = Oh no, I forgot about the checklists again. I have to do some work that my checklists are too much for one person and find a realistic solution for this.
• Don't let chores pile up. = Which is related to the checklist problem I need to solve.

Do you have any goals for the coming year? I'd like to finish up some of the listed drafts so the list looks much more managable after next year. Here's how I'm going to break down 2023:

• January = Ao3 Upload / Trigun: Three of Kind since I can't do the uploads at the paying job I'm pretty sure I will have more left to finish
• February = BookWorm's Library update
• March = Star Wars projects
• April = Zackverse projects
• May = Biker Mice From Mars projects
• June = Trigun: Three of a Kind
• July = Ao3 Upload / Trigun: Three of a Kind
• August = BookWorm Library's update
• September = Star Wars projects
• October = Biker Mice From Mars projects
• November = Strix: Forget the Sun
• December = Trigun: Three of a Kind

This list has more under each category than I will get to in a year, but I didn't want to take a chance of forgetting what to do next. (Where the hell does this fear come from?) The goals from my 2023 one-page business plan are:

• Writing Strix series
  • November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft
  • November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft
  • November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's third draft
  • November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor
• Writing Star Wars fanfics
  • March, September: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
  • March, September: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
  • March, September: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
  • March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft
  • March, September: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader
  • March, September: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft
  • March, September: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft
  • March, September: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft
  • March, September: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story
• Writing Trigun fanfics
  • January, June, July, December: Finish Trigun: Three of a Kind first draft
  • January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to second draft
  • January, June, July, December: Send Trigun: Three of a Kind to beta
  • January, June, July, December: Edit Trigun: Three of a Kind to third draft
• Writing Zackverse
  • April: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul
• Writing Biker Mice From Mars fanfics
  • May, October: Find Wars Are Won series notes and see if stories can be consolidated
  • May, October: Finish next Wars Are Won story to first draft
  • May, October: Finish Evil Jack: Till Death Do We Part to first draft
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a month
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance
  • February, August: Make sure the software is up to date
  • February, August: Add any files that need adding
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • January, July: Upload twelve already published stories
  • January, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft next
  • January, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft after Mission on Mimban
• Other publishing
  • February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha to the Library
  • February, August: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban to the Library
  • Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. The yearly goal is 478,128.
• Write and edit every day.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
• Figure out how to keep the house clean.
• Figure out the house remodel.

Here's to 2023. We'll get through all this together.

2021 My Year In Fic

2021 Fiction Word Count:

177267 / 87598 words. 202% done!

Insights To Not Forget:

It's not over yet. I'd really love for it to BE over but we have too many idiots not willing to do what is necessary to protect other people plus fun with capitalism putting profits ahead of the health of the Third World. Because dead people buy shit, really. So we are all at this point in Monty Python and the Holy Grail:



You will be sooner or later. Go get the fucking vaccine, put on a damn mask, and stop mutating the damn virus!

Moving on. In May 2021, I finally upgraded to Scrivener 3. Thankfully one of the writing podcast I listened to told me that it finally had arrived for Windows users because I never did get an email notice that it was ready. [SIDE EYE GIF if I have one] I consolidated all the Star Wars fanfics to one project so that will be where the GFFA dictionary will live, and then started a project for all the Trigun outlines. I haven't shifted any of my original fiction to Scrivener 3 because of other issues.

Because of course there were other issues. Hurricane Ida made landfall August 29th and its route went right over my head. And I was here in Louisiana because my parents with their health issues refused to evacuate. We were lucky that our houses did not have catastrophic damage. Other people in our area were not that lucky. We were without electricity until September 14th and without even spotty Internet until September 27th. I had to evacuate to my friends' home September 2nd through September 17th when my paying job said we were no longer working from home every other day to reduce COVID-19 exposures and had to return to the office full time.

And then the writing laptop ran out of disk space to run Scrivener 3 properly and I started having issues with the only two projects saving and opening properly. On September 8th, I tried moving project files to a SD card inserted into the writing laptop and found out that Literature and Latte doesn't want Scrivener run from removable media. Not that I plan on ever removing it. So what is eating up all the space? Dropbox. But I put everything on cloud except for the writing projects I need to access offline? Thus began the great Dropbox clean out, which according to the space I pay for was totally unnecessary but according to my laptop, it had to be done. That I finally finished right after Christmas and spent Boxing Day and December 27th letting the laptop follow through on the deletions before importing in all the words I had written outside of Scrivener. In the midst of all this, I discovered that as Scrivener wasn't functioning properly, it is programmed to make a copy of the project and work from that. Which was also getting saved to Dropbox because of my settings and added to the digital space being used. So change to my routine is to get the finished story files out of Dropbox as soon as the story is done and published.

Stories I Posted:

Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences: Word count = 126,075. Started posting it on January 18, 2021 and finished posting it August 2, 2021. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

"Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002": Word Count = 5566. Posted for May the Fourth 2021, and I corrected the series order for the two Sororal Lineality stories published so far.

Stories I Finished:

Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: Miha: Word Count = 3217. The first draft of the third story of the series wrote quickly. I started writing May 5th after posting "MJ-0002" and finished on May 18th.

Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command: Word Count = 7346. I'm not sure what prompted me to write the fourth story in Sororal Lineality in July and August, but I was writing it in Scrivener 3 when Hurricane Ida blew through and I had finished it on September 6th and got one of the fun error messages from Scrivener 3. I left all the Star Wars Fanfic project files alone while cleaning out Dropbox. So once I got the Trigun project up and running correctly and imported all its offline file, I decided to go get Star Wars. At 8:00 p.m.the night before having to go back to work.

KLCtheBookWorm: So I probably should have went to bed before opening the Star Wars Scrivener Files
What I have gotten open is missing "Miha" and "Plans and High Commands" and a ton of what I had done in Mission in Mimban
JediMordsith: oh no
KLCtheBookWorm: I'm not panicking. I have many backups available to open which I haven't even looked at the dates on those yet
But I am low keyed terrified and that's not a good state for bedtime
JediMordsith: no, def not a good way to head into sleep
JediDryad: Yeah, not the best
KLCtheBookWorm: Okay I'm extracting a backup copy with the closest to now date
Mainly because I couldn't start combing through the data files to see if it had more words
In good news, Trigun stuff is all together and I have already compiled a back up document outside of the Scrivener backups
Now if only I can find most of the Star Wars words
I... I really can't comprehend of rewriting all of Mimban again
I had gotten up to Vader's arrival if not to the stupid lake monster
Well I need fight music for the lake monster so I may be conflating

I FOUND THE WORDS!
Okay it does look like some is missing from "Plans and High Commands" but I think I have saved most of those from Slack
Let me compile stuff before I start poking
JediDryad: YAY!!!! the words were lost but now have been found
KLCtheBookWorm: I can't tell you how many words that I was potentially looking at being completely gone because I don't want to open that spreadsheet until I'm done with saving backups
JediDryad: Get them saved
KLCtheBookWorm: Okay have compiled Mimban and Sororal Lineality. Found the Slack notes I had saved. Looks like I have lost about 100 - 200 words of my conclusion to "Plans and High Command" but that is rewriting in a conceivable category
I renamed this Scrivener Project as "Star Wars Fanfics Working" and making a back up of it now
That will help me tomorrow to move the other Scrivener projects that are incomplete out of Dropbox
Now I can look
"Plans" had 6619 words when I thought I had safely finished the first draft in August
Mission on Mimban was up to 45,134 which I'm unsure of if I was counting the chapter previously published in that total or if it was just new words for 2021
I think I feel like relief puking if that's a thing
JediDryad: That might be a thing... I feel like it's a thing
KLCtheBookWorm: It maybe passing because I really don't like puking
I'm just waiting on Dropbox to decide it's done syncing and then desktop is getting a reboot and laptop should be okay to go to work tomorrow
Okay laptop Dropbox is done. And since Slack crashed on the desktop let me sign off and get my ass to bed
G'night everybody!
JediMordsith: sleep well! I’m so glad you found things!!

That took about an hour.

After I put in the narrative I had shared in Slack and saved from it after I realized Scrivener 3 was going wonky, I found I only lost the last 95 words I had wrote and wrapped up the story. And since I didn't really remember how I ended it back in September, rewriting that ending was so very doable. So I did it, finished it December 30th, and added 727 words to it.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Word count = 45,134 (8093 written in 2019 + 14,789 written in 2020 + 22,252). I about doubled the word count I brought into the year on this novel, so you can just imagined the low-level terrified that I had when so many of those words were not in the Scrivener Project file I opened. Honestly, if I hadn't gotten them back I don't know if I could have rewritten that much. I have done so much work on Kee and Hin that I can't wait for readers to discover that I probably wouldn't remember to recreate.

Strix: Forget the Sun: Word count = 46,474 (26,588 written previously + 4279 written in 2019 + 279 written in 2020 + 15,328). I did do the Camp NaNo in April! But I didn't write enough words to win NaNo or finish this novel. So moving onto 2021.

Trigun Outline 1: Word Count = 16,832. So I have dropped mentions of Trigun, an anime series from 1998 based on the manga Trigun and its continuation under a different title Trigun Maximum, through out this post. I have no idea why the anime seized my brain again in early May. We were getting rain and I joked I was trying to send it to Gunsmoke this way. But basically the ideas wouldn't leave me alone and finally collecting the soundtracks and listening to the music repeatedly probably didn't help. So I decided to purge the stories out by doing very detailed outlines to finish off at a much later date. The first idea was to make the change in the episode "Murder Machine." And the change was the buried ship's plant had a baby and gave her to Vash the Stampede to raise. This one has some nice twists on the canon (I'm super proud of how I changed Augusta and the Fifth Moon Incident) but technically, I haven't found the ending of this one yet, but Wolfwood lives. I may get help finding it or this will be the most written it will ever be.

Trigun Outline 2: Word Count = 25,022. This story idea developed practically treading on the heels of the first one. Inciting scene that snowballed into a novel outline: Meryl alone and held hostage by bandits is rescued by Vash two years after the Fifth Moon Incident and she was sure he was dead. They end up traveling together, Wolfwood catches up before they reach New Oregon, and then things get too dangerous on the Flying Ship. Knives lives in this one along with Wolfwood (Knives' fate is one of the problems with the first story's ending) and Vash is reunited with Lina and Granny Sheryl because the episode title plainly said "Goodbye For Now."

