Miles Walked This Month (September 27th-October 25th): 55.5 miles
Total Miles Walked: 573.5 miles
Milestones Reached: Warg Attack, the Eyrie
“All of a sudden they heard a howl away down hill, a long shuddering howl. It was answered by another away to the right and a good deal nearer to them; then by another not far away to the left. It was wolves howling at the moon, wolves gathering together!”
“Over them swooped the eagles; the dark rush of their beating wings smote them to the floor or drove them far away; their talons tore at goblin faces. Other birds flew to the tree-tops and seized the dwarves, who were scrambling up now as far as ever they dared to go.”
“Very soon Bilbo was laid down, trembling with fear, on a wide shelf of rock on the mountain-side. There was no path down on to it save by flying; and no path down off it except by jumping over a precipice.”
~The Hobbit, Chapter 6: Out of the Frying-Pan, Into the Fire
We are nearly halfway to the Carrock!
As someone with a fear of heights, I’ll be quite happy when my feet are planted back on solid ground 🙂 Until next time!
I’m slowly losing my lead, but that’s okay. As long as I stay steady, I should still make my goal this year, but I’ve got a lot of writing to do, so things are gonna slow down on the reading front.
Here’s the link to my star rating breakdown if anyone needs a refresher. It’s also up in the header 🙂
What I’m currently reading (in order of Date Started)
The Dark Tower (Dark Tower #7) by Stephen King– I actually got through TWO of my Dark Tower books last month, and now I’m on the last one! THEY’RE SO GOOD, OH MY GOSH!!! I have no idea how things are going to wrap up, no clue! It’s awesome!
Dude! This book was amazing! I loved the tie-ins to other works, I loved the Calla (I’m not joking, I keep catching myself trying to slip into Calla -speak ;P), I loved the story and the reveal of the Wolves. I predicted it, but there were enough twists to make even my prediction interesting 🙂 I’ve already started Book 6, because I HAVE to know what’s happened to Susannah!
For more info, please see my live-reading updates, they’re pretty entertaining ;P
If you are reading this, then it’s over. Changing History, the fanfiction saga that has encompassed my life for the past 15 years (off and on) is finally complete.
I must admit to mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’m very pleased with the results of my hard work. I’ve reached so many people over the years with this story, far more than I ever imagined I would, and I’ve learned so much about myself as a writer. And I feel like I’ve done the story justice, as if I’ve said the things I set out to say. I’m also very excited for the many other projects I have in the works, both fanfiction and original.
But I must also admit to a disconnected feeling. I sit down to the keyboard and my first thought is still “What do I need to do for Changing History?” Discovering that the answer is “Nothing” has been a strange sensation. I find myself asking if I’ll even know what to do with myself now, without Mel and Boromir urging me on. They have been a part of my life for so long, leaving them behind seems almost unimaginable. But I know that I must. I leave them in good hands, the capable hands of readers who love them and who will keep them alive. And while they will always be special to me, and I owe them so much, it is time for me to let them go, to release their hold on me and give myself to other things, other projects, other dreams.
So long, Calenhiril. Be at peace, Son of Gondor.
No gelin idh raid lîn, a no adel len i chwest. (May your paths be green and the breeze behind you.)
Reminder: At the beginning of the year, I made some yearly goals and some quarterly goals, which I promised to reevaluate and re-prioritize every three months. It’s been six months now, and it’s time to look back at Quarter Three 2016! Here’s a recap of my goals for the year, in case you don’t want to go back and read the original post:
Overall goals for the year:Finish Changing History rewritesDONE!(Q1), Finish first draft of Changing History: Entwives DONE! (Q3), Write the Worth Living For short that I’ve been planning for ages, DONE!(Q3)Edit and begin posting ClarityDONE!(Q2), Finish the first draft of all three parts of Wonderland Reclaimed.
Reward Project: If I finish Wonderland Reclaimed, I can write my Avengers: Age of Ultron fic for NaNoWriMo in November.
I finished up two more of my goals for the year, bringing my total up to four out of five! The last goal regarding Wonderland Reclaimed I’m no longer worried about completing, and I’ve already moved my Age of Ultron fic, Good Intentions, to my tentative 2017 plan. So things are going very well this year!
Here’s the month by month breakdown!
Quarter Three, 2016- Review
July: Camp NaNoWriMo #2! Finishing WriMo including Calenhiril’s Search, Paradise Found (Worth Living For short), and Wonderland Reclaimed: Down The Rabbit Hole, 50k words cumulative. Possibly finish posting Clarity, but NaNo is the priority.
This was a HUGE month for me, and I’m proud to say I accomplished all of my goals, plus some! I picked up Double the Baggins, Twice the Took this month, along with my writing and I managed to post a couple of extra Calenhiril’s Search chapters. I really need to learn how to pace myself, because…
August: Finish posting Clarity (if not finished in July), Focus on the editing and posting of Calenhiril’s Search (at least one chapter posted a week, more as I finish them).
