The Plot Bunny Farm

Alltoseek’s visit got me on a swimming kick that lasted until I got sick on July 29. I went swimming for 30-45 minutes twenty-five times in July. I even got back to lifting weights, going three times before I got sick. I expect I will return to exercising once I feel fully recovered. Especially when this unseasonable cool period ends. (It hasn’t been cold here, but it’s been in the high-60s and 70s for the last two days, which is perfectly comfortable walking weather and therefore not making me yearn to be immersed in a swimming pool.)

Not paying much attention to diet, so it’s been mediocre.

Dailies

I started tracking these again but I still wasn’t doing much creative in July. I worked on drawings 8 times, writing The Dragon’s Secret 4 times, and editing 9 times. Tracking fell apart after I got sick.

Writing

I made a thousand words of notes for The Dragon’s Secret, about the next scene. I am not enthusiastic about this scene. Perhaps I should skip it, or make a placeholder for it and come back to it. 

The Business of Writing

A Wolf-Shiter’s Pack (fka Be That Way) is at 73% edited. I have three remaining editing points before the final read-through. I made a few notes on how to address those last editing points. If I can knock those out, the final read-through is straightforward. It’s much harder to motivate myself to work on “read through the text and fix errors and poor word choices” than “figure out a solution for this issue.” It’s not even that they’re hard issues or plot holes. It’s just coming up with ideas for an interesting new scene that will [establish thing]. For some reason this feels so much harder when I have to do after writing the book than if I do it while writing the outline.

Although I’ve been stuck on The Dragon’s Secret for a while so maybe planning is just too hard for me now in general.

Art

My eight times of ticking off drawing resulted in three portraits of characters from the Villainess soloRPG I started back in March. I also re-started writing it since I was drawing for it anyway.

Reading

I did a lot of reading this month, mostly unfinished manwha. I also listened to Lady Susan, an early epistolary novella by Jane Austen; I’ve read it before but remembered it so poorly that I’d forgotten how much of it was not letters from or to the title character. The LibriVox dramatic reading of this was excellent. And I listened to Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte; some aspects of the story were overstated, but overall I enjoyed this book and am glad to have read it. I started with a collaborative recording on LibriVox and liked the first narrator, Melissa. The next two narrators I was less impressed by, so I switched to the dramatic reading, which was well done.

And I listened to two Brandon Sanderson novels, Tress and the Emerald Sea, and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. I enjoyed both of them: YA fantasy novels with strong romantic elements. Sanderson normally does a great job writing climaxes and bringing all the elements of the story together, so I was surprised at an aspect of Yumi that left me saying “that? Really? That’s what you’re going with here?” It didn’t ruin the story for me, just startled me.

Social

I made it out to see Sophrani, Kage, and Envoy twice in July! It was nice to visit my friends again. I cancelled once because K was visiting, and again this week because I was sick (though that was in August), but I plan to see them again this weekend. Yay friend-time!

Goal Scorecard

• Provide care for parents: Done!
• Pay July bills: Done!
• Make podiatry appointment for Dad: oh I forgot this was on here
• Find out what I need to do to register car in new state: and this too

I had only four items and somehow I managed to drop the ball on two of them. o_o It was not a good month.

Stretch goals:

• Exercise 15+ times: I did a stretch goal!
• Play more of romance soloRPG: technically!
• Track what I read: my tracker didn’t have the read dates for Tress so I’ve guessed at them now, but eh, good enough.
• Do some art: another technically!
• Visit friends: twice!

August Goals

• Provide care for parents
• Pay August bills
• Decide what I’m doing with those last three editing points on A Wolf-Shifter’s Pack 
• Look at this list a few times during the month so that I actually do the next two
• Find out what I need to do to register car in new state
• Make podiatry appointment for Dad

• Do something about the next scene of A Dragon's Secrets (write it, or skip it, or phone it in, or whatever else gets me to writing a different scene)
• Finalize whatever I'm gonna call the Untitled Polyam Lesbian Romantasy
• Start final read through on Untitled Polyam Lesbian Romantasy
• Work on outline for some new project
• Play more of romance soloRPG
• Exercise 15+ times (organizing stuff/cleaning counts as exercise)
• Track what I read
• Keep up on my Dreamwidth feed
• Ask Bookbub for a Featured Deal and run another ad campaign for a book
• Get backmatter updated for whatever book I promote
• Pick an old picture to redraw
• Do some art
• Register car
• Visit friends