April 2020 in Review
April felt like a normal-length month and I'm not sure if that's because it actually was, or if that's because The March Epoch changed my baseline for "normal-length month"
Health/Fitness
In April, I returned to about February's level of eating & exercising: 1820 calories per day consumed, exercise of around 260 calories per day. This is actually the lowest level of exercise since I started tracking via spreadsheet in November. Motivation to go out, stay outside, or even to clean, were all very low.
Weight is about the same, at 168.
Under the circumstances, these numbers are amazing and I'm proud of myself for not spending all day motionless and eating cookies. A++ good job me.
Writing
I actually wrote! Almost every day! Often more than my three-sentence stretch goal! 12,000 words on The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady this month, which is now up to 73,700. Normally, I would not be excited about 12,000 words, but this is more new writing than I have done in the three previous months combined so YAY PERCEPTIBLE PROGRESS.
Everyone I know has been going "well, there's no being productive in a pandemic", but this is the first month I've broken 10,000 words since last November, so I can hardly blame my slump on COVID-19.
The Business of Writing
I finished reading through Spark of Desire. I don't want to make many changes, but there are a few. I need to make a list of changes so I can do them, and then do penultimate read-through. But I'm not in a hurry to do this, since Alinsa is still working on layout for The Twilight Etherium.
Art/Other
Oops. I didn't do this at all. I think I poked a little bit at the Spark cover, but for the most part I would think once or twice on the weekend: "I guess I should do some drawing?" And then I didn't do any drawing.
Gaming
I started "World of Lightness", the romance-themed play-by-post RPG I mentioned early in April. I ended up with four players and it's been moving along. We've been playing the game in Google Docs, which was my preference and has worked pretty well. I wanted to do it in Google Docs because having each complete scene in a single doc makes for a nice, clean archive that's easy to search and it keeps the chronology straight, while still allowing players the option of continuing to write in early parts of the continuity. For example, if player A doesn't want to play out what their PC is doing in the afternoon and wants to skip to evening plans, and player B wants to keep writing out the afternoon, I don't have to tell either player to "wait" or "hurry up". I can just start writing the evening scene with A while I continue to write the afternoon scene with B, and it's easy to tell which is which because they're at different points in the doc, or in different docs. And B can be present in both scenes because this is a romance-themed game and nothing is going to happen in the afternoon that will dramatically impact the evening.
I've been using my portion of the writing for it to play 4thewords.com, so I have an approximate word count for just what I've written: 25,000 words.
Writing for a play-by-post game, for me, involves a lot more exploratory writing than writing a book. I need to write more, both because the players need to have enough information to make their characters act consistently in the story world (which is much more information than readers of a novel need or want), and also because we are figuring out What Happens Next as a team. It's a romance game, so the players need lots of opportunities to meet and interact with potential love interests so they can decide who they're interested in. And I spend a fair amount of time having NPCs respond to things that PCs say and do, purely for conversational purposes -- it's not about the plot, it's about being in an immersive, interactive setting where what the PCs do matters.
Running the game is great fun, and I'm glad I decided to do it. I have such a hard time with "but what do I SAY" that I don't chat much online these days, and World of Lightness gives me an excuse to write a bunch of stuff interacting with other people, and that is nice. Also, my players are all great. So much <3
I have cut back on other games; I stopped maxing out my Pokemon GO battles every day, for instance.
Goal Scorecard
Help Lut: done!
Maintained minimum functions: No starvation! Did not quit my day job! Goal achieved!
Stretch goals:
Weekly art: LOL nope.
Writing: Achieved!
Goals
Last month's worked out pretty well so let's just keep at that.
Help Lut
Maintain minimum functions
Stretch goals:
Do some art-like thing every week
Do some writing. Like three sentences a day. You can make this up by writing six sentences on some days as necessary. This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/649565.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Health/Fitness
In April, I returned to about February's level of eating & exercising: 1820 calories per day consumed, exercise of around 260 calories per day. This is actually the lowest level of exercise since I started tracking via spreadsheet in November. Motivation to go out, stay outside, or even to clean, were all very low.
Weight is about the same, at 168.
Under the circumstances, these numbers are amazing and I'm proud of myself for not spending all day motionless and eating cookies. A++ good job me.
Writing
I actually wrote! Almost every day! Often more than my three-sentence stretch goal! 12,000 words on The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady this month, which is now up to 73,700. Normally, I would not be excited about 12,000 words, but this is more new writing than I have done in the three previous months combined so YAY PERCEPTIBLE PROGRESS.
Everyone I know has been going "well, there's no being productive in a pandemic", but this is the first month I've broken 10,000 words since last November, so I can hardly blame my slump on COVID-19.
The Business of Writing
I finished reading through Spark of Desire. I don't want to make many changes, but there are a few. I need to make a list of changes so I can do them, and then do penultimate read-through. But I'm not in a hurry to do this, since Alinsa is still working on layout for The Twilight Etherium.
Art/Other
Oops. I didn't do this at all. I think I poked a little bit at the Spark cover, but for the most part I would think once or twice on the weekend: "I guess I should do some drawing?" And then I didn't do any drawing.
Gaming
I started "World of Lightness", the romance-themed play-by-post RPG I mentioned early in April. I ended up with four players and it's been moving along. We've been playing the game in Google Docs, which was my preference and has worked pretty well. I wanted to do it in Google Docs because having each complete scene in a single doc makes for a nice, clean archive that's easy to search and it keeps the chronology straight, while still allowing players the option of continuing to write in early parts of the continuity. For example, if player A doesn't want to play out what their PC is doing in the afternoon and wants to skip to evening plans, and player B wants to keep writing out the afternoon, I don't have to tell either player to "wait" or "hurry up". I can just start writing the evening scene with A while I continue to write the afternoon scene with B, and it's easy to tell which is which because they're at different points in the doc, or in different docs. And B can be present in both scenes because this is a romance-themed game and nothing is going to happen in the afternoon that will dramatically impact the evening.
I've been using my portion of the writing for it to play 4thewords.com, so I have an approximate word count for just what I've written: 25,000 words.
Writing for a play-by-post game, for me, involves a lot more exploratory writing than writing a book. I need to write more, both because the players need to have enough information to make their characters act consistently in the story world (which is much more information than readers of a novel need or want), and also because we are figuring out What Happens Next as a team. It's a romance game, so the players need lots of opportunities to meet and interact with potential love interests so they can decide who they're interested in. And I spend a fair amount of time having NPCs respond to things that PCs say and do, purely for conversational purposes -- it's not about the plot, it's about being in an immersive, interactive setting where what the PCs do matters.
Running the game is great fun, and I'm glad I decided to do it. I have such a hard time with "but what do I SAY" that I don't chat much online these days, and World of Lightness gives me an excuse to write a bunch of stuff interacting with other people, and that is nice. Also, my players are all great. So much <3
I have cut back on other games; I stopped maxing out my Pokemon GO battles every day, for instance.
Goal Scorecard
Help Lut: done!
Maintained minimum functions: No starvation! Did not quit my day job! Goal achieved!
Stretch goals:
Weekly art: LOL nope.
Writing: Achieved!
Goals
Last month's worked out pretty well so let's just keep at that.
Help Lut
Maintain minimum functions
Stretch goals:
Do some art-like thing every week
Do some writing. Like three sentences a day. You can make this up by writing six sentences on some days as necessary. This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/649565.html. Please comment there using OpenID.