I’ve been avoiding writing one of these posts because I live in fear of publicly setting goals and then failing them. I mean I’m also scared of privately setting goals and then failing them, but at least then nobody else knows about it. However, something @worryinglyinnocent said in their post made me think, they said “It’ll be interesting coming back to this next January and seeing how well I did/didn’t do…”
Accountability is something that I believe in. The only reason why I manage to do anything is because I set deadlines, and schedules and endless to do lists. If I don’t set a target, then I can’t hit it and I just procrastinate for forever. Every month I’ve been saying what I did last month, and then saying my plans for the next month. Sometimes I’ve met the targets, sometimes I haven’t. Well, if I can do that, then I can do a tentative outline for the year. So here goes:
Under the cut because I ramble and nobody needs that on their dash 🙂
1) Finish my WIPs
I have five of them now and I am absolutely rubbish at guesstimating length. That being said I’ll try …
– Fall All Over Again has 2-3 more chapters.
– Counting Stars again 2-3 more chapters.
– I Love the Way gets longer every time I post as I get more prompts, so feels like it could go on for forever, but let’s say rough estimate 3 more chapters.
– Under My Skin has only just started but I’m going to say 4 more chapters.
– Painting Layers of Love oh sweet merlin, it’s not even half done I don’t think. I don’t know if I dare guess. Maybe 8 more chapters, quite possibly more. I’m not going to artificially limit it, it’ll be as long as it takes to do it right.
So when is all this going to happen? Well Painting Layers of Love and Fall All Over Again chapters average at 4.5k each. The other three WIP’s have slightly shorter chapters at an average of 3.5k each. So excluding PLL because it’s so much longer, to finish the other 4 WIP’s if I’m right on my chapter guesses, I need to write 48.5k. Now I average 60k a month but I don’t just write rumbelle fanfic, I write other stuff as well.
So let’s be vaguely realistic here and say that I’ll write about 30k of fanfic per month. That means I can finish all the WIP’s except PLL (which will be updated a few times) by the end of February. Not fantastic, as that is basically the entire hiatus, and it doesn’t take into account Monthly Rumbelling fics, other events, or anything else I might feel like writing but unfortunately that’s reality. I will just have to do my best.
TLDR: I will finish all WIP’s except for Painting Layers of Love by the end of February. I wish I could say the same for PLL because it’s my most popular fic and I feel like I should probably work on nothing else but that, but it’s so much longer and I just can’t. I’m sorry, I will update it as often as I can.
2) Clear the list of ‘promised fic’
I never forget fic I promised, it just sometimes takes me a lot longer than it should. So on the list I have:
– Untitled: GoldenLace Bonnie and Clyde (should have been December’s Monthly Rumbelling, but it got very long)
– All I Needed (this is my pure prompt verse and I have half a dozen outstanding prompts I need to fill)
– Untitled: Rushacy University (student/teacher oneshot)
– Untitled: Renaissance Faire (from a prompt pic, oneshot)
– Untitled: Lachacy (January Monthly Rumbelling, I don’t know if this will be on time either but I’ll try)
When are these going to happen? Well the prompts for All I Needed aren’t going to be huge chapters, just a few hundred words/a thousand or so at a time, so I can do those when I need something quick to write. Everything else? As and when I can I guess. I would like to finish the Lachacy this month to post on time for the Monthly Rumbelling event, but it’ll depend on how long it gets. Fics seem to be getting away from me lately.
3) New WIP’s
I need to clear the decks before I start anything new. I remember when I thought having two WIP’s was crazy, and now I have 5. I have an idea list, full of ideas that I love but there are three which are top of the list:
– Nightwalkers, which I’ve been promising since June. Basically murder in Storybrooke, Belle and Gold go undercover, fake dating, bedsharing all that good stuff. I did start writing this and I have a couple of chapters but I think they suck so I might throw them out and start again.
– Ripple Effect, Rushbelle fic verse. I have already written one oneshot in this verse, and I have another planned separate from the main WIP which takes place on Destiny (the fic starting where SGU began at Icarus). I feel so guilty about this one because when I posted the idea, someone commented “oh I’ll keep a look out and see if you actually do write it” and my immediate response was “I’ll show them, I’ll write it!” and it’s still not happened /facepalm – it will though, I promise!
– Rule Number Three (I should really stop calling it that), it’s my Enchanted Forest Rumbelle/Swanfire AU which the wish!Realm made me want to write even more. I had hoped to do this in the hiatus but I think I’ve already bitten off more than I can chew with my current WIPs.
When are these going to happen? I would love to say NOW because you know, I just want to write all the things, but for some reason writing takes a lot of time. If I’m thinking logically and realistically I’m not going to finish my WIP’s until the end of February if I’m lucky. Starting anything new before then would be stupid, but that won’t stop me from trying to do oneshots/Monthly Rumbelling etc. so my writing schedule is already jam-packed.
Realistically, as much as I would like to say different, there isn’t going to be progress on these new WIP’s until March at the earliest. Which one will I do first? I don’t know. I suppose it’ll be whatever I feel like, or maybe I will go crazy again and do them all at once. I don’t want to do that because I would like to learn a lesson from my current circumstance, and never have this many WIP’s at once again. However, I know me and I know I don’t learn, so it’s entirely possible I will be very stupid in future.
TLDR: No hope for anything until March at the earliest.
4) So Sam, you’ve only got up until March and look at all the rambling!
Yeah well this was part of the reason why I didn’t want to write a post like this. I mean, it is helpful to think that I will be hopefully done with most of the WIP’s in a couple of months because right now it feels like I’ll never finish anything. At the same time I’m kinda disappointed about how long it’ll take to finish them, as I would like to write new shiny things.
Anyway, I’m not actually sure if this is how I’m supposed to do a post like this. I think it’s too rambling and I’m breaking the rules. I don’t know how the year will go, or what idea I’ll get next month which will throw a spanner in the works, or how long my ‘oneshot’ fics will turn out. I don’t know what the events/prompts will do to my carefully planned out schedule. I wish I could be more definitive than I have been but I just don’t know.
I do promise to update something every single Tuesday, I’ve managed that for the past several months and it’s not a posting streak I’m willing to break now. This Tuesday will be Chapter Two of Counting Stars. Ideally I would like to update every Friday as well, and it’ll be regular and you can count on it. I miss the days when I updated The War Within every Tuesday, and Painting Layers of Love every other Friday. I like routine but I have too many WIP’s to have such a simple update schedule now.
2017 will bring a bucketload of fic either way. Oh and best of all, I don’t need to wait until next January to laugh at myself if I screw it up – I’ll know by March haha 🙂
