I’m going light on the goal-setting for the next couple of months, because it’s the busiest time of the year for me – we’re living in a more remote bit of the country, I’m teaching both my sons and doing house work without much in the way of labor-saving devices (while trying to keep out curious mice, snakes, monkeys, and scorpions).
But I’ll keep writing as much as time and energy permits. And from July/August, I’ll be back on all four cylinders.
My primary goal for this month is to stay consistent, writing 1k words a day with the exception of days I need to spend plotting the choice trees. I really want to be able to push Chapter 1 out by the end of the month, but since I’m 15k words in and not even 1/6th of the way through, I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
So, a more reasonable goal is to have that 1k words a day and finish half of Chapter 1 by the end of the month.
Wishing everyone luck in their May goals!
Look on the bright side. “I was fending off a monkey invasion” is a way cooler excuse for not having finished the dishes than I could even dream of having.
My closest mouse encounter so far was when I was washing the dishes, and a mouse that had been sampling the pancake crumbs in the drain ran up my hand. Gak.
As for the monkeys, we’ve armed the Havenpebbles with slingshots and that’s worked so far to keep the rhesus horde at bay.
It was stupid to name a character “Victoria” for this game set in Hong Kong. Because it’s clashing with Victoria Harbour, Victoria Park, and Victoria Peak, all of which I have as background flavor elements. I find-replaced all of them to a new name, but I’m always worried I left some out. Names are tricky!
People use this day to set themselves lofty wordcount goals, but I think I’ll step away from my WIP this month. I know we’re not supposed to care about popularity and stuff, but posting a major update and receiving no replies… does not do wonders for my emotional well-being.
Maybe I’ll write a Hunger Games fanfic. Or re-learn how to code in Twine, that could be fun.
Okay, that does it, I’m never reaching into a kitchen sink again as long as I live. (Please ignore the fact that there has never been any evidence whatsoever of mice in this house and the fact that I am far more grossed out by dirty dishes than mice in the first place.)
HAVENPEBBLES. Love it!
@Omeg, I’m sure this is worth absolute zippity zilch, but although I almost never have time to read forum WIPs, yours would be the first one I went for if I did. I came to Saturnine too late to provide feedback, but even before I finished it I was raving about how great it was. I would bet you the eventual purchase price of Saturnine that after it comes out, you’ll be bombarded with more feedback on your new project than you know what to do with. I believe you could well become known as one of the masters of the art of interactive fiction, one who uses the medium to its fullest potential and teaches the rest of us what’s possible. Please take some time away from your project if you need to, but then please come back and keep writing because the world will be a lesser place if you don’t.
I keep crashing my games because I always confuse @{} with ${}, but your faith in me is appreciated.
Meh, that’s just mechanics. Code can be fixed, but the ability to tell a story that naturally encompasses the broadest range of character builds and outcomes, full of challenging and meaningful choices that use interactivity to explore uncomfortable concepts in ways static fiction can’t, in prose that is by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, and sometimes both at once … that’s rare.
Besides, most Hosted Games authors don’t use multireplace at all, so you’re already swimming with the fat cats, or something.
Well, if it makes it any better your IF is discussed in several IF related discords. It very much could be that your audience is on reddit rather than tumblr/forum and the forum frequently overwhelms people away from posting. So I hope you’ll keep going! I’ll make sure to post feedback as well, I really enjoyed Saturnine.
Hi. Idont have a lot to say. I was depressed , I was really ill. But, here I am again too stubborn to vanish. I am thinking and wondering if people would want a Halloween jam this year. Normally Eiw would be don’t be silly of course you will do Halloween jam everyone wants the event stubborn girl"
Dunno. I always feel like only her appreciated them.
Eiwynn gave so much encouragement to us all. But I know she wasn’t the only one to appreciate your events. Listen to the Eiwynn in your head, and run the jam.
… Is this a common saying? It’s new to me, and it’s delightful.
It’s a bit uncommon nowadays, but it’s a classic. Well, “fat cats” is.
After several updates in a row over several months of Meteoric not getting much feedback or interest, I decided that releasing whole first drafts or maybe half drafts at a time in the future would be better for my productivity and morale. I thought updates would make me inspired and energized but I usually just felt demotivated
Wow! That’s so impressive! And an official rating at that. I am 850 Chess.com lol 
, but well, I have only been in it for about 3 months. How long have you been playing?
I am definitely writing a chess tournament in my IF cause no way zero IFs have this.
Hello, I hope everyone’s writing is progressing well!
I am starting the month a little over a week into my rewrite with 24k words written on the prologue. It looks like [gauging from the likely length of the project] that book on will be over 300k words if things keep heading the direction they have been. Shengzhang has been mostly smooth sailing with the exception of having university final projects due around now, so no time to write yesterday. I am hoping to finish next month with the first two chapters done but honestly if I get one chapter done then I will be a happy camper!
I’ve been doing these little logs since I first started working on this kind of writing, where I track my daily word count. I think it’s fun when in the brainstorming phase where I’m doing a lot of writing but when I’m editing I think a ‘progress bar’ of some kind makes more sense.
I can feel already that there is going to be a bit of a slog in transitioning between the Prologue to Chapter 1. I feel as though Chapters 1-3 are going to be the hardest for me to write since I’m still familiarizing myself with the characters. Wish me luck!!
*comment Prologue_2 Progress: 24/04/2025 - 3800 Words [3600 Words w/o Code]
*comment Prologue_2 Progress: 25/04/2025 - 5500 Words [5150 Words w/o Code]
*comment Prologue_2 Progress: 26/04/2025 - 8100 Words [7550 Words w/o Code]
*comment Prologue 2 Progress: 27/04/2025 - 10150 Words [9500 Words w/o Code]
*comment Prologue_2 Progress: 28/04/2025 - 18000 Words [16700 Words w/o Code]
*comment Prologue_2 Progress: 29/04/2025 - 23300 Words [21150 Words w/o Code]
First of all, I would like to thank @LeannaMandragoran for making this month’s writer’s support thread!
Second: I am happy to report that I schieved my goal last month of adding 30k words to my next chapter. I’m not as far into the material as I wanted to be, but I’m trying to be content with steady progress. I’m just frustrated because personal issues keep staggering my progress, so instead of making good progress everyday, I fluctuate between very large progress and minimal progress.
Lastly, my goals for this month:
Gotta start somewhere. 
My first rating was 701. That’s when I started playing tournaments in 2015. Though I’ve been playing since I was a kid
That would be great. I’m actually planning on writing a horror story where you find a cursed chess book, called 64 Knightmares, but I wanna write it when I’m rated 2200…
No, it’s an Aletheia Knights original, but feel free to borrow it!