three cheers for literacy

I'm nervous about doing another of these log posts because when they happened somewhat weekly, it was massively depressing to have to drop them when the shit and the fan met for a torrid love affair... Yet here I am! Random stuff that doesn't feel particularly post-specific. I guess I just want to chat ;D

General status/Last week:

I not only discovered the "copyholder" function on Scrivener (basically an additional way to break down your screen, adding a little read-only window at the bottom of your editor pane), but also that you can show a previous snapshot in there. I'm doing A LOT of rewriting at the moment because I added a couple of subplots, and being able to restart a scene from scratch while having the copy of the previous version below + a preview of my bookmark of the updated scene outline in the Inspector side-pane is really super neat.

Once again, I'm thinking I really should sit down with the Scrivener manual someday and have a good read. Then I remember it's nearly 800 page-long. But the number of times when I think "it would be really neat if..." for something small (or not!) and tadam! It's already somewhere in there! only ever increases.

I'm enjoying this round of structural edits!! Obviously, it is only the beginning, and is going slowly. My pace tracker is saying at this pace, I'll probably be done at the end of December lolsob. But that's fine, I'm hoping that it'll pick up a bit once I find my feet with this new way of doing things.

Additionally, something ultra cool that's happening is that I seem able to focus for longer periods than I have in a long time. I believe it's because I've done so much of the thinking work ahead of time and have such a detailed revision plan. A lot of the bigger questions already have answers, and it's about how to make it all fit into the current scenes (and a bunch of rewriting, clearly!) as well as a bit of puzzle solving as I move different character introductions and dialogues around. I think that'll calm down once we get past the intro chapters?? (Then there can be new types of problems XD)

Projects:

• Soul Thief structural edits!

What's coming up next week?

More structural edits, clearly :D And also I want to write to the folks who volunteered to beta the Cursed Witch to check if they're still up for it and confirm timelines. (Prepare thyselves!! >:D)

Feel free to share your writing/creativity plans if any for the coming week, too, if you'd like! What's going on with you?

*screams into cushion* I love this story so much

It feels so good to step into this world again and spend time with the characters. I think it's one of the most original settings I've ever created and I'm enjoying it so much. I'm describing places and thinking, "I want to visit there too!!!" Later, I know I'll be describing a haunting location where many people die and I won't want to visit, but! It's still a cool building that I'd like to see from afar!! This is such a good time.

I think it also feels good to simply be writing words again. I have a bunch of stuff to rewrite, missing scenes, and so on. Stepping into a character's mind and experiencing the world from their perspective feels so nice. I spent most of March planning these revisions, and most of April finishing up the editing and proofreading of the Cursed Witch. (We do not talk about how far behind I am on my GYWO pledge 😨) It's just nice to putter around with words again! And thanks to all the planning I did last month, it feels like informed and useful changes rather than the kind of editing where I sputter about, unsure if my changes really improve anything or might not be making things worse actually. Of course, I could be lying to myself about that, but that's okay! I'm still embracing the good feels :D

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The three weeks event celebrating Dreamwidth is starting today!! \o/ There's already a fresh friending meme posted over the comm thanks to matsushima!

Over at bnha_fans, we're running a Rec Fest again, and I posted the announcement on the first day for the first time in what feels like 70 years ;v; XD Sadly, it seems like the bug in which, if a journal or comm is set to default to nsfw/18+, it won't show up on the Latest Page feed for the event even if the post itself is marked "No Ages Restriction". Sad that the comm contributions won't show up there, but since this post will be, hey! Boku no Hero Academia/My Hero Academia fans out there, we're running a Rec Fest if you're looking for new fanworks or have some you'd like to rec! :D

Looking forward to see the various ways people participate this year! :D If this is your first time (or not, for that matter), you might enjoy the blogging questionnaire ysabetwordsmith shared a few years ago. That was a good time, replying to a question a day and reading people's answers!

I just finished proofreading the latest draft that has aaaaall the changes that came from beta-reader feedback *stares into void* As usual, this is the only step of my process in which my word count gets smaller, although not that much (just by 1%!). Final (#2) draft stands at 58k words.

Unfortunately I've also reached the stage where I hate everything because clearly I'm a garbage person who can only write garbage stories etc etc etc *sigh* I wish that wasn't part of the process. Every time I finish reading a book and the author in the acknowledgements goes "Thanks to my spouse for talking me off the ledge whenever I started hating this story/stopped believing in it/etc" I grumble "WHERE IS MY SPOUSE!!!" lol. I'm going to wait a couple of weeks for the yucky feelings to scatter before contacting the kind souls who volunteered to beta-read. I was thinking of giving folks 5 weeks to beta again? I realise this might be smack-bang in the middle of end of academic year shenanigans for students and teachers though, so I'll have to ask and see if I should wait to align the timeline... I would prefer that over getting the feedback at random times over many months if possible, because I know my brain is going to start working on stuff as soon as the feedback comes in.

I also have a pretty graph!


I'm never tracking daily again!! Lol. I guess it's not really actionable. It reflects the rest of my life more than the writing. "Here I wasn't home... here I was sick... here something stressful was happening..." I like the idea of weekly tracking more, just like I like yearly challenges like getyourwordsout more than once-off events like NaNoWriMo: even if it never feels like I'm doing enough, it's good to see that consistency even small pays off over time. Daily tracking is never consistent!!

You can also see how I went crazy last weekend, like "Fuck the plaaaaan I'm finishing THIS WEEKEND even if it KILLS ME LEROYYYYYY JENKIIIINS" and then it killed me and I wasn't anywhere near finished, but really burnt out instead. I did One Last Push this morning because the end felt so within sight. But the bad feels are still here :C And I had to change the graph to add more days and I'll have to write myself a tutorial about that because I fuck things up every time I try to tweak something.

What comes next? Well, for the witch, contacting beta-readers, getting feedback, praying there are no more structural issues lurking (but if there are, so be it), let the feedback simmer. Starting in a couple of weeks.

More immediately, I'm taking a few days' breather then I'm going to start on the Soul Thief structural edits. I have the detailed plan, what needs to change, what needs to go, 15 new scenes to write for all the missing bits... I'm guessing it'll take a few months. I'm looking forward to it, though, and hopeful I'm truly solving the major problems early before any beta-reader takes a look!

I find it interesting, carrying the hopelessness of the Cursed Witch together with the joy/excitement/hope about the Soul Thief. Obviously, that one is incomplete so it still could be anything. This is one of the reasons I always want to find ways to write more. It's not just because "moar words moar better rawwwr", but if I have other projects in various stages to immediately lose myself into, I don't dwell as much on the bad, nor feel it as much. In 2020 and 2021, for Several Reasons (tm) I was writing about 20k words/month, and I think writing so much really fed into itself well: like, sure, damn, that story didn't work out the way I hoped it would. But rather than think "I am This is crap" I could simply believe that the next story would be better, because I'd already started it, and if nothing else I wouldn't repeat the exact same mistake(s) with it.