Trigun Outline 3 Crossover: Word Count = 83,769. So because of the first two outlines and needed to refresh my memory, I ended up introducing my beta to the series that is one of her husband's favorites. We're still laughing at how he didn't show it to her first instead of T&A anime that has given her a miscomprehension about the medium ever since. However it got less funny after my muse took this exchange as permission:

Beta: "Are you going to cross Trigun over with Star Wars?"
Me: "Ack, no! I don't want to figure out how their off-the-charts powers work with the Force. It would be math."

The muse started going through the Rolodex of existing characters and universes and matching them against Trigun and ended up with Hannah Davidson from the Biker Mice From Mars: Evil Jack series when she is aged twelve and her half-brother Chuck Turbine Davidson is aged six. I always intended to end Evil Jack series with Chuck's birth but since that story isn't written yet, he is a new character to the readers. The siblings end up on Gunsmoke with Throttle's bike--thanks Karbunkle--and luckily for them they find the caravan right after "Escape From Pain" and Vash the Stampede and the Insurance Girls decide to take care of them. Mutual adoptions and then Meryl's life is wrecked and Vash rescues her. This whole scenario has been so much fun, except for the muse not realizing this is an outline and not a full draft.

What I Think About My Stories:

My favorite story this year: Trigun Outline 3 Crossover by leaving all the other word counts in the dust. Man, it needs a title. But really, it has been so much fun to write.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Strix: Forget the Sun again. I made some pretty decent progress on it in Camp NaNo even if I never made the NaNo word counts. Maybe there is something to focusing on one writing project for a whole month instead of trying to touch all of them at once.

Most fun story: Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command. Biggs lives in this AU and I had forgotten (until I had to come up with a new ending) just how much fun he is.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: See the above Trigun outline entries. THREE stories! Muse, we have to stop there because I have to finish Star Wars and original series.

Hardest story to write: Strix: Forget the Sun. I don't know, maybe I do need a cheerleading section for it.

Biggest disappointment: I wish I had crossed a novel off the to be written list. I had the word count for it, but what got the words hadn't been in the plans at all.

Biggest surprise: Trigun obsession came out of nowhere. Honestly, if it was all because of what you read consistently, it should be Megamind fanfic. No, Muse, do not go find a fanfic idea for Megamind. I have enough trouble composing comments there.

What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? From Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command

“Frankly, if anyone in the Alliance is entitled to a little selfish gain,” Biggs said, “it’s you, Leia. But you’re going to set an impossible to meet noble standard even if your selfish gain also equals saving Han’s life.”
“I’m not sure if I should thank you for a compliment or punch you for an insult,” Leia said.
“You’re welcome.”

What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? From Trigun Outline 1:

Vash opens his left arm gun and shoots Gray the Ninelives’ foot. The robot topples over and Vash flips free, grabbing his nickel Colt back from Rai-Dei. Vash trains both guns on Knives. Knives laughs. The casing on the black Colt pops open and bright pink light grows.
Knives: “It’s your turn now, Vash!”
Vash: “Everybody run!”
Knives’ arm starts forming the Angel Arm. The Gung-Ho Guns begin fleeing. Meryl tucks her derringers away to hold Rem to her front as she runs.
Little Rem screams: “Daddy!”
Vash charges Knives forcing Knives’ Angel Arm up. Meryl realizes she can’t run fast enough and tells Little Rem to put out her wings and make the ball so they can help Daddy after. Little Rem sobs but wraps them up in the protective ball.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? I'm amazed by my word count, 202% of what I had decided I could write based off last year. It wasn't on what I had predicted at all, but I hope I can carry the amount forward.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I think I have figured out how to balance writing while at my paying job and not to get distracted and now for health issues have worked in standing up and walking around a bit. Now I should take that technique and combine with only one writing project for a month. But now we are getting into the goals section.

Did you meet last year's goals? Let's find out. The goals from my 2021 one-page business plan are:

• Use Ali Luke's Two Year Novel Plan to finish the Strix series
  • April - August 2021: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft (I'm going to push myself to get it done in by treating April as NaNo, but more time is available if I need it) = Nope, still not finished.
  • Sept. - Dec. 2021: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's second draft = Nope, not started yet.
• Writing Star Wars AU fanfics
  • Finish Unexpected Consequences' third draft = Done
  • Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft = In Progress
  • Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft = Not there yet
  • Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader = Not there yet
  • Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft = Not there yet
  • Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha first draft = Done
  • Edit Sororal Lineality: Miha to second draft = In Progress
  • Send Sororal Lineality: Miha to beta reader = Not there yet
  • Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft = Not there yet
• Writing Zackverse
  • Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul = Never touched this at all
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a week = Not as regularly as I wanted
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance = Work on once a week on Sundays = My time never seemed to work out to do these
  • Make sure the software is up to date once a month
  • Add any files that need adding
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = Work on once a week on Sundays
  • Create section
  • Make artwork
  • Code section
  • Upload files
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • Upload Zackverse in story order = Not there yet
  • Upload Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences when edited on Ao3 = Done
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 on Ao3 on May 4th = Done
  • Reload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath on Ao3 = Fixed the series order so done
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha to Ao3 after Mission on Mimban = Not there yet
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library = Forgot about
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library = Forgot about
  • Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library = Forgot about
  • Upload Looking For Home: My Home Is You to the Library = Forgot about
  • Upload Looking For Home: Outcast to Library = Forgot about
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library = Forgot about
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library = Forgot about
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha to the Library = Not there yet
  • Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now = Forgot about

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among the projects. I'm making the yearly goal to reach whatever number I actually reach on December 31st. = I had 85 days that I reached the daily word count! That's the second highest amount I have managed to do since I started tracking that in 2017. I doubled what I managed to do in 2020.
• Write and edit every day. = I'm going to say this was a win. When I had the longest spans of no tracking was when I was writing outline in long hand instead of typing.
• Schedule website updates and fanmix work on the weekends. = Totally forgot about this.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM. = Still need to do this.
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently. = Fell off from using this tool.
• Don't let chores pile up now that you have two jobs plus writing to do. = I'm so bad at this.

