#deedlie dee

[haikujitsu]

Done for now - and probably for good unless someone wants to further the dialogue. Now to spend a few minutes on my inbox to catch up with some asks! Then I should really go do Adult Things

[haikujitsu]

The Final Countdown

I haven’t made a to-do list in a while, but it’s super important to me to finish this by the end of March, so... how about a little public shame motivation? Here’s what I’ve got to do (strikethroughs for what I’ve already accomplished):

Ch. 57 Overhaul:

- Type up edits from print draft (scene one, two, three, four, five, six)

- Find quotes for Ch. 57 and split it in half (sorry, I know, but it’s over 8k)

- Do one last pass for paranoia’s sake

- Email beta readers with beta request and final message

Substance edit for remaining chapters:

- find and type up summary of beta notes (aka the fix-it list)

- Chapter 58

- Chapter 59

- Chapter 60

- Chapter 61

- Chapter 62

Polish edit for March/April buffer:

- Chapter 49 

- Chapter 50

- Chapter 51

- Chapter 52

Post-beta-read substance edit:

Chapter 57a

Chapter 57b

If I can get all this done, then I’m essentially done with SoaD (minus the minor final-polish edits which I prefer to do right before publishing anyway). It’s so close I can taste it. Wish me luck.

[haikujitsu]

"Fire emoji" Valerie.

(from waay back and that unpopular opinion meme)

Hmm, you know I can kind of see Val as being biracial. I don’t headcanon it hard or anything, but it’s a thought.

[haikujitsu]

Be Warned

I’m about to post a ton of con pics. Blacklist the hashtag #comikaze2016 if you don’t wanna see ‘em!

[haikujitsu]

SoaD Progress Report

Quick update before I go to bed: Finished editing the print draft! All 76 pages, wowzers. So, you ask, is the rough draft done? No, I says, I gotta type all that up, plus the handful of unwritten scenes still unwritten, plus whatever minor gaps I left along the way. But I’m CLOSE!

[haikujitsu]

Halfway through the month, halfway through the word count! Onward!

[haikujitsu]

pal im just hecka curious about your writing process so like...what exactly are you doing with soad right now? And what comes next? it looks real hardcore

Ahaha, well I tend to get carried away with this sort of thing. ^^;

Still, it’s what works for me and it gets the story written. Ridiculously elaborate or not, I’mma stick to it. Breakdown under the cut!

Right now I'm in what I like to think of as the grinding stage (as in level-grinding where you do a bunch of boring stuff to buff up your character). I have the basic plot points mapped out and some messy partial scenes hacked into chapters, but they need to be filled out and cleaned up before they'll become a coherent whole.

I've found it's most helpful to print out a draft and do it all in one go, working page by page, so I have:

A rough draft (in the purple folder) which is a hodgepodge of scenes from the original draft of SoaD written back in 2014 and ones produced by freewriting in later Nanowrimos, now sorted into chapters and with a handy bullet point list of scenes.

My Plot Wall of Doom which helps me figure out what scenes happen in which order, where I need to add scenes, and keeps everything straight.

A brand-new notebook for all those scenes that I didn't write the first go-round.

Now I’m just working through it scene by scene, page by page, from beginning to end, writing in parts where they're missing, editing/expanding/rewriting existing scenes, making sure the characters are acting consistently and that it all comes together and makes sense.

That involves filling out a lot of in-between stuff that I was too lazy to do on the first pass, too: Scene setting, having the characters move and do things as they talk, putting dialogue in more logical order, weaving in sensory descriptions, digging into the POV character’s mindset. 

Today I'm mostly in the notebook, writing a new scene for Danny so that a scene three chapters down the road makes sense. He needs to interact with a particular character and end up in a particular place (mentally and physically) by the end of it, but otherwise I have no idea what happens here, so I'm feeling my way through it line by line.

I realized somewhere in the middle that I had too much going on (the inner monologue, dialoguing with this character, an action segment, going to a new location) for a single scene, and decided to break it into two. 

That means another card on my plot wall and probably some chapter juggling, but I'll worry about that after I get this scene written out.

So yep, that's all there is to it: Write, edit, write, move things on my plot wall, rinse, repeat. I plan to keep chugging along until I get at least to the four-chapter mark (p. 33 I think.)

After that, I'll alternate between doing the above and typing all those handwritten edits into my digital manuscript. I have to get to here before I’ll start making updates again, for anyone who was wondering.

Once the edits are typed up, I can move into a more active stage: Get feedback from beta readers, do another pass (or two) on each individual chapter, then send them on their merry way to you readers!

[haikujitsu]

SoaD Progress Report

Almost done. Will post prolly in the next hour or so. I’m just going to read over the whole thing to make sure the parts I just added actually make sense, then do the formatting, A/N, and it’ll be good to go.