I was excited to continue writing my wip
Only to open the choicescript IDE and see a large part of chapter one showing weird symbolsā¦ Encoding errors or so
So I guess all the edits I made recently were lost
I have a backup but not quite recent
But Iāll still do what I can
For now Iām still practicing visual arts 
I hate when tech buggers out. Iām sorry that happened 
Thanks
At least I can think about the plot a bit more 
My goals for July are pretty simple. Write at least one scene a day and release one update a week for my current WIP. Iām so happy that people seem to like what Iāve written so far!
Well my June plans didnāt work out, and I quit my job to apply for a better job soā¦ Oops? Yay? Definitely yay. I love my new bosses and coworkers.
My goals for this month is to work on the new book, Ground Zero: The Beginning.
So far we got 5k words, and Iām hoping to bump that up to around 20-40k so I can comfortably publish a first demo. So far Iām stuck in the middle of character creation, but those get done fast.
I have a real good feeling about July my dudes. Hereās to all of us meeting our goals!
When I started posting on the forums in May, I never could have expected that my life would become 10x more chaotic and stressful than it already was. 
I decided to start simple with the goal of doing something for my project every day, no matter how small. I didnāt realize that my anxiety was slowly building up and becoming worse every day that I did that until I was too overwhelmed to continue at that pace. Turns out that Iāve been completely unaware of 90% of the thoughts that run through my head (or possibly more that Iāve opted to ignore them for so long that I learned to not acknowledge them) and that I was building up my anxiety the more I pushed myself to do stuff since I wasnāt dealing with any of the negative emotions.
Unfortunately, I realized this a bit too late and now I sit on the verge of a panic attack every time I think about writing. Luckily, I found a therapist and am working through the anxiety with them now. I still want to make a goal or two for this month though, so here I am. 
Hereās to hoping for a happy, productive month for everyone. 
Happy July everyone! I am a July baby, so thanks for the birthday wishes! 
I finally finished my study year, so now I can focus on writing!
My goals are:
Good luck everyone! 
I usually check out the support threads and have a read through, but it tends to be about halfway through the month, and I donāt feel right to jump aboard at that stage. But finally I remember to come in at the start (ish) of the month!
My goals for July are:
Good luck everyone!
First time setting my goals here!
)May all your writing be fun and breezy! 
Edit: If anyone sees this and would like to help shape/edit/read a new-adult romance murder mystery novel set in the late 1800s, please send me a message!
My Goals for the month basically amount to working on chapter 5 - determine if the āOptimus Prime lore bombā is necessary for both the chapter and the story at large (although Extinctionās words in chapter 3 leave an impact on the Autobot cast, especially Prime, simply because he recognises Optimus. Case in point: āITāS BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE WE LAST FOUGHT, HASNāT IT OPTIMUS.ā although the words where began, almost friendly, they where spoken in a tone that was drenched in hated and rage - a lose snippet of Extinctionās recognition of Optimus prime.)
And if I do go with the lore bomb I need to do it properly! Iāve got a bit to think about, and a bit to write too.
If I get bored with working on chapter 5 I could go back to chapter 1 and work on Extinctionās revised description (and look up may different synonyms for the words massive/huge while Iām at it) or work on chapter 3. Yeah, that one is still incomplete.
At least Iām mostly happy with the climax of that chapter nowā¦
My overall goal for this month is to complete Scene Two out of Three in Chapter 2 of my book and publish the demo of that with the save state feature implemented in dashingdon. Lots of mental health stuff this past month that is still going on, so I canāt wait to get to Chapter 3 of my book to help expend some of that from my head.
Iām very sorry to hear that @Persephonified
Just remember that having fun is the most important thing here and it shouldnāt give you anxiety, and i hope you will enjoy writing again and make great stories for yourself.
Iām glad you found a therapist that can help though, and i hope things will get better for you soon. Wish you luck!
Congratulations @will on the release of his Hosted Game:
Romance immortal beings in a world of epic fantasy! Fall in love with witches, princes, dragons, and more in a millennia-spanning search for eternal companionship. Immortality is a life of sex, violence, and tough moral questions. Burn castles, write poetry, seduce mortals, stop wars, unlock dark powers ā you have all the time in the world to do as you please.
I edited the first post to reflect this accomplishment for July as well.
I just finished a course on creative writing thatās been very helpful. Outline has been completely redone with more fleshed-out details and characters more rounded out. Still a lot to work out for the characters though, figuring out how to give sympathetic characters their happy (or at least satisfying or fair) endings, just from the sheer volume of major characters.
