2024-W25 EOW Report
Highlights This Week
- This basically took up the entire week. From early 4AM half-hours, to a Friday lunch while eating wonton noodles, to more on my bed Saturday evening, youngest’s bedroom floor for some reason on Sunday afternoon, and finally the living room couch. 4500 words of theorizing on character arcs.
- Middle one had a sleepover on Friday night, then a Saturday all day thing, recital tomorrow evening, and graudation on Thursday. Eldest is freaking out over final math and physics exams. Youngest is a lot more comfortable conversing with me this year. I wouldn’t say she was intimidated previously, but more like there was a period between here being a cute, huggable, adorable creature and her coming to her own. Maybe her getting me addicted to stupid Suika and talking about fruit strategy helped a lot. Stupid game.
- Uh-oh. X-Men and comics coming back into my life? See Book Reading section.
Project Status Dashboard
The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote1.
| P | prj | st | fd | ed | rv | xd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MINOS | 2/11 | 2/27 | X | X | 2 |
| 2 | SAVED | 3/12 | 3/25 | 4/28 | X | 3 |
| 3 | BECKY | 1/7 | X | X | X | 1 |
| BACKLOG | ~~~ | ~~~ | ~~~ | ~~~ | ~~~ | |
| SATSU | 1/21 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| ROBOT | 1/28 | 1/29 | X | X | 2 | |
| YOKO | 2/18 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| STAR | 3/3 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| BELLA | 3/10 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| AURA | 1/6 | 1/6 | X | X | 1 | |
| FIRED | 1/14 | X | X | X | 1 |
As stated above, I went deep the rabbit hole of taxonimizing, categorizing, and organizing a matrix that intersects the 6 Stasis (reactions to Ghost/Wounds) against MRK’s 4 Aspects of Self, which led to 24 potential arcs. That was 4,500 words on theory this week.
EOW Time Tracking
Minimizing this section as per last week. Might try the simple 3-sentence strategy that Elizabeth Bear gave C.L. Polk that I heard on a MRK Q&A after I’m done exploring arcs. And I’ll track that instead.
- CURRENT STREAK: 0 Days
- LAST STREAK: 5 Days (June 14, 2024)
- BEST STREAK: 18 Days (May 10, 2024)
Four Thousand Weeks
| Wks Lft | HP |
|---|---|
| 1739/4000 | 43.475% |
I don’t think I have much to write here this week. Didn’t record an episode of Garage Fiction as Olivia is travelling back and forth between England and Sweden Switzerland. LL made a Swiss Swedish friend. AM is dealing three gigantic life things simultaneously. LK asked me about writing music last week? And I wrote a stupid song just to say I could. FT-Contract is coming near the end of the trial. I’m not sure where I’ll end up when it ends. Lawyer client – third issue almost done, email newsletter in full swing, and booked time with JB (gawd, there’s two of them, the designer one) next Saturday to learn basic layout.
Finishing stories is still a distant thing that I keep reaching for but keep running into obstacles for. The whole purpose of this journal and website is to keep tracking how I get there. Progress is happening, but it’s slow and frustrating.
Book Reading
- Decided to pick up and finish Martha Well’s All Systems Red in the Murderbot series on Saturday night. Comments here
- Still thoroughly enjoying Shannon Chakraborty’s The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (2023). Still plugging along on David Graeber & David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything (2021). Have not touched Atonement (2001). Guess I’m not starting Emma (1815) in June either.
- So that unquantifiable itch, or thirst, or whatever it is for me to consume and collect stuff – now that work life has somewhat stabilized (still on trial, but ending soon?)… continues. Couple weeks ago, I was looking at CCGs and LCGs. None of which scratched my itch properly because I was going to just collect the cardboard but never play it. That bothered me. Last week, explored solo RPGS, which I still think has potential. But what happened last night was I realized I missed a good old fashioned comic book series. It got catalyzed by the fact that JB kept harassing me to watch X-Men ‘97 (2024-) on Disney+ and I was like yeah, yeah, yeah I’ll get to it, because while the original X-Men: The Animated Series (1992-1997) was extremely influential on my childhood, for some dumb reason I didn’t think they would udpate the storytelling to 2020s modernization (which is really stupid, I know). I mean, Kevin Smith nailed it with Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021) and told a story that has post “Golden Age Television” sensibilities, right? ANYWAYS – I watched a couple more episodes on Saturday night and was like, holy shit, telling X-Men stories well is back in fashion. SO THEN – I was like, what’s going on in the comics world. Oh what? They’re rebooting the series after the Hickman Krakoa stuff? There’s going to be ten #1s? I can afford comics as a 43-year-old man and the hobby? I should subscribe to all ten series? Sure OK. I guess I just can’t quit you, Hourglass Comics. Given that Jed MacKay’s X-Men #1 comes out on July 10th, 2024, it will be just over a year since I walked into a comic book shop.
Archive of all EOW reports here
LEGEND for Project Status Dashboard
- P = priority (limit to 3 projects at any given time)
- prj = project codename
- st = start date
- fd = 1st draft completed
- ed = edits (before beta/crits) completed
- rv = revisions (post-feedback) completed
- xd = current draft being worked on