Look at that, it’s an actual #onemillionword update posted on Friday and everything.

We are now at the end of week 8 which almost lines up with the end of February. A month that I am all too happy to say a proper farewell to. Over here in New England we’ve seen a lot of cold temps and a lot of snow which usually I’m fine with when I can also leave the house. This year with the quarantining, I don’t get any vitamin D during the week and I can’t wait for spring because of that. The ever so slightly warmer days that are slowly passing by have given me a little extra pep in my step in most aspects of my life. For one, I’ve already started our spring cleaning. The amount of tumbleweeds made out of cat hair my two make in a week is astounding.

Now, between the spurts of cleaning and trying to hit my word goal I’ve neglected a big part of my life; reading and video games. My husband and I haven’t been able to play WoW at all this winter which is when we usually hunker down for some good ol’ fashion raiding. This is because of my work and his plus homework. It’s been a busy pandemic.

As of right now, I am in the middle of four different books and three different video games with no progress made in any of them for weeks. What I’m getting at here is, I am horrible at the whole work/life balance thing. It’s not a horrible shock since I’ve been like this my whole life. Just comes with the territory of being ADHD. Though it did take me two months into the year to realize it too.

So the problem has been identified, now I need to fix it as much as I can. First, as of next week, I’ll be seeing an ADHD specialist which is great. I work best with structure and accountability. Regular check-ins to keep meds going does exactly that. Just being accountable to my husband doesn’t cut it, no matter how much he tries to be the hardass in the relationship.

From there I plan to try and write 6,000 words a day but only Monday through Thursday. Friday the goal is 4,000 words. Saturday and Sunday the goal is 500 words. Dividing it up like this should allow me to catch up as well as relax, regularly. If done correctly, I should have 29k new words a week which is 7k more than what I’d need just to stay afloat.

Some might ask, why write at all on the weekends? Shouldn’t I use those two days for a real day of relaxation? Especially since my husband works a regular 9-5. It’d give us more time to just hang out with each other. I’d 100% agree if I didn’t use a website called 4thewords.com to write and I have to keep my streak going. If you don’t know what 4thewords is, I’ll explain it below.

4thewords.com is a website that is an infusion of a word processor and a flash video game. You start at level one with a basic avatar and level up by completing quests and ‘fighting’ monsters as you go. It has all the usual trappings of a fantasy video game so you may ask, where does the whole writing thing come into play? Well, to fight the monsters you have to beat them with word counts. Right now, I’m fighting a monster called a Nitana. Sort of looks like a toucan. To defeat the Nitana, I have to write 700 words in 130 minutes. How am I doing right now in this battle? I’m just under the two-hour mark and have written 289 words. Some battles are a lot tighter. For example, there’s an Assassin that you have to defeat by writing 1,400 words in 130 minutes. The largest monster I’ve encountered so far needs 2k words to defeat it.

There are probably bigger monsters in the newer areas but I haven’t done any quests there yet even though I’ve had those areas opened for months. The reason for this is because I’m a completist. I’ve slowly been going through and finishing up all the quests in the first 4 areas before moving on. Granted, right now I’m stuck in the desert area since I used up my last 20 coins to travel. I could wait ten minutes to slow travel for free but who has patience like that?

In addition to just writing, you can dress up your avatar in two different ways; aesthetic and battle gear. I used to raid ICC three times a week during the Lich King expansion so I am a huge fan of gear grinding. Feels nostalgic since no raid has lived up to ICC yet. Sorry, Blizzard. All battle gear has at least one of three stats; attack, defense, and luck. Attack gives you extra words. Having a +10 in attack will get you 1 extra word for every 10 you write. This lets you whittle away the monster’s health faster. Attack is a great stat to build up when going against the 2k monsters. Defense gives you more time. Not too sure about the ratio but with my attention span, more time is always good. Lastly, there’s Luck. Luck affects what items will drop when you defeat the monster. The higher your Luck means the more likely the monsters will drop rare items.

There’s even crafting and some great lore to round this all out. Not to mention the art is cute and well done. They’ve even introduced reaction emojis for the forums that use the same art style the monsters and world are in.

This all sounds wonderful, right? There is a catch. As you’ve probably guessed, it costs money. The good thing though it’s not that expensive, only $4 a month or less if you buy the crystals needed to get the subscription in bulk. It takes 44 crystals to buy one month. The largest bundle they offer is 2250 for $150. That makes it about .06 a crystal instead of the normal .09 cents. If you don’t have the money all the time, there are two ways to get a month or two free. One, they have a pool you can opt into that helps those without the means get subscription time donated to them. The other way is that there are quests that give you crystals. If you are smart and don’t spend them on some of the aesthetic items you can save those up easily to use on months that you don’t have the money.

Don’t be like me and waste them on boots and a kickass top the first minute of playing.

If you are at all interested in trying 4thewords, I’d really recommend it. They have a free trial is 30 days and allows you complete access to the game. If you decide not to pay after that then you can still access your work, you just can’t add or edit it on the site. You can copy and paste to another word processor.

Also, if you use my referral, we both get cool stuff; VNMLP95872.

Until I can find a better balance between work and play, this will probably be my only video gaming for the time for a little while.