My goal now is to finish my chapter 2 then go on to the next chapter where youāll actually be doing stuff. A full rewrite, new characters, scenes shuffled, scrapped, and completely new stuff. Character introductions moved around in the outline too since Iām introducing too many, too fast. I wonder if itās any good since my thread is real quiet, but it is a slow start to the story so far. Not much action yet, and there wonāt be anything too serious until Part 2 (out of 4 or 5 - still havenāt decided whether to split that long one or not).
June has been terrible for me when it comes to the amount of time dedicated to my IF, I havenāt been able to complete my June goals and wrote a mere 5k words. Butā¦
I wrote 5k words My July goal will thus be to finish the Tuesday storyline. I have the whole structure/framework in place, but I need to finish writing it.
I see some people are saying that they want to get a demo out with just a chapter or a prologue. Although a couple of months ago, I was advised by @Eiwynn to consider writing more, I posted my demo with 25k words which was the prologue and chapter 1. It was great to get some feedback from people and hear that people like the style, however, some of the feedback would be addressed in a part that was yet to be written and this made me realise I was too quick in posting it. I am a slow writer as I have a full time writing job and feel I should do something besides sitting behind my computer, but in hindsight I should have gotten much more of my IF ready before posting any of it. It might work for other people to have more regular updates to keep momentum going, for me this becomes pressure to have to get an update out regularly, which I cannot do especially not now I am focusing on writing the endings first.
Just a bit of advice for people looking to post just a prologue - however exciting it might be to get your story out, it might be a good idea to consider taking some time to write more first. And I needed to tell @Eiwynn she was right. 
@lisamarlin ā It seems we had similar Juneās in terms of writing. Let us both hope for a more productive July.
Making a WiP and getting actionable feedback is not as easy as it may seem at first blush. Not even mentioning the anxiety of putting your writing out for the community to read, communicating to them your feedback needs is a skill that more should be taught.
I suggest everyone read the official CoG beta calls, and perhaps one or two experienced Hosted Games authorsā threads to see how this communication is done and then mimicking them for your own threads.
Here is a recent beta call:
Here is an experienced Hosted Game author that does a great job at communicating:
Finally, here is a WiP author that has done very well in running his feedback thread:
One thing each of these feedback directions do is explicitly say what they are looking for in feedback. You have to spell this out for testers because they do not read minds and most are not experienced enough to know already what is āactionableā and what is ānot actionableā.
Thank you to Abby, Cataphrak, and Parivir for providing clearr instructions on feedback that testers should be able to follow.
There are a ton of āfeedbackā related threads on the forum, so if you want more in depth discussion on the topic, I suggest using the search feature and looking into them.
First time here! My writing goals for July:
Going to be away for some of the month but I figure I can try and finally set aside an hour or more a day for consistency. Key word being try. 
My goal for July will be to write an average of 2000 words a week.
Iām hoping that this āweeklyā goal will ease some of the pressure of having to write every day; a difficult task, given that the only time I have to write is after workā¦ but post-work me just wants to crawl into bed and sleep 
thinking of writing when Iām in that phase can turn it into an awful chore. Which is bad. Been through that once, and it took all the joy out of writing.
I also realize that itās so important - and so difficult too - to be able to be in that āzoneā when your mind is free enough to ease itself into the world of your WIPā¦ without your brain curling its fingers around your pencil and whispering, āyou have yet to do the laundry.ā
So, maybe on work days when Iām unable to really be in that āzone,ā, Iāll write less than 10 words. But Iām hoping to make to make up for that shortfall on my off days, when Iāve more time to write 
After some internal debate, I decided to put my current WIP on hold. I have major university entrance exams next March and I need to catch up in my studies for it. The WIP I was writing was too large for me to work on while maintaining my discipline for studying, and it results in a half-baked attempt at storytelling.
This story means a lot to me and I want to give it the best effort that I can, which is not very doable in the position that Iām in right now. I plan to come back to it right after I finish my exams, fully prepared to give it the love and attention that it deserves.
That doesnāt mean that Iāll stop writing, though. Iāve already outlined a short story which Iām thinking of pursuing, but for now Iāll just enjoy the process of writing without worrying about whether or not Iām really doing the best that I can or if I should be studying right now.
So, that knocks off the first and third goal off from my first post for this month. I still want to keep up writing 500 words for most of the week, since I donāt want my writing to go rusty again.
This is probably true, but for me my main problem has been that I have not written an substantial amount even though it hit 25k words.
Iāve found that the testers canāt see which direction I am headed, and so it is virtually impossible for them to give constructive feedback for this reason. Someone even suggested something I had already planned so it would have been better to show that already. I am now waiting untill I have well over half the book done including the ending scenes and secondary storyline before posting. Lesson learned.
Hereās to a more productive July for both of us! And actually everyone here