Dreamer's Sanctuary

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!🎄

Happy December!  I’m back with Chapter 50 of The World Will Be Waiting!  I don’t really know what to say about this chapter because it’s kind of all over the place.  If you’re like me, the first scene might make you cringe, the last scene might make you cry, and the middle might make you smile.  I hope that it does and that I haven’t bored you all to death with this story!  I always appreciate hearing from those of you who are still alive and reading.

I guess I’m on the every-other-weekend updating plan for now since the holiday season is always so busy, and I haven’t been the most productive writer lately.  I do have a great start on the next chapter and am hoping to finish that this weekend, so we’ll see.  This part of the story takes place during December, which has been fun because I can listen to Christmas music while I’m writing and have it fit both the scene in my story and the season in real life.  That rarely happens; it seems like I usually end up writing Christmas scenes in the summer.  So far, it hasn’t helped me write any faster, but I’m still having fun with it, even if I am slow.  Thanks for being patient with me!

Today marks Day 666 (😈) of my writing streak, and I’m back with Chapter 49 of The World Will Be Waiting!  I had this chapter finished last weekend but decided to hang onto it for an extra week in case I wanted to do more editing before I posted it.  It didn’t quite turn out the way I planned – I went into it thinking it was going to include a sex scene, but I ended up writing a little more conversation and a little less action.  Elvis would not approve, but I doubt any of you read my stories for the smut, so hopefully that’s not too disappointing to you.  I actually hate writing sex scenes and typically only include them to further the plot and character development, which apparently was not needed at this point in the story, but I hope the chapter doesn’t seem too boring without one.  I know it’s a lot of talking.  I welcome feedback, so please feel free to share your thoughts!

As we’re approaching Thanksgiving in the U.S., I want to say how much I appreciate those of you who continue to visit my site and read my work.  Writing fanfiction has become an increasingly lonely hobby, at least in the BSB fandom.  I’ve made many friends through fanfic over the years, but I’ve also been left behind as many of them have moved on – from fanfic, from the fandom, and from me.  I’m thankful for the ones who have stuck around.  I especially want to thank those of you who take time to let me know you’re still out there reading, that I’m not just writing for my own entertainment.  I wouldn’t keep doing this if I didn’t want to, but it’s nice to know there are others who enjoy the same kind of stories I do.  Thank you!

Alas, spooky season is over, but that means Christmas is just around the corner, so it’s perfectly acceptable to start listening to A Very Backstreet Christmas on repeat!  That’s if you’re not still nonstop-streaming Nick’s new single, “Made For Us.”

I’ve had a long week  and a frustrating day of writing, but thankfully, I finished Chapter 48 of The World Will Be Waiting last weekend.  It’s now posted for your reading pleasure, and hopefully Chapter 49 will be ready by next weekend.  Thanks for your patience!