Do you have any goals for the coming year? First off, I'm going to spend one month on a writing project instead of doing the juggling thing. If I finish one early, then I'll figure out what to do next. These projects are going into the Weekly Planner that I look at every day so I don't forget as well as the one-page business plan.

• January = Trigun 3 Outline
• February = Star Wars: Mission on Mimban
• March = BookWorm's Library Update
• April = Strix: Forget the Sun
• May = Zackverse Upload to Ao3
• June = Strix: Forget the Sun
• July = BookWorm's Library Update
• August = Star Wars
• September = Trigun
• October = Star Wars
• November = Strix: Forget the Sun
• December = Zackverse

The goals from my 2021 one-page business plan are:

• Make real progress on the Strix series
  • April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft
  • April, June, November: Edit Strix: Forget the Sun to second draft
  • April, June, November: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's second draft
  • April, June, November: Send Strix: Forget the Sun to a developmental editor
• Progress on Star Wars fanfics
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft
  • February, August, October: Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
  • February, August, October: Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Miha to second draft
  • February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Miha to beta reader
  • February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to second draft
  • February, August, October: Send Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to beta reader
  • February, August, October: Edit Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command to third draft
  • February, August, October: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Extrication first draft
  • February, August, October: Finish Sororal Lineality: Kyber first draft
  • February, August, October: Outline Everybody Lives But Maul story
• Writing Trigun
  • January, September: Finish Trigun 3 Crossover Outline
  • January, September: Finish Trigun 1 Outline
• Writing Zackverse
  • December: Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a week
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance
  • March, July: Make sure the software is up to date
  • March, July: Add any files that need adding
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library
  • March, July: Create section
  • March, July: Make artwork
  • March, July: Code section
  • march, July: Upload files
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • May: Upload Zackverse in story order
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban third draft
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft after Mission on Mimban
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Plans and High Command third draft
• Other publishing
  • March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
  • March, July: Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library
  • March, July: Upload Looking For Home: My Home Is You to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Looking For Home: Outcast to Library
  • March, July Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
  • March, July: Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha
  • Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among stories. The yearly goal is 177,267 that I reached December 31, 2021.
• Write and edit every day.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently.
• Don't let chores pile up.

Here's to 2022. We'll get through all this together.

2020 My Year In Fic

2020 Fiction Word Count:

86691 / 126531 words. 69% done!

Insights To Not Forget:

So I had a beautiful plan that I was going to reset and hit the ground running for 2021. See Year Zero is Reset Year.

Covid-19 was officially found in my state March 9, 2020, and life found unforeseen territory.

March 24th, I had to adjust to working at home. June 1st, back to working in the office and commuting daily. November 30th, we're back on a modified work from home/office plan (day at home, next day commuting in). I haven't gotten sick and I haven't passed on covid-19 to anyone else. For 2020, that is the biggest win anyone can have. 1.83 million people (to date) didn't get that win.

Would I have forgotten about my buckle down and reset plans without a global pandemic distracting me? Quite likely, I tend to forget all my plans every year. In fact, the writing business plan that I made to cover the year (I use it below for all the goals of the year), the printed version is on my filing cabinet and covered with so many other notes, I can't read the plan. (Removed the notes). This is for 2019. I never printed out 2020's?

And you can see by the total words written, I came under what I wanted to write. Let's see what I accomplished this year.

Stories I Posted:

Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: Aftermath: Word count = 3309. The Fic Whining Circle was getting stories ready for May the Fourth. I decided that this story would be perfectly short to get it up and started writing on May 2nd. I didn't get it finished for May the Fourth, but put it up on Revenge of the Fifth. And then it turned out to be the only story I posted in 2020.

Stories I Finished:

Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences: Word count = 126,607 (31,008 written previously + 49,572 written in 2019 + 46,027). The first draft was finished on July 28th, and it took the rest of the year to get my first edits polished to a second draft for my beta to go over. Now I need to go prod her so I can start posting in 2021.

Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002: Word count = 5664 (387 written in 2019 + 5277). I finished this short story as planned after I finished Unexpected Consequences and before I picked up the next novel. I hope to post it after Unexpected Consequences, but I may need to use it for a May the Fourth story.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Strix: Forget the Sun: Word count = 31,146 (26,588 written previously + 4279 written in 2019 + 279 written in January) I took a very tiny stab at this novel in January and promptly lost it to work on other things.

Star Wars: Looking For Home Future Timeline: Word count = 7598. So at the end of February, I got stuck on giving the Sequel Trilogy Trio better movie(s) and started writing detailed notes on a future story that will probably never been written. I had already put Rey and Poe Dameron in the sketchy future of the Looking For Home so I needed to figure out how to add Finn. I got stuck with the Third Act, and probably need to declare it has to be a trilogy to get the resolutions I want. Maybe I need a Death Star.

