Ok so since I last rambled (Day 17) I have taken six zero days. I felt really unwell this past week which sucked.

Anyway last I talked Gentlemen of Blood I speculated that it would be approximately 20-25k. In the end it was around 33k but hey that still wasn’t the 50k I’d cynically thought it could be when I first started writing.

I finished it today! 🙂 🙂 and so I’m ¾ on finishing the WIPs I picked out for this month. It was always incredibly ambitious listing those four projects and I knew it was unrealistic that I would finish all of them. I’m a bit bummed that I only have tomorrow, this month, to work on my novel but that’s because of the zero days. If I hadn’t felt so unwell this past week I’d have finished Gentlemen of Blood last week as planned and had a whole week on my novel. Alas…

So what are my upcoming plans? Well I now have three completed Sanctuary fics (Life Without Purpose, The Tragic Tail and Gentlemen of Blood). Life Without Purpose is a short 2k job that I can post whenever, the other two are multi-chapter fics and still need graphics. With The Librarians prompt month I posted a fair bit this month so I think I’ll wait until next Friday before I start posting. I probably have enough chapters across the stories to post every Tuesday and Friday for all of August.

That leaves me time to write something else! My first priority is completing my languishing novel as that’s the WIP I didn’t complete this month. After that I have two Sanctuary fics on the list: Time Will Tell (soulmate AU) and Shadow Play(season 4 colouring between the lines). I’m currently thinking once I’ve finished the novel I’ll write Time Will Tell next as that’s what I’m most interested in. At the same time I can plan my next novel. I have August, September and October to finish my current novel, plan the next one, and write fic because come November I’ll be doing a new novel for NaNo.

I also want to finish the languishing gifset. You know the artistic one that’s a complete love letter to my OT3 and taking forever. Plus I have a list of 50+ other gifsets I could do. I signed up for a drawing course I’ve not started. I made it a goal to do a drawing a month and haven’t done one since March. So yeah I’d say I can fill the next three months pretty easily.

I’m 273 words off having written 300k this year. That’s a little ahead of pace for 500k and I’ve decided that’s what I’m going to aim for. If I keep on current pace that should be easily doable. Which means I think I’m at least one project short to add up for another 200k, I’ll have to think on it hehe.

Words Written (this month): 54,593
Final Total (for Gentlemen of Blood): 33,326 (well pre-proofing anyway)

So I really didn’t want to write today. It was one of those days when I could very easily have said ‘screw it’ and taken a zero. I think my brain was rebelling because I just wrote 15k in the last 4 days, and finished a story.

Buuuuuut it was 5k weekend so thankfully that was all the incentive I needed to get down another 2.6k. The Five just had their fight with Worth, literally just ended, and so I need to wrap up the scene and deal with the immediate aftermath. Then we’re into ‘feelings’ territory as Worth’s rage and split personality start James thinking…

It’s still 5k weekend tomorrow so I need to do another 2.5k+ to win. Which is making it look really good for finishing this story hopefully by the middle of next week.

Tomorrow I’m dropping the whole of and the Sins of Atlantis on AO3. I’ve had a couple of really nice comments on my teasers, and I’m so grateful, but also a little concerned that the actual fic may be a disappointment. It’s going to be niche. I mean it’s a crossover fic to start with, and then there’s the rare ship (my beloved OT3) AND even worse a separate OC pairing. I tried to resist, because I know OC’s are pretty hated but I just couldn’t, I had headcanons.

So yeah #1 mission tomorrow is not getting distracted wondering if people hate it. Just post it and then go back to writing the next fic. Famous last words.

Words Written (this month): 39,562
Current Total (for Gentlemen of Blood): 18,282

FINISHED!!!

Yes that is right and the Sins of Atlantis is now finally finished. I’m still in that “OMG I can’t believe I reached the end” state because really it’s been a journey. It’s even longer than I anticipated and I had cynically thought it might reach 50k. Whenever I start a long fic, that’s never my intention. However, estimating story length is a bit like “how long is a piece of string?” it’s just however long it turns out.

I haven’t broken it into chapters yet. Proofing it and breaking it into chapters is a tomorrow job. Also I will be picking Gentlemen of Blood back up as it’s 5k weekend on WriYe so no rest for the wicked, I need to keep typing!

Words Written (this month): 36,949
Final Total (for and the Sins of Atlantis): 58,561 (well pre-proofing anyway)

I made a big push with Gentlemen of Blood at the end of June, as I was writing this fic for the WriYe challenge. So if all goes well I might finish this one early next week. I had cynically thought this might also be a 50k job but I’m now thinking more 20-25k. That leaves the rest of the month to go back and crack on with my original novel that has been languishing since May.

I said that July was going to be the month of finishing things, and thus far I’m 2/4 on the list I made. For once I’m actually doing as intended. Long may it continue!

Current Total (for Gentlemen of Blood): 15,667

In which you can tell I’m firmly into the endgame as my “words per day” are getting pretty damn high. When I start to get to the end of a story, suddenly it’s all downhill in this sort of mad blitz to the finish line.

I have 3-4 scenes left of and the Sins of Atlantis to write, we’re firmly in wrap-up territory. We’re back in the real world. Everyone was returned to their proper place in time, the records match what they remember, the apocalypse remains cancelled (Apep and the ultimate battle is firmly in the rear view despite the danger of meddling in the time of prophecy). So no worries.

Except poor Jenkins. He’s rather subdued right now and currently contemplating leaving the annex 🙁

I may finish tomorrow, although Friday is more likely. Either way I’m surpassing my estimation of Sunday. Yay for downhill blitz haha.

Once it’s done I will need to do a complete readthrough and maybe a light bit of revision. I’ve gone back a few times and adjusted some stuff when I thought of it, and I need to make sure everything tracks. I’ll also need to split it into chapters. Last month I joked saying that I was covering 11 of the prompts, and my brain really didn’t need to take that as a challenge for needing 11 chapters BUT based on the figures there may well be more than 11 chapters /facepalm

Anyway I’m going to easily make the “on or before July 31st deadline” 🙂

Words Written (this month): 30,317
Current Total (for and the Sins of Atlantis): 51,929

So work continues on and the Sins of Atlantis. I realised today that I dropped the ball on a plot point, so I need to go back and weave it into a number of scenes. This is why I like what I do now, with writing it completely before I post, it means I can go back and revise when I realise oops something would be better changed.

Anyway, we’re battling the Lake and about to conduct the ritual to retake the library. Battle scenes are hard, I hope I’m managing it ok. We haven’t really seen magic used offensively in the show. We did have Jenkins talk about it a bit and say that it wasn’t like in books, it took hours/a day? to be able to conjure a fireball. So I’m mostly leaning on artifacts.

I’m not thrilled that somehow it’s already the 12th and I’m still not done. I have 2 other WIPs that I had on my list to finish this month. Although admittedly when I ran the numbers, that was incredibly unlikely, but still I dream.

Words Written (this month): 21,803
Current Total (for and the Sins of Atlantis): 43,426