Kings Game

Author's Diary: One Year Later (Updated 3/7)

3/07/22

My life imploded and I went completely offline for a while. I've been struggling with a lot of personal thing (mostly good things, they've just been exhausting) but I've finally found myself with some free time to make updates and get things going again.

First update: I never stopped writing. Even though I haven't posted updates, and my life has been a chaotic mess, I never stopped writing and now have a backlog that needs to be posted.

Second update: It's done. Kings Game is finally done. After 500 days of writing, I have completed the story. I'm working to get everything posted ASAP, then I'll be taking a break to recover for a minute before going into editing mode so I can get this story ready to properly publish.

Third update: Okay, so the story isn't quite done. I have two long Epilogues that I'm planning on writing, but those will be a while in coming. We'll see how it goes.

That's it for now. If you've made it this far, then thank you for joining on one of the most intense journeys of my life. There will be more to come <3

10/20/22

Today I officially posted part 365 of Kings Game. I'm technically a few days behind posting, but I stopped worrying about that a while ago. My big goal has always been to have the initial writing done by the deadline. I like being able to disengage from my writing before I try to edit and post it. It gives me better clarity and helps me catch a lot of errors.

Either way, my initial goal has been completed. I tracked everything in a spreadsheet and it's so surreal to see it show the project as completed. Obviously, I'm still writing and still pushing forward at the same pace (hopefully a faster pace), but I completed what I initially set out to do and that feels soooo good!

10/17/22

One year ago, I started a writing challenge to write and upload at least 1,000 words per day for 365 days. Today, October 17th 2022, I completed what I set out to do.

I didn't have much of a plan when I started. I gave myself a handful of rules and started writing. I didn't even have a plan for the story. I had a vague concept I wanted to work on and I just started going from there.

It's been a hell of a ride. I've learned so much throughout the year, both about myself and about writing. I've also learned about various online publishing mechanics and social media (I suck at social media). The biggest challenge of all was simply staying on top of my writing quota. Somehow, I managed to keep up with the insane pace and have cranked out over 430,000 words in a single year. And I'm still going. 

Kings Game has taken on a life of its own. My initial plan had been to end the story at exactly one year. I'd honestly been afraid that I would have to stretch the content to reach the one year mark, but now I'm finding that I have the opposite problem. It's been a year, and I'm not done yet. There's more story to go.

At this point, I have two more arcs planned. The fourth arc has already begone. The fifth, and final, arc will wrap up the story. Because I would like to finish this story and move on to other projects, I'm going to try and accelerate the pace of the story. I average 4 months per story arc this past year. I'm going to try and halve that for the next two. Ideally, I'll be done in February of 2023, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm going to start keeping a journal as I finish off the story, just to track my thoughts and experiences as things reach a climax.

Thank you for reading my story. I cannot describe how much I appreciate it. I hope it continues to be entertaining and enjoyable, all the way to the end.

All my love,

-Cecilia Ogilvy