Star Wars: Everybody Lives But Maul: Another plot bunny developed during the year. Mara Jade was given to Darth Vader to annoy him so he would eventually murder her, but he bonds with her instead. So Palpatine orchestrates that Lady Vader's path crosses Maul's on Tatooine. Only Luke Skywalker and Biggs Darklighter ruin the planned outcomes, and Mara remains on Tatooine for her safety. I really don't know if it will be a novel or something else yet.

Star Wars: Everybody Lives But Maul: Prologue: Word count = 1385. So far all I have written in this AU is the scene of the adoption of Lady Vader. I don't know where this scene will end up in the finished work.

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Word count = 22,882 (8093 written in 2019 + 14,789). After writing "MJ-0002," I came back to Mission on Mimban from the beginning. Still working on it.

What I Think About My Stories:

My favorite story this year: Star Wars: Unexpected Consequence. I can't wait to turn this one lose on the readers.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Star Wars: Looking For Home: Future Timeline. I really need to spend some more brain time on this one if just to find a conclusion that makes me happy.

Most fun story: Everybody Lives But Maul. I really wasn't expecting to write it accept the idea would not leave the muse alone and then this happened:

KLCtheBookWorm: I really don't know what to do with Vader and Leia... unless he goes into her cell deactivates the IO droid and "Now Princess can we discuss waging war against Palpatine? Because he orchestrated my first family's death, has tried to kill my daughter, and your rebellion has made her flee her safe haven so he will potential see her again. He will not have her or my grandson."
Sithspit, why does the muse want to rewrite OT constantly?
JediMordsith: lolol
Hmmm.... that could be interesting. Or he could go to Bail.
"I will give you your daughter back if you help me get mine back."
KLCtheBookWorm: YOU GAVE ME MORE PEOPLE TO HELP LIVE!
JediMordsith: Bail convinces the rest of the Rebel leaders to work with Vader to take down the Emperor because he knows what a father's love is.
KLCtheBookWorm: I always consider Alderaan's destruction a fixed point in time
But the conversation between Bail and Mon Mothma. "You wanna do what now?"

Yeah, at that point I will write it.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: Star Wars: Everybody Lives But Maul. Technically I haven't really started the narrative, but really, Muse, was not expecting yet another rewrite of the OT. This one is the third, after Rescue the Farmboy and Sororal Lineality.

Hardest story to write: Star Wars: Looking For Home Future Timeline. I have never gotten stuck in which I couldn't finish off an outline. And this is so stuck.

Biggest disappointment: Strix: Forget the Sun. I did not even try for NaNo during the pandemic. (Huge props to everyone who did). I'm considering to do NaNo in April instead in 2021 to finish this novel.

Biggest surprise: I only posted ONE THING! I'm not beating myself up for any of the results of 2020 because it was garbage year, but I honestly didn't plan to leave my readers hanging so hard. On the plus side, they will have at least 30 weeks of new content to read in 2021.

What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? From Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: Aftermath.

Luke opened his eyes to Leia’s suspicious face. “She was arguing with Threepio. I went the other way.”

“So she couldn’t put you back in the medbunk.” Leia bounced to her feet and helped leverage him out of his seat. “You are going right back to it and staying in it until we reach the Fleet, Commander.”

“Aye, aye, Colonel,” Luke replied with less than the banter he normally did. He leaned heavily on Leia, more than he should.

Lando finished locking down the controls and followed behind them. “Colonel? Not a General?”

“Not a General yet,” Luke responded with a wheezy laugh.

It took a while to figure out what Leia's military actual rank is based of costumes and plot actions in Empire Strikes Back. Major Bren Derlin didn't get a yes from Leia because she loves the two men out in the cold, but because she out ranks him.

What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? From Star Wars: Soroal Lineality: MJ-0002.

The last one she dared to open was a recording. Her memory replayed on the screen: a child’s best dress colored green as the recorder tilted down, followed by looking back at the sad adults in the shadows of the shuttle’s lights. She heard the woman’s quavering voice, “Please, don’t take my baby.” Then the gnarled hand extended from the sleeve of the black robe and a tiny hand took it, and the recorder turned to the lit hatch at the top of the ramp.

Mara's surroundings registered in waves after that. Her glutes were tingling as she shifted from sitting in a collapsed position on the floor. The floor was cold stone. The recording was playing on a loop above her head. She hadn’t fainted because she wasn’t flat on her back. She climbed up to her feet and shut off the playback. Now the title of the file burned into her retinas, Primary Memory Imprint for Murdering Judges Clone Line.

I can't wait to share this story with readers.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? Oh I came in under what I had aimed for, only writing to 69% of my goal that I set from what I wrote in 2019. But 2020 was a garbage year so I'm not beating myself up over word count results. As I went through the year though, I noticed that August and September were totally spent on just editing and no new words. That means I need to watch the schedule in 2021.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I have officially started the write a series of short stories and keep them under 7500 words. I need more practice writing short, which is why I plotted Sororal Lineality this way.

Did you meet last year's goals?

That's a no, and boy, how is it a no. 2021 Goal is to not have Leeloo laugh at me.

