I joined this site yesterday, and I had already written a little bit, though not nearly as much as I should've written up to this point. I apologize if my update seems scattered, and my English seems bad. It is not my first language, and I'm running on two hours of sleep, My brain is officially fried. Anyways, with that disclaimer out of the way, I should really start making an update. Before I got here yesterday, I had written little over 18.000 words, which isn't even close to where I would normally be on the 22nd of November. I had pretty much given up on writing, not really feeling it without a website to support me in my efforts. I think that joining this place gave me a second wind, and aside from a two hour power nap i've written all through the night, a grand total of 16.5k words. In one day. I think that might just be a record. I'm pretty pleased with myself, honestly. It's very unlikely that I'll keep this pace up, but seeing the progress bar jump all the way to 69% (don't... nu uh, no no. I know it's nice, but... no no) really motivated me, and made me feel like I might still finish it in time for the end of November. In case anyone is wondering, my story started out as a slice of life without much direction, but somehow evolved into a drama story of a family dealing with loss after a death and having to pick up daily life again. I didn't mean for it to get dark, but somehow it did. I can't help but love it, honestly. I started writing without a clear direction to work in, and somehow it brought me here. It's a far cry from the things I normally write, although most my stories have some element of darkness to them. Yet I mostly write fantasy stories, or romance, or romantacy. It's usually not something that's rooted in a more normal setting, an urban landscape, with no magic and no other species. I wanted to challenge myself, and it seems like I might have succeeded. Let's see if I can see this through. I do know I won't have a completed draft of a novel at the end of this, however. I feel like I've only scratched the surface. It's a good starting off point, however.

Welcome! I'm glad you like the progress bars, they're one of the main thing I miss about the old site. And you absolutely should be proud of yourself! Are you writing in English, or your first language? I'm learning Mandarin, and I can write 'okay', but can't image trying to write an entire novel in chinese. I'm 5x slower at reading in my second language, let alone writing 😭

Thank you for the welcome, Bethany! I am writing in English, I might not be perfect at the language, but I tend to speak and write in it more frequently than my own language, which is Dutch, in case you're wondering.I've tried writing in my own language, but for some reason I find it more challenging than English nowadays, I keep forgetting words and I get frustrated, so I switch to English anyway. I can't imagine learning Mandarin, that is a while different beast to tackle. Even being 'okay' at it and being slower at reading it is still a massive accomplishment in my opinion. Personally I attempted to learn Japanese for a while. I do alright until I come across kanji. I just don't seem to have the brainpower for those.

Oh interesting. It must be a weird experience to have so much in a second language that you drift away from your first. Do you think you'll ever think of English as you primary language, even if it wasn't first? To me Japanese is WAY harder than mandarin. I learned it for a little while in school, and the grammar was hard and they have so many different alphabets! Really like they took the characters from chinese and thought "too straighforward, let's spice things up a bit" 😂

Haha honestly it does seem like that a lot of the time, I agree. Hiragana and katakana are doable though, I can work with those if need be, but kanji just makes me want to punch my study material. I gave up on it for the time being. (I can tell I've been writing too much lately, as I just tried to ctrl+s this website...) I don't think I'll ever think of English as my primary language, especially since my direct family has very little understanding of the language, so I am forced to speak Dutch on a daily basis. For me personally, however, I even think in English by now, sometimes I even dream in English. I just like the language better, it doesn't sound as harsh as my own.