I've been mentoring a grad student on "de-scoping". It's time for me to do that here too:

- The markup on iisaw's older fic will get sent to him as-is, after my next visit to my old city (ink-on-paper markup is filed with old creative writing projects; I only brought active projects with me). I had problems with the direction the story went, and should have either finished the markup or bailed on it when that occurred instead of shelving it.

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The good news is, I have a permanent job now (and it's one that I love). The less-good news is that life prior to this was not conducive to hobbies.

My FIM-related queue is:
- Finish marking up iisaw's fic and send the last section to him.
- Do a detailed analysis of Bad Horse's code and dataset and send the conclusions to him.
- Get my incomplete short-ponyfics in order.

Timeframe for these is unknown.

I'm still alive, and still enjoying reading about ponies; that's the good news.

The less-good news is that I haven't made significant progress on writing and I don't expect to soon. This is primarily due to a combination of job-search fatigue and burnout.

(This has also been affecting my pre-reading time; apologies to iisaw for the delay.)

This will resolve itself in due time, no worries.

Writing-related:
- Organized my notes for "LAN Party of the Night" into a coherent outline. This still needs work before anything gets written.
- Continued making notes for "Time Loop Logic". I have a backlog of entries to add to that, and procrastination continues.
- Started pen-and-ink notes for "Gone Horribly Right". This is going to need decent character hooks before it can get written (for now, it's just a plot outline, which won't get the reader emotionally invested).

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Writing-related:
- Finished pre-reading Luna Cypher. Iisaw has indicated that he won't be making a second editing pass, so this task is now done. And the story was nifty .
- Wrote on-paper notes for two more "Time Loop Logic" entries (contributions to MLP Time Loops). These plus the already-queued entry are at the top of my writing to-do list.

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Writing-related:
- Continued prereading chapters of Luna Cypher for iisaw. First pass pre-reading has been done out to Chapter 15. There will be a second pass, but that'll most likely be after the story is finished (a polishing pass).

Distractions for the last couple of months:

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Writing-related:
- Pre-read more chapters for iisaw. I've given feedback through Chapter 6, and Chapter 7 is in my to-mark-up queue.

Distractions for this month:
- Preparing to host an annual barbecue. This happened, went decently, but was a big enough project to keep me busy.

To-do list:
- Mostly unchanged from December.

Token writing-related accomplishment:
- Pre-read two chapters of a new story by iisaw.

This was a lot of fun, and I'm flattered that I was asked to help. I look forward to future chapters.

Things that have kept me busy:
- Wrapping up loose ends from work.
- Preparing to move back to my old city while I look for new work.
- A non-writing-related coding project.

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Reason for being busy in January: Work. This will be true for the rest of February, also. My contract is ending this month, and there's quite a bit I need to finish before then.

The good news is that I'll have more time for writing and other hobbies while looking for work.

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Procrastination excuses for December: finishing work before the holidays, running around getting holiday logistics in order, prep for an upcoming gaming campaign, and much-needed downtime. Reading the entirety of "MLP Time Loops" accounted for a lot of that downtime (it's been added to the "comedy favourites" list).

The to-do list is unchanged from December's update, though I've made minor progress on a couple of fronts.