A couple months ago, I made a decision about my writing plans for 2025. Part of my 2024 plans had been to post a story each month on my website, one each month on my Ko-fi profile, and one every other month on one of my blogs. The ones on my website I would get the idea, write it, and post it that month, while the others were either new ones I could write in advance, or revised stories. So that’s thirty stories, about half of which were new. Turns out, between everything else going on in my life, meeting those goals took most of my writing energy and I barely had any to work on other projects. So my plan had been to stop the monthly stories and just post stories on my blogs whenever I felt like it, and put all my focus on two big projects.
The first project would
be to finish up Lunar Dreams, which is a collection of essays I have on
colonizing the moon. I’ve been working
on it for a year-and-a-half, but I’ll work on it for a month or so, and then
decide to take it in a new direction.
Then I work on it for another month or so, and then decide to take it in
a new-new direction. And then after a
couple of months, to take it in a revised-old-new direction. But I think I’ve finally figured out where I’m
going with it. So I just need to hammer
out a few details, and give it a good polish.
Once I finished that, then I would get around to finishing Volume One of
The Pathfinder Saga. This is two
novellas and a short story. The first
novella I started … over ten years ago and is 90% done, but I originally wrote
it to be a standalone story. The second
novella is 70% done, and I’ve barely started the short story. I’ve tried working to update the first novella
before, but my plan had been to work on it every Wednesday and Thursday and
that didn’t turn out so well. This is a
fantasy story, and while I just “understand” scifi stuff like starships and
hyperspace, I need to immerse myself in the story to keep how the magic works
and what creatures can do what. And just
doing that a couple days a week wasn’t working.
My hope was by focusing on the setting for months at a time I’d finally
finish it.
Then the election
happened. My plans had been made with the
expectation that the country wouldn’t be driven off a cliff by lunatics. Now I need to spend some of my writing energy
fighting a fall into a fascist dystopia.
My current plan is
to still write a story each month on my website. Before, I’d come up with the story and write
it that month, but I waived that self-imposed rule at the end of 2024, so I’m
doing away with it entirely. This is
helpful, because as I type this up at the end of December, I already have the
January and February stories mostly finished.
I just need to give them a good polish.
I also have another story where I already have the framework, I just
need to fill it all out, which I’m having a bit of trouble with. This was to be the January story, but now
I’ll have a few more months to work on it.
In the past, some of these Monthly Stories had been of a political or social
nature, but I’d also throw in some fun ones.
But going forward, they will probably all be of a political or social
nature.
As to Ko-fi, I’m
keeping my account, but I’m not planning on posting much there. The point of posting a story every month was
to try to get some traction to maybe start making money there, but that didn’t
happen. Maybe in the future, we’ll see.
I also plan on posting
a story each month on one of my blogs.
These will likely be revised stories, or maybe some new fun ones.
