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Okay, it's only November but this year went by so damn fast I might as well start making plans for the next one in advance.

Going forward and assuming no major life disruptions, I will seek to write at minimum one review a day on every work day, and 10k over every weekend off.

I am done with contests. I know I've said that before but I really mean it this time, that Epic thing broke me. I can't continue this seesaw effect of starting new stories and then not finishing them in time and then starting another new story and not finishing it and piling up an infinite number of half finished projects I never have time to return to.

My writing focus will be entirely on finished stories I've already started or at least outlined. I will not plan out or begin any new ones until I've completed the old ones. (Or discarded them as unworkable.).

Just a short list of what I have in progress and must (somehow) finish in the next year, with some brief notes. I'll update later with rough progress estimates, but since the whole idea is to finish the stories in my own time, the way I want, there's some hacks and compromises I made when I was aiming for the deadline that I'll be ripping out. Word counts on some of these will be moving backwards.



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1.) Fairy Story - You play a night fairy in a world where fairies and their Faery rulers are the main humanoid race. There'll be history and lore to uncover and much of the plot revolves around what being a night fairy means and the difficulties it causes for you. Finished version will contain three major paths, with a general theme of family and belonging. The challenges of each route will lean toward diplomacy, trickery, or force.

2.) Furry Story - You're the leader of a small army in exile, most of whom abandon you the moment your ship touches land. You've got to restore the confidence of your remaining soldiers as you carve out your niche in a barbarian land with nothing but a 400 year old map and your nostalgia for the ideals of a long dead Empire to guide you. I ended up really liking the plot and the setting for this one (once I was forced to turn it into not-Redwall after fanfic got ruled out...) but as for the contest I tripped myself the hell up right off the bat with trying to track and account for morale and loyalty of different characters and factions. A big factor was going to be offering the player the choice of two of six generals each with their own combat style and agendas but...I need to figure out a way to streamline this so a lot of that may have to go.

3.) Superhero Story - my entry for Berka's heroes contest, interrupted by Hurricane Harvey. It's a much more streamlined plot now than what I started with, with a theme of identity and whether it's possible to escape the past. It turned into a more thoughtful story that did away with most of the punching of bad guys, although that's still a thing going on in the background and it's a setting where everyone is pretty used to the absurdity of people in silly costumes with weird powers slugging it out all the time. I really really want to finish this, and not just because I paid for cover art.

4.) Space Lizard Story - This was my entry for the Chaos story way back when. Tribal lizard people dealing with civil unrest have their shit interrupted by a skirmish between alien factions far beyond their comprehension. I primarily want to finish this one because I'm already two thirds of the way there, and there's also a sequel I want to do set a few centuries in the future.

5.) Space Rodent Story - Okay let me just deflect accusations of furryism right here and clarify that these are perfectly respectable Star Trek humans-with-funny-face-marking aliens, I just think of them as rodents because they live underground, breed very fast, and the plot will address the way they wind up all over the place and difficult to get rid of. Anyway this was my entry for the prompt contest, based on a race I'd invented for a short story prior to that.

6.) Witch Story - My attempt at the romance contest. A good portion of it is finished but aside from being a romance, it's slower paced and set vaguely in 19th century Europe somewhere, so a little out of my comfort zone. The actual title is The Witch, The Whore, and the Dullahan (and yes it includes a wardrobe.) It's based off taking IAP and Mynoris' prompts from the previous contest and seeing what happened when I mashed them together.

7.) Path of Life - the epic replacement for Path of Death. You're an evil outsider sent on a quest to save your wizard mistress/mentor. This will be the first time out adventuring on your own without supervision in the sixty years you've been in the mortal realm, and aside from dealing with a powerful enemy and the assumptions of the ordinary people you encounter, the choices will involve whether you stay on the path the good-aligned community you lived with set you on or slip back into your old nature.

8.) Vampire Story - The plot I have outlined is pretty complex and involves juggling too many characters. I'll likely figure out a way to massively trim it down. I don't even like vampires but I have lore ideas I'd like to play around with in a story and this is a modern-ish setting that might be fun to write, mostly ripped off of Hellboy and Buffy and whatnot.

9.) Tribal Story - Started ages ago for the Wilderness contest. Turned into a weird star crossed lovers thing with warring tribes and some religious elements. It might be more fitting as a novel than a CYOA but who reads novels.

10.) Misc stories - I've got several smaller ideas with an outline or a handful of pages written, sometimes just exploring a single conflict or idea. They'll be 10-15k on average and I might crank these out over a weekend now and then if I need a break from my main project. One thing I'd like to do is a Biblical inspired/fanfic-ish thing specifically to replace Wibn's story About Darius and the Desert God.



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I ain't betting shit since points don't really matter to me anymore and I just want to write some good stories without pressure. If I can do half of these by the dawn of 2020 I'll be pretty happy let's be honest.

Good luck!

Hope the extra focus helps this time around. Since you're swearing off contests, i'll have to come up with more forum puzzles to disract you with haha!

You might as well just combine your rodent and lizard stories into your furry story.

Good luck Miz :)

Good luck Mizal! I hope you manage to finish your goals this time. I'm not very optimistic about it, though ... Your stories are very enjoyable to read, so I'm looking forward to being able to read more of them.