Dreamer's Sanctuary

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!

A lot has happened since my last update!  When I wrote my last blog, I was so sure Kevin was S’more on The Masked Singer.  The voice sounded like it could be him, and the clues fit almost perfectly! But after the second episode, I changed my mind – the clues no longer fit, and the voice didn’t sound as much like him.  So disappointing!  I haven’t watched since.

I also went to Nick’s show in Nashville two weeks ago!  It was so much fun!  I scored front row center tickets, so I had an amazing view and got some great videos.  They’re all posted on my YouTube channel if you’re interested in watching them.  Sadly, he did not sing “Don’t Wanna Lose You Now,” but he did sing “Lovesong” and some other awesome ’80s covers, including an amazing performance of “Wanted Dead or Alive” and an incredible medley of “I Need You Tonight” and “Right Here Waiting.”  That was one of my favorite parts.  I thought of Broken Nick and Claire during a lot of those because I listened to a lot of ’80s rock music and power ballads back in the Broken era.  But I also thought of Cary and Curtain Call when he sang “Just Want You to Know,” which was an unexpected treat – I hadn’t heard that song live in a long time!

Since I spent that whole weekend with friends, I didn’t have much time to write except to keep my streak alive by adding a few words to the story each day.  I’ve gotten back on track since then, but Chapter 47 of The World Will Be Waiting took me longer than expected to finish because of how long it turned out to be, over 8,000 words!  But it’s finally done and posted for your reading pleasure!

With this update, TWWBW has officially surpassed Curtain Call in length.  That’s based on total word count, not the number of chapters.  It’s now my fourth-longest story after By My Side, Song for the Undead, and Broken… and it’s only about 40k words from passing Broken, too, with no end in sight.  To be clear, I do have an ending point in mind, but I still have a lot left to write before I get there.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be my second-longest story.  I don’t think I’ll ever beat BMS, nor do I want to.  But I never set out to write super long stories; they just sort of happen.  Anyway, thanks for sticking with me and reading so many of my words!  I’m always appreciative!