My goal for this month is to get the little bit of game that I wrote over the last months finally up in the workshop 
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The months go by so fast. Itās like yesterday was November.
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Good job, everybody!
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Thanks! I love this thread. Even during my quiet days, I still pop on and read these messages, even if I donāt have time to respond to them.
Iām calling January a success: January 2021's Writer Support Thread - #122 by Lucid
I remember writing that January goal and breaking it down because I thought it might take longer than I had hoped. It sure did. 
February is going to be very difficult for me. I have a VERY busy schedule for the next 2.5 months. But, Iām still hoping to make some gains.
February Goals:
- Finish my first playthru, again, again, and again. I have a very mangled saved game, so I canāt trust the stats (it crashed and continued so many times!) but I can still use it to see at least 3 more endings. I also need to flesh out one of the endings I did reach. (I already enhanced the others.) This feels a lot like a completion (or addition) to my January goals. I think itās worthy of itās own goal in February because I didnāt think about the fact that Iād be checking 6 endings (maybe more, weāll see!), since the old goal was just to finish once.
- Do a second playthru. Make a new character and explore/test an entirely different different set of branches. I know that the first playthru is always the longest, so a second should be MUCH faster.
- Do a third playthru. Early January, I thought that this was an easy goal, having multiple playthrus completed, but that first playthru took a lot of time. Fixing those errors should make subsequent playthrus much easier/faster.
But, as I mentioned above, February is going to be a busy month. If I can complete the second playthru (and all it entails) Iāll be very happy. If I suddenly find more time, Iāll just keep plugging away with more Alpha Testing.
I think I might share my playthus over here: Life of a Space Force Captain - #70 by Lucid
This hectic schedule goes for 2.5 months, but the 2.5 months after that should be much better. And the 2 months after that (summer break!) is best of all.
Enough procrastination and rambling, back to work! Good luck everyone.
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Iām really excited that itās February and snowing. Something about the weather just makes me want to curl up with a good book and a cup of coffee. Too bad I need to write the good book first.
- I want to finish the third chapter of my WiP. I donāt think itāll be too difficult, because itās shorter than the last one and I really want to write this one. The reader finally gets to figure out why A, M, and K have to be who they are. Also the reader gets to figure out so many fun plot points that I had to push back because chapter two got large.
- I also need to go back through and make sure that the point of views are fixed (I have to do this multiple times because I always miss something) and recheck for any typos or bugs that people have pointed out.
- I really want to figure out my stats, because when the names get complicated, I get confused. Iām hoping that this chapter might help me do that because itās the one most like the rest of the story.
- Not in relation to Interactive Fiction, I also really want to write chapter seven of my novel-novel. I got a little into writing it last month, but since IF and regular books are such different beasts, I think I might need to take a week or something off IF to write the novel and vice versa. Maybe once I finish chapter three, before I go back and do my edits and revisions.
This got long, but goals are my favourite things in the world, and I do have some time now, so I do think these are all achievable (except maybe the last one). As always, best of luck to everyone else!
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February goals:
- Write something. Anything.
Just started a new job, so I think a low goal is justified this month. Not that I did better last month, with for as far as I can remember only two writing sessions.
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Congrats on the new job! Stay safe! Good luck on your goal!
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Iāve been pretty swamped with various things lately (work and school mostly), so my goal is a bit smaller this month. I just want to write 10k words. Nothing crazy.
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I am too depressed to write again I did the ridicule big deal in the last contest. To much that the idea to write again hurts. I just hope that the feeling will go away. Last time I had that feeling I was Years without being able to write.
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I share your feelings, my friendā¦ I share your feelingsā¦
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Totally dropped the ball on my goal to write stuff back in August(?) but here I am looking to make a come back. I like @AChubbyBlackCatās goal of two sentences a day. Iām working two jobs right now pulling like 11 hour days plus a commissioned coding project from a startup so my time is super limited but at this point I just need to get in the habit of writing so I can get something done.
Good luck to everyone here!
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@WallyWorld I know what that feels like. Sometimes itās good just to keep the project alive, make notes and chip away at it.
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Although Iām new to the forums, Iāve been a longtime reader of CoG - but recently, Iāve been thinking of penning a WIP of my own. Just so I wonāt be tempted to procrastinate:
My stretch goal for this month is to write 50% of the prologue. And figure out CSIDE.
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It is a worthy goal, I recommend you ask on the forum about your doubts
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Thank you! Iāve been peeking at othersā codes and it too has been a great help.
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Good luck to all you writers. Hope you continue to stay safe and happy.
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Iām mostly setting other general lifestyle/productivity goals to get my life together this February, so for the moment my February writing goals is basically to just think about my story every day, read other WIPs and stories to see what other people are doing and liking about IF, and maybe write a couple side stories/scenes just to practice some stuff that Iām not very strong with. Maybe a little unambitious of me, but I think Iām starting to get a little too tunnel-visioned with my story and want to break out of that.
Good luck and well wishes to everyone this month! Looking forward to what progress we make.
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I really want to write another chapter of my WIPā¦ but so far itās been a week since I started it and I only have a couple of hundred wordsā¦ so I donāt have high hopes. Hopefully I can put out a good partial chapter, if nothing else.
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Itās the 5th of February (barely) and I am doing my first active work on the game this month. So a little slower starting than I had hoped.
Iām still building my core mechanics for the game, as the story is going to slot into these. The problem I keep encountering is that certain aspects of the game either make no sense, or have no real meaning or impact - so I spend some time in my head thinking it all through and inevitably decide to just axe the entire mechanic. I have gone from ~20 customisation options to 6. Iām fairly sure itās making the game better, but is certainly to make it simpler to design, code and write!
Fortunately I gave myself the whole month to get the WiP out, so Iām still on course!
Edit: Spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to elegantly calculate the cost of the player undertaking a certain game mechanic and present that cost to the player - where the cost could change on the fly, making it incredibly complicated to present the information neatly.
Solution? Just remove the cost element of that mechanic! I already have an āeffort requiredā component which I can use to tune the difficulty of the mechanic.
Snip snip snip.
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Sounds familiar!
I had a lot more mechanics in my game that didnāt make a whole lot of sense in hindsight. Sure they sounded cool at the time, but when the author canāt even justify a mechanic, much less remember how it was supposed to be implemented, maybe itās time for it to go into the retired pile.
Also Iām probably a minority but seeing ~20 customization options is definitely not a bonus. Itās just 20 more choices that are pulling me away from the main story.
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