Category: Updates

Happy March!  I don’t know if the weather’s been extreme where you live, but Mother Nature was having some kind of bipolar episode here in the Midwest this week!  At one point, we literally went from 77 to 17 degrees in the span of about twelve hours.  Crazy!  But that lovely taste of spring has me hoping the worst of winter is behind us.

It’s still winter in The World Will Be Waiting, which has been updated with Chapter 54!  This is the chapter I was writing two weeks ago when I posted the poll about my two female original characters.  Thank you to everyone who took a moment to vote; I appreciate your feedback!  It was interesting to see the results – apparently, there are a lot more of you who feel the same as me than I realized!  No one ever really says much about Dawn in their comments, so it’s nice to know other people do like her character.

The reason I posted that poll was because this chapter went completely off the rails!  It was supposed to start with a short Kevin-Dawn scene that would lead in to Kevin and Natalie’s trip to Jamaica, which the rest of the chapter would focus on, but it definitely did not turn out that way.  I’ve mentioned before that I am mostly plantsing this story – half planning, half flying by the seat of my pants – and this chapter is a perfect example of that.  It took me in a different direction from where I was planning to go, and I just went with it, letting it unfold the way my characters apparently wanted it.  Take that as you will; I’ll probably have more to say on the subject when I finish the story, whenever that may be.

I also discovered a trope/kink that I didn’t realize was a thing with me until it dawned on me, during the writing of this chapter, how many similar scenes I’ve written in other stories.  If you’ve read enough of my other work, you may be able to figure out what it is after reading this chapter.  I hope you enjoy it and am curious to hear your thoughts on it!

Man, I was so proud of myself back in December when I was writing chapters that also took place in December.  It felt almost like I was writing in real time, even though my story takes place eleven years ago.  I thought for sure that I would have some Christmas chapters ready to post in time for Christmas, which would have been perfect!  Unfortunately, Chapter 51 turned out to be over ten thousand words long, and Chapter 52 (which was technically the first of said Christmas chapters) unfortunately coincided with my latest Sims 4 phase and took me a month to finish.  That is why I’m just now posting the second of said Christmas chapters after Valentine’s Day. 🤦‍♀️  Fail.

But, in any case, Chapter 53 of The World Will Be Waiting is up!  Better late than never.  I haven’t opened The Sims in well over a week, and I’m officially back on track with my writing!  The streak never stopped (it’s up to 757 days now!), but I’m not having to force myself to put words on the page just to keep it going anymore.  I actually really enjoyed writing this chapter and am happy with how it turned out.  It’s more of a Dawn-centered chapter, which was a nice departure after writing several Natalie chapters in a row.  Confession time: I enjoy writing Dawn’s character more than Natalie’s.  This is not a clue to the direction the story is going in; it’s just the honest truth.  It was very evident to me as I was writing this chapter and the next one, which I’m working on now and is also very Dawn-centered so far, even though it was supposed to go back to Natalie.  Anyway, it made me curious about which of the female characters my readers prefer, so if you’re reading this story, please vote in the poll below!  I promise this is not meant to influence the plot in any way; it’s just for fun!

Also, I promise the other Boys will be back in the story at some point soon-ish as the story shifts back to them finishing the album and eventually rehearsing for the tour!  I still have a lot of story left to write, so yeah… it’s gonna be a long one.  Thanks for reading!  And, since I won’t be updating again on Tuesday, I want to wish a very happy birthday to my boy, Brian! 💙

I purposely waited until after midnight to post this update so it would fall on Nick’s birthday.  I figured, if I’m going to take a whole month to finish a chapter, I might as well wait for a Backstreet Boy’s birthday to post it on. Happy birthday, Nick!

And yes, you heard right: Chapter 52 of The World Will Be Waiting is finally finished and posted for your reading pleasure!  Sorry it took me so long.  To be honest, it was not the most exciting chapter to write, and between that and the Sims building spree I’ve been on, I didn’t spend as much time working on it each day as I could have.  The good news is that, along with finishing this chapter, I also finished the last lot in the new Sims world I’ve spent the last few weeks developing, so I won’t be spending so much time on that.  I started Chapter 53 earlier this week and am already enjoying writing it more than I did this last one, so hopefully you won’t have to wait as long to read it.  Thanks for being patient with me!

I’ll preface this post by saying upfront that I have no story update for you today.  Sorry!  The next chapter of TWWBW is started but far from being finished.  Before I get into why, I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year!  Whether I have a new chapter to post or not, I enjoy updating around New Year’s so I can reflect on the past year and update the date at the bottom of the page to reflect the new year.  Cheers to 2024!

