the wings that you burn turn to ashes, my dear

I should really get better at updating this journal more regularly.

Anyways! Camp NaNo for July is over. I ended the month with 58,032 words. This is well over my initial goal of 35,000 words, which I attribute to two things: one, my vacation and my writing retreat days, where I wrote 11k over the course of two days; and two, hosting word sprints for my NaNo region. We decided against doing full write ins on Discord, since they weren't that popular, but I did have some people pop on for the scheduled sprints.

On the story front, I am almost finished with the first draft of the sequel to With These Hungry Eyes. I am seven scenes away from the end - assuming, of course, I don't feel the need to add anything extra. This is the quickest I have drafted anything this long since I cranked out the first draft of A Hero Lies in You in 2019, which was slightly longer in length and took me two months. I'm almost done in three weeks' time, which leads me to believe that I should keep up the word sprints on Wednesdays and Fridays until I finish up.

I also restarted So Boycott Love. I adapted the scene order to fit the Save the Cat! structure, which I hope will strengthen the story. What I found, though, was that it is a heavy story to write. Which isn't a bad thing, but given my mental state sometimes, writing something that's an angst fest 24/7 doesn't always do me any favors. Still, I'm proud I worked on some original stuff, even if I didn't get as far as I hoped.

Hungry Eyes 2 still needs a title too. I keep debating a few options:

- Canyon Moon, after the Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness song; it's one of Julianne/Darill's theme songs and it can apply to the story, but not in a very obvious way
- No Place Like You, after a Backstreet Boys song that also fits
- What's Meant To Be Will Always Find a Way, after "She's In Love With the Boy" by Trisha Yearwood

Eventually I'll need to decide, but probably not until I finish the draft.

Next on my to do list, aside from finishing up this sequel in time so I can actually edit, is my Press Start assignment. I have my idea, and hopefully it won't take that long (lolsob we've heard this before). I am also toying with what ideas I want to work on for November, as I've proven that I can write quickly if I actually outline a story ahead of time.

....I should probably also get back to posting Angel of Mine too. I can give up my "heavy" editing of every chapter and just... fucking do it. I'll get there.