The goals from my unprinted 2020 one-page business plan are:

• Use Ali Luke's Two Year Novel Plan to finish the Strix series
  • January - May 2020: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft = Nope, not done yet.
  • June - October 2020: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's second draft = Nope.
• Writing Star Wars AU fanfics
  • Finish Unexpected Consequences' first draft = Done
  • Start writing Sororal Lineality = Two stories done out of 28
  • Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft = Nope, but I am currently writing it.
  • Send Unexpected Consequences to beta reader = Done
  • Send Sororal Lineality stories to beta reader = Done
  • Edit Unexpected Consequences = In Progress
  • Edit Sororal Lineality stories = Done
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, Tumblr Random Thoughts, Pillowfort = Do once a week on Saturdays = I haven't been doing this at all. Tumblr posts happen when I'm home but usually reposting and not anything I have written.
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance = Work on once a week on Sundays = Really need to do this
  • Make sure the software is up to date once a month
  • Add any files that need adding
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = Work on once a week on Sundays = Hasn't happened yet
  • Create section
  • Make artwork
  • Code section
  • Upload files
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • Upload Zackverse in story order = Nope, not yet
  • Upload Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences when edited on Ao3 = In Progress
  • Upload Sororal Lineality stories when edited = In Progress
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to FF.net and the Library when finished = Oops, forgot about this
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to FF.net and the Library when finished = Oops, forgot about this
  • Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to FF.net = In Progress
  • Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library = In Progress

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among the projects. I'm making the yearly goal to reach whatever number I actually reach on December 31st.
• Write and edit every day.
• Schedule website updates and fanmix work on the weekends.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently.
• Don't let chores pile up now that you have two jobs plus writing to do.
• Reward myself when goals are reached throughout my Reset Year.

Do you have any goals for the coming year? The goals from my 2021 one-page business plan are:

• Use Ali Luke's Two Year Novel Plan to finish the Strix series
  • April - August 2021: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft (I'm going to push myself to get it done in by treating April as NaNo, but more time is available if I need it)
  • Sept. - Dec. 2021: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's second draft
• Writing Star Wars AU fanfics
  • Finish Unexpected Consequences' third draft
  • Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft
  • Edit Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to second draft
  • Send Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban to beta reader
  • Finish Rescue the Farm: Mission on Mimban third draft/li>
  • Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha first draft
  • Edit Sororal Lineality: Miha to second draft
  • Send Sororal Lineality: Miha to beta reader
  • Finish Sororal Lineality: Miha third draft
• Writing Zackverse
  • Work on Hyrueliana's overhaul
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, and Tumblr Random Thoughts = Do once a week
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance = Work on once a week on Sundays
  • Make sure the software is up to date once a month
  • Add any files that need adding
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = Work on once a week on Sundays
  • Create section
  • Make artwork
  • Code section
  • Upload files
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • Upload Zackverse in story order
  • Upload Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences when edited on Ao3
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 on Ao3 on May 4th
  • Reload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath on Ao3
  • Upload Soroal Lineality: Miha to Ao3
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to the Library
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to the Library
  • Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library
  • Upload Looking For Home: My Home Is You to the Library
  • Upload Looking For Home: Outcast to Library
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002 to the Library
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Aftermath to the Library
  • Upload Sororal Lineality: Miha
  • Update FF.net profile of where newer stories are now

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among the projects. I'm making the yearly goal to reach whatever number I actually reach on December 31st.
• Write and edit every day.
• Schedule website updates and fanmix work on the weekends.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently.
• Don't let chores pile up now that you have two jobs plus writing to do.

Here's to 2021. We'll get through it together.

2019 My Year In Fic

2019 Fiction Word Count

126531 / 199759 words. 63% done!

Insights To Not Forget: See Year Zero is Reset Year for these. It was too long to go here. Here is where I analyze my writing and what I'm doing moving forward.

Stories I Finished:

Star Wars: Crude Matter: Word count = 5811. So the Fic Whining Circle came up with a kink challenge. I ended up with gender swap and aphrodisiac, and came up with the plot so quickly. And then my muse was "what, you want words on this stupid idea now?" It took FOREVER to write, but I finally got it finished and posted.

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation: Finished editing and posted this year.

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service: Word count = 847. The first in-between story in this series finished.

Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Temple of Pomojema: Word count = 8044. So 2019 Star Wars Legends Halloween Extravaganza rolled around after I had decided I was only submitting WIPs for any and all challenges moving forward after losing so much time forcing Crude Matter out of my head. So I ended up writing the climax of this story for this event. I still have to finish the rest.

How TPM Happened in Rescue the Farmboy AU: Word Count = 910.

How AOTC Happened in Rescue the Farmboy AU: Word Count = 1533.

How ROTS Happened in Rescue the Farmboy AU: Word Count = 3786. Obviously Padmé living in Anakin's body and Anakin listening to his beloved wife while he wades through the Empire as Darth Vader is a huge change, and I had a few more fix-its for the Prequels lingering in mind. I worked enough of them into Liberation that readers found that I made myself go back to the Prequels and solidify what changed. So far these background notes have only been published on Dreamwidth. I'm not hiding them from the series fans, but I have them ready when I get blindsided by a question.

Star Wars: Interrogation Room: Word count = 573. Evilmouse set up a quick Midnight Kiss challenge. I had just had this little vignette that didn't fit in any WIPs, so I wrote it up for this challenge. This does not mean I will be writing outside the WIPs in 2020. I intend to stand pretty firm on that so I can deliver those WIPs.