…this month was a disaster. I didn’t have to worry about Clarity at least, because I had finished that in July, but I lost all the momentum I had built up for NaNo and only posted one (two if you count Sept. 1st) chapters of Calenhiril’s Search. I did almost nothing else. I also managed to burn myself out for Wonderland Reclaimed. I don’t know when I’ll be able to look at that story again. I’m hoping early 2017, but not holding my breath.
September: Continue posting at least one chapter of Calenhiril’s Search a week, complete first edit of Paradise Found, add at least another 25k to Wonderland Reclaimed.
I feel better about this month, even though one of my goals was a complete non-starter. I had given up on Wonderland Reclaimed by this point, so I didn’t even try, but letting that go seemed to have the effect of freeing up my brain to post for Calenhiril’s Search, doubling my projected chapter count. I completed the edit of Paradise Found and posted the story too, which was a nice boost to the ego 🙂
Quarter Four, 2016- Goals
Quarter Four is a short quarter, since I usually try not to set any specific goals for December to allow my brain to rest and try to cope with the depressing reality of the holiday season. For all that, here are my goals for Q4!
October: Finish Calenhiril’s Search, post one chapter of DBTT and write 5,000 new words, finish outlining my new NaNoWriMo project, The Stars Are Fire.
November: National Novel Writing Month! This year, my goal is not just to write 50,000 words, but to COMPLETELY finish the first draft of my novel.
December: My only goal this month is to post my requisite chapter of DBTT and to finalize my plans for 2017. I will likely try to pull out Wonderland Reclaimed again and see if anything has jostled loose, but I’m not setting any goals in that regard.
And that’s it! I feel pretty confident in what I have here, we’ll see how I feel once December rolls around. Until next time!
This went surprisingly well this month. So well in fact that I’ve moved up my completion date to… the end of this week. Oh god, I literally have only THREE CHAPTERS LEFT… There will be a dedicated blog post when I’m done, I have too many feels.
Three years after I finished posting Worth Living For, I finally have the Bora Bora sequel up! Hopefully it won’t take three years for me to write the full-length Age of Ultron sequel. I’m shooting for sometime in late 2017 😉
Once Changing History is finished (oh god…), this will be the next sprawling epic that receives my attention. Weekly posting probably won’t start until after the first of the year, and until then, I’ll be dedicating most of my new words to this fic. Not in November though. November is for my brand new project 🙂
This is the story, all about how… wait, that’s not gonna work, let’s start again ;P
So, about two weeks ago, I was actually getting kind of depressed about NaNo. Wonderland Reclaimed held absolutely no appeal for me (you know that old saying about beating a dead horse? Yeah…) and I had resigned myself to the fact that I would be writing words on my DBTT fanfic for the month. It wasn’t ideal, but it made the most sense, productivity-wise.
Then I went to writing group. And was promptly (and rightly) shamed out of it.
I’ve been working on almost nothing but fanfiction all year. And that’s not to say that fanfiction is unworthy of my time. When I write a fanfiction, it is because I have a story to tell that I cannot imagine telling any other way. And I believe that those stories are important. They touch the lives of those that read them, and that is always a worthwhile pursuit.
All that to say, it’s still not going to pay the bills. Ever. I’ve been working so hard on my fanfiction this year because I want to finally be able to take a step back and breathe, to evaluate my time so that my fanfiction projects and my original work can exist in harmony together, side-by-side, neither one gaining complete control over my time. But getting to that point is turning out to be exhausting. My brain needs a break.
So, with the help of my group (I love you guys), I’ve decided to write a brand new novel for November. It’s a genderswapped, Hamlet in Space retelling, and I could not be more excited about it!
Special thanks go to Adan Ramie (who was instrumental in my shaming, mostly because she is probably SO SICK of hearing me talk about fanfiction ;P) and Cat Mealer (who was so excited about this idea I thought she might have an aneurysm, thanks for not dying at writing group, Cat! ;P).
What’s Coming Up in October
I’ve already mentioned that Calenhiril’s Search, the fourth and FINAL installment of Changing History will be completed sometime this week. I’m also planning to post my requisite one chapter of DBTT around the 15th. The rest of the month will be spent finishing my outline for The Stars Are Fire and writing new words on DBTT (I’m going to set an arbitrary goal of 5,000, because I like round numbers, but I don’t want to die ;P).
There will be a couple of extra blog posts this month too. It’s time for a Quarterly Round-Up (I almost forgot about this!) and as I said, Changing History will receive it’s own blog post in the next week or so.
I’m feeling really good about this month! Also, take a look at this bird!
It’s called a potoo, and they may look like Muppet characters, but I assure you, they are very real!
FogIsBeautiful 