Update 2025 / 12 / 03

OMG! It’s time for another blog update already? The last one was a month ago, so yes it is blog time. And . . . I have nothing major to update. I will say this though, I have been writing and it has been tremendous to be writing consistently again.

Looking back at my writing journal, Summer was a huge bust. All I really did was write for this blog and that’s it. There are huge gaps throughout the year but Summer was the worst. The last time I did personal fun writing in Summers was 6 / 22 then nothing but blog updates. I did not start writing again until 9 / 25. Jeez, three months of writer’s block sucks.

But then the brain juices started to flow again and I kept writing for the rest of September, all of October and November. There are gaps, most on day or two of not writing but there are weeks filled with progress and productivity. And I have been looking back and wondering why Summer is the season of unproductivity for me.

I think it has a lot to do with schooling. After grade school, I went to college for a few years and Summer had always been the month of freedom and relaxation. And then Fall comes, the beginning of school season, and mid-September brings forth all the anxiety and hyperfocus. I am wondering if that was the case for the last three months of writing progress.

It is funny how I have been out of education for a while and my employment in grocery retail means that I work no matter the time of year. Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, my work hours are all over the place, no matter the day of the week or the season. And yet the lingering school mentality has persisted. Oh, and I have been having nightmares about being lost or late, which are classic school anxieties.

So what am I writing exactly? Well, I will reveal the working title of the series: Oracle Tales. It is a fantasy drama and I have been working on it since last year. The odd abbreviation I have been putting down such as DotNO are the tales in Oracle Tales. I am not ready to reveal the titles yet and I have no idea if this series will see the light of day. But I enjoy writing, no matter what the goal is, I will write on and have fun.

I should at least share something about this personal writing project though. Oracle Tales so far has four completed story drafts. Each story has 17 to 18 chapters which are 2000+ to under 3000. And I will be extra cheeky and only reveal each story’s initials:

Story 1: Nw/DS

Story 2: DotNO

Story 3: WotGT

Story 4: PotDL

Nw/DS is special because it is the first story I had ever written with an outline done beforehand. In the past, I had ideas floating in my brain then just type out whatever came to mind. I have been a very unorganized writer and Oracle Tales has been my personal challenge to follow a draft and have each chapter be limited by the word count. I started working on Nw/DS back in 2024, on 5 / 8 then finished with 17 chapters on 6 / 12.

And then a whole lot of nothing happened the rest of the Summer and well into Fall. Well, I did try writing up a follow up story after Nw/DS but I did not like the direction it was going. And there was no outline, so it was all over the place. I did not start writing the second story proper, DotNO, until 2 / 17 of 2025 [with an outline done but no entry date when it was]. There were writing projects between that time, like those blog stories I wrote and posted while recovering from my butt burns.

Yes, you read that right. Those of you who are randomly now jumping into the blog without reading the whole thing, yes that happened and I spent a whole blog talking about that. And no, not linking it, consider it incentive for exploration, Tee-Hee 😁

Anyway, knowing there was a huge gap in my writing during Summer last year just adds to my theory of schooling mentality still lingering within me.

So throughout this year, on and off, I worked on DotNO until 6 / 11. And then a huge gap with no writing, as I have mentioned before. WotGT was started on 9 / 25 and ended with 18 chapters on 11 / 2. Then PotDL was worked on from 11 / 6 to 11 / 28. And hot damn, I have been so very diligent with my writing since late September. And I hope to continue this momentum well into the next year.

Though I will admit, the weather getting colder is making me more lethargic and less focused. I am a Fall baby and whenever the fall season hits, I feel more alive and willing to do stuff. Maybe that is another reason why I have been so on fire lately?

None of that makes any sense but that is part of the mystery. I hope to start working on Story 5’s outline by the time this blog is posted. I have that day off and really want to save time to get this next Story started. Now that I finished working on PotDL, I really want to get fired up to work on the next story, which I am initialing as DotWW.

Now, it will be a new year come the next update blog, 1 / 7 / 2026. If I feel motivated enough, since 12 / 31 is on a Wednesday, I may do a blog looking back on the website from 2025. And I am making that a tentative maybe because by the time December ends, I will likely be more unmotivated due to winter getting colder and . . . snow. And I am super embarrassed to read my nonsensical blogs over again after months since posting them. So, we shall see. I’ll write the date down on a notepad and make it a neutral “maybe”.

Here I was thinking I had nothing interesting to share after a month and I got this blog to 1000+ words. And I actually mostly talked about writing this time. I have seen some anime but so many that I really can’t think of any series to focus on. No video games were played, no Loop Hero, I have been too busy with writing to game again [which for me is a really good thing]. I started listening to Critical Role Season 4 and I am at episode 3 and loving it so far. So looking forward to listening to more while [hopefully] being productive.

Good Luck and let’s hope winter never drops in the negatives 🥶

—BUCK