Stories I Didn't Finish:

Strix: Forget the Sun: Word count = 30,867 (26,588 written previously + 3780 written during NaNo 2019 + 499 written in December) I had a great idea to focus only on this novel during NaNo 2019. 50,000 words should get me over the finish line of the first draft. My mother had a valve replacement heart surgery scheduled for Oct. 28th but that wasn't going to effect my schedule at all.

My mother ended up spending the entire month of November in two hospitals and a rehab facility. My poor tired brain did not want to work on original fic, but wanted refuge in fanfic instead. So I will carry working on this novel into 2020.

Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences: Word count = 80,580 (31,008 written previously + 49,572). Did I make big plans for my AU of the Thrawn Trilogy? Possibly, since I made unsustainable plans with every other writing project. This novel became my fall back when everything became too stressful, and surprisingly I made a lot of progress this year on it. I'm almost done with Act Two.

TLJ Story Grid Project: Word count = 930 (383 written previously + 547). I got talked into doing my original idea of deconstructing the Last Jedi according to the Story Grid method. This will probably be as long and as involved as the Splinter of the Mind's Eye Analysis. I worked on it a little in January and hit the point that I will probably have to rewatch The Last Jedi and what desire I had to do this project died. I think there are lessons to mine from a serious analysis of this film and the whole trilogy, but I don't think I have the will to see it through.

Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: A plot bunny materialized on me unexpectedly that Mara discovered she wasn't the only Emperor's Hand but that the other Hands are clones at different ages and she is also a clone. But I didn't want to write this story as one big novel, so I decided to do a series of short stories that I can write in between novel projects. I plotted out twenty-seven short stories using the MACE method that I learned about from the Writing Excuses podcast. This is my first time forcing myself to write short and my first time using this outline method. But I haven't really put any of them on the writing schedule.

Star Wars: Sororal Lineality: MJ-0002: Word count = 387. Despite not putting any of this series on the schedule, I ended up writing this little bit to get it started.

What I Think About My Stories:

My favorite story this year: Star Wars: Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban: Temple of Pomojema. I still remember while working on the analysis of Splinter of the Mind's Eye when I decided to let Padmé emerge from Vader and have a chat with her and Anakin's son. It was one of those ideas that took the whole project from a clean-up job on a profic interesting idea not brought to its fullest potential to something magical. This chapter was everything I wanted of that scene. Now for the fun job of writing the rest to lead into and support this chapter.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Star Wars: Crude Matter It had the fewest reviews of what I published in 2019, but all the important people commented so it's not bothering me.

Most fun story: Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences. Okay, I'm being mean by picking something I didn't publish. But I am having a blast when I get to write on this story.

Stories I wrote that I never thought I'd write: How the Prequels Happened in the Rescue the Farmboy AU. I am absolutely serious with this choice. I wrote all of Liberation without finalizing what happened in the previous generation and thought I could carry forward that way. I'm glad I came to my senses and figured it out.

Hardest story to write: Star Wars: Crude Matter. As I said before, the muse did not want to cooperate with the narrative. Or with femslash. I still feel bad that I faded to black, but it was either do that or never publish anything for the rest of the year trying to make that sex scene happen.

Biggest disappointment: Strix: Forget the Sun. NaNo was my solution to that lack of progress and real life shredded that plan. I must always remember these words of wisdom:

Biggest surprise: I didn't finish a novel this year. I really miss finishing a novel so it's going up for readers while I do something else.

What's your favorite piece of dialogue you wrote this year? From Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences, which is unfair considering that it's not published.

She ignored it as Captain Karrde approached them. “Minister Organa Solo, Lucinda, is everything all right?” His shrewd blue eyes were focused on her.

“Worried about Mommy, I guess.”

“Ah, she’ll be back soon. Meanwhile, I have a job for you.”

Lucinda frowned. “I thought I was too young to work for you.”

Captain Karrde smirked. “This you already have experience in.” He held out a datacard. “Ghent is coming here in a few days. These are his instructions. Make sure he gets them and shove food and water into him regularly while he works on them.”

Lucinda smirked. She did know how to take care of Ghent. But she didn’t take the card. “How much is it worth to you?”

Princess Leia smothered a laugh but Captain Karrde beamed. “Very good. I did call it a job. What’s your starting bid?”

“A skyhopper!”

“So your mother can make me eat it, no. What about a personal piloting simulator?”

“Only if it’s a model that can hold multiple programs for different ships. Because I’m going to master them quick.”

“Deal.”

She took the datacard from Captain Karrde and slipped it into her belt pouch.

What's your favorite piece of description or narration you wrote this year? Everything is coming from Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences today because nothing I published has stuck in my head as shareable.

Yellow-white fire lit up the landscape, hurting her eyes with how bright it was. The multiple detonations made a thunderclap that knocked her to her knees. She screamed and covered her ears, but she still heard blaster fire open up behind them.

Strong arms scooped her up against his chest, cloth covered not armored. Lucinda grabbed hold of Jedi Skywalker, and now the sounds of the battle battered her ears: the blaster fire from behind them and from the stormtroopers hugging the stone pillars, speeder bikes whined louder around them. Stormtroopers grabbed Jedi Skywalker under his arms. She glanced up and saw the Chariot assault vehicle turning around to face the unseen attackers.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would, less, or about what you predicted? Oh I came in under what I had aimed for, only writing to 63% of my goal that I set from what I wrote in 2018. I'm still coming to terms with how badly I planned 2019.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I don't think my risks were with writing this year.

