5:07am

Yep… you read that right. I’m starting this post at five o’clock in the morning.

2025 has been an interesting year so far for me.

I did not meet my writing goals for January or February, despite exceeding the monthly word counts for last year. Matter of fact, I just checked my Writing Log and discovered that I have already exceeded the word count for March of 2024. That’s a good feeling, but I only wrote 5,472 words that month.

Not a high bar, and April will be even easier.  🤣

On top of that, I’ve done a horrible job of keeping up with the weekly writing updates every Saturday. It’s on my list to do a better job of that, and today is the first step toward that particular goal.

I think I discussed in a previous post how my original plan for 2025 (focus each month on one, specific story) turned out to be sheer folly. That plan failed worse than the hull of the Titanic when I caught up to my creativity eight-ish days into January.

Since then, I have modified my plan. I will write wherever my words take me, while trying to keep the list of active projects as small as possible. Right now, that list has three titles: Tribunal, Lynxeen, and The Crystal Plinth.

I hit a bit of a wall with Tribunal back in February, and every time I’ve gone back to it so far, it still feels like it needs to percolate a bit more. I know where I am in the story (obviously enough), and I know for the most part how I want to end the story. The expanse between those two points, though, is a bit murky at the moment.

The words for Lynxeen and The Crystal Plinth, though have been flowing like water.

Worried that you haven’t heard of The Crystal Plinth yet? Don’t be. I’m not sure when I’ll publish it, as it will start not just a new series but an entire shared world. The idea for that shared world is slowly approaching the point that Smilodon was, right before I gave it my full focus.

Which means that, sooner or later, I’ll have to focus on it… just to shut it up and have a little peace in my own mind.

I want to get Book 6 in Shepherd Security Services published before then, though. I also want to get Tribunal published and that series ended, too.

Speaking of Shepherd Security Services, I already know what the story will be for #4 (the story after Lynxeen) and #5. Book #4 will be titled Vorcalix, and #5 will be titled Sol.

Book #6 is way more nebulous at the moment, but I have a minute or two before I need to worry about it.  😉

I haven’t decided whether Crystal Plinth will be a Newsletter Story or an actual published book yet. For the genre that the shared world will be, Crystal Plinth is kind of a slow start. Maybe ‘glacial’ is more appropriate. But I feel it’s necessary to show how the world reached the point where it truly is representative of its genre.

Oh… you want to know what genre that is? Hrmmm… okay… I can do that. It’ll be LitRPG.

But like with Shifter Fantasy, it’ll be my take on LitRPG.  😉

I do want to circle back to my Draco-Verse, too. However, given how disagreeable Tribunal is being right now, I don’t want to delve too deeply into the next series in that world, since the next series references events and characters established in Sorcerous Pursuits (Dawn of the Sorcerer, Hyperion, and Tribunal).

Hopefully, it is obvious that I have enough stories rattling around in my head to keep me busy for a while.

Right, then. I think I’ve yammered on long enough. Let’s get to the Writing Log screenshots.

The first batch will be the screenshots for February, 2025.

And now, here’s my progress in March so far.

So, it occurs to me that I’ve never really explained the color coding in my Writing Log, specifically the color coding of the ‘Daily Word Count’ and ‘Total Time’ columns.

Each cell of the ‘Daily Word Count’ column will change color based on that cell’s value. If the cell is white, that cells value did not meet the minimum threshold for color coding. My paradigm follows the visible light spectrum (ROYGBIV)… for the most part. There are nine divisions, though, as opposed to the seven colors of the visible light spectrum.

Orange means more words than a red-colored cell, yellow more words than orange… and so on.

The ‘Total Time’ column is a bit different, though. That column will either be red or green. If the value of the corresponding ‘Daily Word Count’ cell meets or exceeds my Daily Word Count Goal, that cell in the ‘Total Time’ column will be green.

Oh… and ‘Total Time’ is the total writing time, not total elapsed time. I dropped ‘Writing’ from the column header, because I didn’t want a wide column. I have to reduce the zoom of this sheet down to 98% to get everything I want on the screen as it is.

The red, horizontal lines are the week dividers. Almost forgot that.

Alrighty, then. If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with me.

I hope the days treat you and yours well. Stay safe out there.