I’m trash at consistency it seems.

I’ve set up multiple trackers for #onemillionwords. Each project has been set up individually on the NaNoWriMo website. I have a monthly tracker for each project in my bullet journal as well as a tracker on each project in 4thewords which is where I write. The site automatically updates each project as I write so I don’t even have to worry about that one but the other two? I’m horrible about updating them.

This is the same problem I ran into in school. The whole having to actually update it every day thing doesn’t work for me. So far, it’s been more like once or twice a week. In the end, will it matter if I updated every single date? Not really. They’re tools to help. The main goal here is writing every day and as long as I do that, then I’ve still accomplished my goals. This might be common sense for some but it’s a big thing for me. I tend to hyper-focus on using the tools exactly and tend to get discouraged when I misstep.

Everyone works and succeeds differently. Myself, I have to use multiple accountability tools, a community, and half a dozen post-it notes a week to accomplish this. I found what worked for me. Not 100% mind you but it has worked enough to keep me going. Before this, I was a disorganized ball of static. Three weeks of using a bullet journal can only do so much

This whole thing is teaching me to organize and utilize tools that better suit my brain. Wild to think that three weeks of a random internet event has helped where most of my special education teachers failed. Not throwing shade since I am well aware of just how badly understood ADHD was when I was in school and do not fault them these shortcomings.

First, let me give a #onemillionwords refresher. A wonderful mutual of mine over on Twitter tweeted out close to the new year that they were going to do a writing challenge for all of 2021. They were setting a goal of writing one million words in just one year and invited others to do the same. Nearly a hundred people, that I knew of, jumped on this and set the same goal thus an incredible community was born. To break it down that’s on average 2740 words a day and about 85,000 words a month. Most of us aren’t expecting to get to one million but pipedreams are a thing for a reason. If interested, you can find the mastermind behind this on Twitter at CKnightwrites. 

How’s my progress? I’ve been keeping on track more or less. I haven’t been able to bank any significant amount of words so that I have a buffer when we move, whenever that is. House hunting is fun and full of delightful surprises, said no one ever but my total as of this morning was at about 58k words. That’s still a great deal of progress. I keep having to remind myself of that fact. I’ve written more in these past three weeks than I have most years since graduating college.

• CHAINED HEAVENS – Still really hate the name but I can’t think of anything better. This is my high fantasy short story collection that follows the adventures of Lucifiel and her two siblings, trained to fight against the demon armies plaguing their world. I have to be honest, Lucifiel is one of my D&D characters, an Aasimar barbarian. She was created five years ago when I finally joined a campaign that didn’t have three other Aasimars. I made a barbarian because the duality of it tickled me. It was a pairing that you seldom saw until Critical Role Campaign 2. Good thing Lucifiel and Yasha are not that similar in personality. That being said, it took me way too long to use D&D mod prompts but since doing so it’s helped a lot to start new stories.
• Blog posts. Here’s one, isn’t it lovely? These weekly updates help me twofold; keeping my word count growing and reteaching me how to write editorial content. I have a bachelor’s in journalism but I obtained that over a decade ago and haven’t done anything with it since. I’m a little rusty. I will probably always be horrible at thinking up topics. The next post by me should be out Tuesday, a book review of DISAPPEARING NIGHTLY by Laura Resnick.
• CLOAKED RITES – Every time I go back and rewrite this story, iI remember just how much I love these characters. This book is 1st person and written from Lysundra Evan’s perspective, a half werewolf, half peri agent of the supernatural British version of the FBI. I am afraid I haven’t gotten a lot of extra words banked in this project. It’s hovering just about where I should be so this weekend I plan to set aside some time for this project specifically. Maybe even try to outline beforehand. I’m rubbish at outlining and honestly, don’t know a method that works for me. If anyone has any method suggestions for this poor ball of static, please let me know.
• The Stormbloods Saga Series – This is project has been the easiest to write. Hands down. Out of all my projects, this one has the most words banked. I also randomly, this time around, decided to make her ADHD so I’ve been having a lot of fun writing little internal monologue bits. It’ll get cleaned up in editing but for now, I have a little outlet for my own internal monologue which I didn’t know until recently that most neurotypical people don’t have. Another thing I’ve leaned into with this story is the sass of my main character. Here’s a snippet that I’m proud of:

I looked down. My energy drink was more than half empty and my coffee wasn’t steaming anymore. I furrowed my brow, wondering how long my mind had wandered off. With a deep breath, I grabbed the mug and put it into the microwave, hitting a minute reheat before asking my cousin if he wanted some as well. Not sure if coffee did anything for the Fae. Caffeine or any stimulant really didn’t do a whole lot for me but the little kick it gave was always appreciated.

“If that’s all you have.” He sounded so put out that I had to bite my tongue to not immediately tell him to go fuck himself.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, trying to keep the urge to murder out of my voice.

“Tea, darling, I would prefer tea.”

I flipped the bird in his general direction before popping an earl grey into the Keurig. A wall separated us which meant as I waited I finished my energy drink and starting in on my coffee while every so often just flipping him off for no particular reason other than he was here.

• THE DANGEROUS LIES OF A PERPETUALLY SINGLE WEREWOLF – This story is so hot and cold with me. Some days I can put in a solid 600 words and other days I barely write the minimum. When the latter happens, it’s like pulling teeth. It’s my first time really jumping into the romance novel scene and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Out of all the genres I feel like romance is the hardest to write. I have so much respect for romance writers. That being said, I am still going to power through because I got a nice plot bunny of an idea that I think could turn out to be something really good. Also, challenging myself with something new after exclusively writing urban fantasy for thirteen years is a good thing.
• The Keeper Chronicle Series – It’s going the same as DLPSW is going; hot and cold. This series is a bit hard because even though I fell in love with the characters and the world it was originally meant to be a singular short story. The main character, Frankie, basically got trapped inside a magical house for the rest of her life so she can watch over the demons and angels within. Kind of hard to figure out how to make that kind of future interesting enough to have multiple short stories come after. I’ll post a snippet when I write something I love not just like.

Three weeks in and even though I’m not where I wanted to be or using the tools I set up every day I still feel pretty good about this. I’m happy I did this. That might change mid-April when the last of my sanity runs but we’ll see. Let me know below if any of you are participating in this challenge and if so, how’s your writing doing?