Did you meet last year's goals?

That's a no, and boy, how is it a no.

The goals from my 2019 one-page business plan are:

• Use Ali Luke's Two Year Novel Plan to finish the Strix series -- It maybe overly ambitious to try to finish all three novels in the same time frame. What I'm hoping to do is finish ahead of the schedule and pick up the next one. = REALLY PAST ME?! That's what we're calling my need to
  
  • January - February 2019: Move all files into Scrivener = This I got done at least.
  • January - February 2019: Outline the trilogy = Nope, only have one book outlined. The same one I had outlined before attempting to get serious again.
  • March - July 2019: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft = Nope
  • March - July 2019: Finish Strix prequel story's first draft = Nope
  • March - July 2019: Finish Strix sequel story's first draft = Nope
  • August - December 2019: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's second draft = Nope
  • August - December 2019: Finish Strix prequel story's second draft = Nope
  • August - December 2019: Finish Strix sequel story's second draft = Nope
• Writing Star Wars AU fanfics
  • Send Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to beta reader = Done
  • Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation's third draft = Done
  • Finish Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service's second draft = Done
  • Send Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to beta reader = Done
  • Finish Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service's third draft = Done
  • July 2019: Finish Unexpected Consequences' first draft = Haven't finished it yet.
  • December 2019: Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft = Technically started, but I need to write steady on it
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, Tumblr Random Thoughts, Pillowfort = I haven't been posting to any schedule.
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance = And I haven't kept up with that either this year.
  • Make sure the software is up to date once a month
  • Add any files that need adding
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = Haven't started this either.
  • Create section
  • Make artwork
  • Code section
  • Upload files
• Publishing the Strix series = Didn't attempt any of this due to still being on the first draft of only one story.
  • November 2019: Research candidates for professional editor
  • January 2020: Hire a cover designer deadline 3 weeks before end of March 2020
  • January 2020: Hire editor and send off material deadline 3 weeks before end of March 2020
  • March 2020: Receive corrections and artwork
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • Upload Zackverse in story order = Haven't started this project yet
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to Ao3, FF.net, and the Library when finished = I pretty much stopped once I got it up at Ao3
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to Ao3, FF.net, and the Library when finished = same thing, I stopped once I got it up at Ao3
  • Upload Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences when edited = Still writing

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among the projects. I'm making the yearly goal to reach whatever number I actually reach on December 31st. = I was very good at splitting the word count between daily projects, but I only had 49 days that I reached or exceeded 600 words. 2018 I had reached 105, so I'd like to get back to that level.
• Write and edit every day. Pick one for Saturday and do the other on Sunday. = I started off with good intentions and then my projects got out of sync. Like right now, I don't have anything ready to edit unless I want to give the stuff I need to post in Ao3 another proofreading check. What to do on the weekends is another question.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM. = Why can't I ever find time for this?
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently. = Yeah, this is something I'm working on harder in 2020.
• Don't let chores pile up now that you have two jobs plus writing to do. = Still a work in progress.
• Reward myself when goals are reached. = Rewards? What are those?

Do you have any goals for the coming year? So I am sick and tired of laughing at myself when I write these things. So tired and with my Year of Reset, I am shifting things down to a lower gear. The goals from my 2020 one-page business plan are:

• Use Ali Luke's Two Year Novel Plan to finish the Strix series -- SHRINKING THIS GOAL BY SO MUCH! Notice the other two novels are not mentioned at all
  • January - May 2020: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's first draft
  • June - October 2020: Finish Strix: Forget the Sun's second draft
• Writing Star Wars AU fanfics
  • Finish Unexpected Consequences' first draft
  • Start writing Sororal Lineality
  • Finish Rescue the Farmboy: Mission on Mimban's first draft
  • Send Unexpected Consequences to beta reader
  • Send Sororal Lineality stories to beta reader
  • Edit Unexpected Consequences
  • Edit Sororal Lineality stories
• Post regularly to Intentionally Left Blank, Dreamwidth, Discipline Under Fire, Tumblr Random Thoughts, Pillowfort = Do once a week on Saturdays
• BookWorm's Library website maintenance = Work on once a week on Sundays
  • Make sure the software is up to date once a month
  • Add any files that need adding
• Add Media Center to BookWorm's Library = Work on once a week on Sundays
  • Create section
  • Make artwork
  • Code section
  • Upload files
• Add more fanfics to AO3
  • Upload Zackverse in story order
  • Upload Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences when edited on Ao3
  • Upload Sororal Lineality stories when edited
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: Liberation to FF.net and the Library when finished
  • Upload Rescue the Farmboy: One More Service to FF.net and the Library when finished
  • Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to FF.net
  • Post Star Wars: Unexpected Consequences to Library

My daily writing plans to help the above list of goals get done:

• Write 600 daily words. Can be split among the projects. I'm making the yearly goal to reach whatever number I actually reach on December 31st.
• Write and edit every day.
• Schedule website updates and fanmix work on the weekends.
• Work in meditation time with Brain FM.
• Use my Kanban Flow checklist consistently.
• Don't let chores pile up now that you have two jobs plus writing to do.
• Reward myself when goals are reached throughout my Reset Year.

Here's to 2020. We'll get through it together.