fireflies where my caution ought to be

 Well. A week was a week was a week. If last week things felt like they'd changed rapidly, this week even more so. On Monday the Prime Minister had a press conference to announce our Alert Level status (something introduced on the Saturday - 1 being the lowest, 4 being the highest, we'd been at 2 since then). We pretty much all knew it would be going up, since typically the head of the Ministry of Health would touch on it during his briefing, but he'd deferred it to her. 

We didn't expect it to go up as much as it did. We immediately went up to a level 3: public institutions would close, affected schools would close, people should work from home if possible. Then, she announced, as of 11:59PM Wednesday the country would be at Alert Level 4 for at least 4 weeks. All non-essential (eg supermarkets, pharmacies etc) would close. People are allowed out of their houses for the necessities, or for a walk, but aren't supposed to leave their neighbourhoods (if possible) and cannot be within 2 metres of people outside of their household "bubble".

We're in lockdown. It was intense. All this and I still didn't have my test results. I didn't actually get them until Wednesday afternoon (negative!) and got immediately called in to help at my family pharmacy. I was there the whole next day as well. Friday I had to stay home and try and get through some of the work from my actual job that I hadn't managed to get through earlier in the week due to being a mess due to well. All of the above.

I'm including all of this because it's the context for my writing this past week, and also my plans for next week. 

• Mon 23/3 473
• Tue 24/3 400
• Wed 25/3 410
• Thu 26/3 178
• Fri 27/3 431
• Sat 28/3 189
• Sun 29/3 435

I managed to do 400+ words on 5/7 days which given everything, I'm happy with. It was definitely a struggle though. Now that my March challenge is over, I'm going into april trying to be really aware of the fact that everything is wild and I'm going to be unbearably busy (still have my regular job - part time) and will now also be working as a trainee pharmacy tech part time. fun) and need to work with that.

I'm not having daily word goals other than 'any' to begin with. I need to set the bar lower for a couple of reasons:

• I just don't have faith that I'll have the energy for it 
• I also don't have the mental space for doing the thinking and planning that allows that - though I am hoping to take more walks and do thinking on those
• I'm already a week late for my fake marriage!au update, and the next chapter to post needs a lot of editing (as do six and seven lmao) which means I won't have as much time to write)

I am also going to be suspending my "have to work on all three active projects" thing. Or rather, I'm putting both my nano and squishy on hold. Squishy is a fic I really want to do well, and the words I've been putting into it so far just aren't working. I need to take some time and really figure out where I'm going with this, and how I'm going to do it really well. I don't have that right now.

For my nano it's much the same. I've finally reached a point in the story I was really excited to right that needs to be done well and I would rather wait until I can give it the attention it needs. There's also the fact that I just really need to put the effort into fake marriage!au if I'm going to keep updating regularly.

 Well. We've made it to ten sustained weeks of writing, which I'm pretty pleased with. 

Monday 2 March - Sunday 8 March

• Mon 2/3 140
• Tue 3/3 190
• Wed 4/3 218
• Thu 5/3 415
• Fri 6/3 280
• Sat 7/3 281
• Sun 8/3 865

All in all a pretty good week. Worked on everything in my slots, and got pretty decently over my current 100 words/day goal. Next week is going to be a minimum of 200 words per day which might be trickier. I leave for a 10ish day work trip on Tuesday which is going to be incredibly busy and pretty tiring, but I'm going to try and fit some writing in where I can during the day and also include it as part of my wind-down in the evenings.

 Nearly missed posting this! February having 29 days is very difficult.

I've written less this month than I had hoped to, or expected to honestly. Given the amount of study I had going on in January, and the comparative lack in February I was expecting to do more - alas I only wrote 6666 words this month (compared to 9081) last month. Still, that's over six thousand words.

I did miss one day of writing this month, but only because I flat out forgot, so I'm definitely feeling good about that. I have noticed that I've done a lot more days this month with very few words, and hardly any larger chunks. Part of that has been my schedule. Some days I haven't had a chance to write until just before bed after working or travelling all day. 

I did manage to post two whole things though! Chapter two of fake marriage!au, and Greer's birthday fic which I posted up today. Now technically, while I did post those this month, I didn't write or even finish them this month, so I'm not getting too cocky. Going to aim for two chapters of fake marriage!au in March, and depending on how I go with that, might even start working on something shorter.

Now that I've built myself a decent foundation of being able to write pretty much every day, I'm keen to start building that up. For the first week of March I'm going to aim to write 100+ words per day, the second week: 200+ words per day, and so on. This is going to be a pretty soft goal. If I really can't manage it then that's okay, but I'm going to try. I'm also definitely allowed to write more! Also going to try for an overall goal of 10k over the whole month

 So. Broke my 42 day streak yesterday. We got some really bad news yesterday. It was my day off and I was supposed to be planning and packing for the work trip I'm currently on. Between having to replan some things and process and also shock and grief I was up really late and just flat out forgot, I'll be honest.

Mon 10: 153
Tue 11: 69
Wed 12: 232
Thu 13: 580
Fri 14: 196
Sat 15: 0
Sun 16: 316

I've been having some sticking points with the various things I'm writing, but I think I've got through them. Hopefully I'll get a decent chunk done these next few days (may be difficult given that I'm travelling) because I really want to finish another chapter of fake marriage!au before posting chapter 2.

Obviously I say every week that I'll write more, and then it doesn't happen. The trick, I think is figuring out how I'm actually going to do that. I think one thing is going to be attempting to do some words earlier in the day. In the morning perhaps, or during the day. Also to find some brain time where I can think about what I might write, so I'm not going in cold. The place we're staying at is in amongst a lot of bush and nature, so might go far a wander.

 Given how close the end of January was to the end of the week, I figured my January update could wait until tonight. Haven't necessarily done a lot of actual writing, but it's been a week of feeling pretty positive about writing. Stats and thoughts below!

( Week #5 )

( January )What have you done this month? How have you surprised yourself? It doesn't have to be 'productive', it doesn't have to involve reaching or working towards a goal. It can be personal, fannish, professional, whatever - what are you carrying with you to build on in February? 

 Hello again folks, we're back again for another update, and it's quite a goodie this week. I spent the first few days on holiday, which was delightful, then back to work Thursday-Sunday to catch up on the work I missed (on the plus side I just realised that tomorrow's a public holiday so yay me?). There was also some drama involving withdrawing from a uni course that I may or may not discuss later.

on the writing front though, it was an utter success!

( Writing stats: 13-19 Jan )

It's not been a full week since the New Year and my new writing goals, but I'm going to try and keep myself accountable on a weekly basis and starting on a Sunday seems sensible.

( Results for 1 - 5 January 2020 )