Ange | Author A. M. Shilling

WIP update: I only managed 567 words tonight, between fixing up some of last night's writing and forging ahead with the next chapter of THIAW. I'm just too tired from insomnia + a full day at work to write more than that. It's still great progress, though! #WritingCommunity #AmWriting

Oh no.

Not at all, which is why it was so easy for me to scrap him. 😂

Thank you!

Yes. In THE DEVOURING's first draft, I had a very minor crime lord show up but ended up relegating him to backstory and dialogue references in later drafts. I changed so many aspects of the plot that his appearance was no longer necessary.

5000 words written so far for my vampire novella, and I'm not even at the halfway point yet! 🫠

Airtable is excellent! I haven’t used it in a while, but it was so useful to me in the past.

Thank you! It was fun to put together.

Me too, I love data. 🥰

A Power BI report of 2025 writing data.

A Power BI report of 2025 writing data for THE DEVOURING specifically.

I just spent the past hour recreating my Excel pivot table charts from my 2025 daily writing tracker in a more robust Power BI report. Now I can view all the data as well as filter it by WIP, month, stage of writing, and day of the week.

I might be the biggest nerd in the world.

Makes sense to me! I would be the same, which is why I love plotting and outlining.

Thanks, me too. What did you discover about your author self?

I don’t think it’s over-described at all! It’s well-balanced to me and perfectly cinematic.

You’ve got this, Jae!!

I love this snippet of Kenzie every single time you post it.

I revise in order too. 😂

Same! I loved his werewolf horror. I’ll have to pick this up soon.

I write in order. I have no idea how to write a later scene if I don’t know everything that happened leading up to it.

Imagine this: you, curled up in your favorite reading nook, following along as a pair of morally questionable but very attractive protagonists investigate an occult conspiracy involving an eldritch god.

Sign up to be an ARC reader today! forms.gle/SgMBu5wnhn1W...

#WritingCommunity #Booksky 💙📚

I hope a similar setup works for you!

If this works, I’m going to be unstoppable.

Not anymore. It stung pretty badly for the first hour. 😣

I'm expecting this to be a game changer for me, but I can't say for certain until I finish THIAW and pick COTBM back up. Fingers crossed, though! I will definitely post updates after trying it for a while. (fin)

COTBM Word Count Chunking (awful title I know) Reach 10,000 words by 2026-12-31 0% Past Progress (0 words) / Today (0 Words) Complete THIAW Draft 1 Reach 10,000 words by 2026-03-31 55% Past Progress (5,526 words) / Today (0 Words)

I set up a new Goal with a target of 10k words, set an end date far in the future, and set the start date as the next day I intend to work on COTBM (in this case, April 1, but that may change). Every time I fill up this progress bar, I move the start date forward, clearing the bar for a new round.

The solution: divide longer projects into 10k-word chunks. It's incredible seeing the progress bar fill up quickly as I write my vampire novella for MMM. I feel successful, like I'm actually accomplishing my goals. This is what working on COTBM is missing, and it's easy to do in TrackBear.

I'm currently in the midst of Monster Mash Madness, the 10k-word monsterotica novella challenge hosted by @fromtreetobook.bsky.social, and had a revelation this morning about how I might set myself up for success with longer, bigger projects, to avoid the issue I wrote about in this older thread.

I'm pretty amazed that after almost a lifetime of writing (fanfiction, mostly), I'm still learning a ton about myself as a writer: my process, my preferences, how to motivate myself. 🧵

Oh my god. Universe, please... Leave us alone! 😭

Yikes! So glad you were able to avoid an accident!

That's so awesome, Hope! Congrats!