2023 was a year of ups and downs for me and most people I know, so I was not sad to say goodbye to it.  I certainly hope our Boys have a better year ahead.  Nick and AJ in particular have had a rough time of it lately.  I was sad to see the statement AJ and Rochelle posted on Instagram today.  Although I knew they had been separated for a while, I was pulling for them to reconcile.  Rochelle is/was my favorite Backstreet wife, and I wish both her and AJ nothing but the best as they move forward with their lives.

As for Nick, no one represents the emotional rollercoaster the past year has been better than him.  Although he had some professional successes with the release of his new music and a solo tour, he’s had a lot to deal with in his personal life, between his ongoing legal issues and the recent losses in his family.  I had just finished updating last weekend when I got on Twitter and saw the news of BJ’s death.  I’m not sure how much contact Nick and BJ had had in recent years, but my heart still hurts for him and Angel.  Their family has been through so much.  I just hope things start looking up in the new year.

And, of course, I wish Kevin, Howie, and Brian health and happiness in 2024 and beyond as well!

As for me, 2023 was a successful year in terms of writing.  I set a resolution to write every day, and for the first time ever, I actually kept it!  Below is a screenshot of my year-long NaNoWriMo goal.

I fell about 15,000 words short of my word count goal, but it was never about hitting a specific number of words.  My resolution was to simply to open my story and add something to it each day – even if it was just one word.  As you can see from my recent progress updates, some days I don’t write much more than one word. 😬  Usually I have unproductive stretches like this during busy times of year, but I’ve been off work all week, so I really have no excuse except to say I’ve been busy playing The Sims instead of writing.  🤷‍♀️  I bought a new expansion pack and have been obsessively building for the past few days.  Once I finish what I’ve started and get that out of my system, I will get back to my main hobby, which is writing.  In the meantime, I’m still keeping my daily writing streak alive and am looking forward to hitting my next milestone later this month, which will be two years!

My resolution for this year is the same as last year:  to write every day and continue The World Will Be Waiting.  I would love to say “finish,” but that might be too ambitious considering how much story I still have to write. 🙃  I will finish it one day; it just might not be this year.

I want to thank everyone who’s reading.  I hope you know how much I appreciate you!  Here’s to a happy new year for all of us!

Sorry updates have been so scarce this month!  The holiday season is always a busy time of year, but along with the usual decorating, shopping, wrapping, baking, and celebrating, I’ve been busy writing the world’s longest chapter!  Well, maybe not the world’s longest, but certainly my longest chapter ever!  Seriously, Chapter 51 of The World Will Know Your Name is over 10,000 words long, which is a new record for me, surpassing the previous record I set sixteen years ago with Chapter 193 of By My Side, which was over 9,000 words.  (Yeah, I have a plugin that calculates this stuff for me because I am clearly a numbers nerd.)

There is no particular reason this chapter is so long.  There are no sex scenes, no drawn-out and overly-dramatic resuscitation scenes, no weddings, and no funerals.  It’s really just long because I self-indulgently let it be, because there was no logical place to break it up, and because I know there are many more chapters left to write in this novel and am trying to keep it under a hundred. 🙃  Consider this a month’s worth of updates all wrapped up into one!

I hit a couple of other milestones while working on this long-ass chapter.  First, I finally found out exactly what Google Docs’ character limit was when it abruptly cut me off from adding anything else to my document.  I’d always known there was some kind of limit that was somewhere between the length of Curtain Call and Broken because when I uploaded all my old Word documents to Google Drive years ago, I had to split Broken and everything longer than it into smaller documents.  Google said the limit was 1.02 million characters, but I surpassed that number back in August without any problems.  Apparently, it is actually more like 1.5 million.

It happened! 😱 I reached Google Docs’s character limit, which is not 1.02 million characters but 1,506,283 characters, apparently. pic.twitter.com/uUog8J1QEU

— Julie (@RokofAges75) December 6, 2023

The other milestone was making it to Day 700 on my writing streak yesterday!  That’s seven hundred days in a row that I’ve added something to Kevin’s story, dating back to January 22, 2022 when I was still working on the first part, My Brother’s Keeper.  If I can keep it going for another year, I’ll be over a thousand!

Thank you for sticking with me and continuing to read this story.  Assuming the next chapter is more normal in length, I hope to be back with one more update before the year ends!  Merry Christmas!🎄