I'm heading out. It's a shame, I was enjoying posting again, as well as just talking about writing. When I have new socials I'll post but for now, take care everyone.
Hi. Long time no post. How’s everyone doing? Surviving what’s left of 2023? I hope so.
Anyway, before 2024 starts, I thought I’d break down 1) where I’ve been and 2) what I’ve been up to. This update is now 3 months overdue after all.
What’s Been Going On
So, the last time I posted an update was April. I was firmly in “Act 2/3 territory” back then, so where does that leave me? Don’t worry, I won’t drag out the reveal.
As of September 27th, draft 3 of The Case of the Crawling Shadows is done. We all have read over the book, and are at a point where we're ready to share it with people.
I can't overstate how happy I am about it - we've been working at this thing since April 2022, and we're finally here. We can start talking about publishing this thing. I CAN SHOW PEOPLE THE BOOK.
Back in September, I intended to do a post about it. There's a draft announcement saved on my computer somewhere for that purpose.
I remember reaching the end of the book, and then scrolling back to the top as I usually do. I didn't find any outstanding comments, or weird spelling/grammar, or even a sentence I thought looked funky. As I read through, searching for weak points, none materialised. I was happy with the book.
It was the weirdest feeling, almost melancholy. For those of you who don't know, I've never finished a novel before. Starting them isn't a problem, but I tend to keep going and just...abandon them. This was a first. I enjoy writing, and it was a bit sad to not be writing this story that consumed a large portion of my life any more.
So, I told the others I was done with my side of the edit, stepped away for a bit, and then threw myself into some writing exercises to feed the itch. The others finished their edits and read-throughs not long after.
From here, the plan is simple. The three of us are sending it to some beta readers (ie: close friends to double check things) on Tuesday. After that I’d like to send it out for a sensitivity read, do tweaks according to both sets of feedback, then…yeah. We’re good.
The plan at this point is self-publishing so @fioriisketches and @lazyninjartist have the freedom to design the inside and outside of the book. I'm hype to see what we can do with the layout.
What Else Has Been Going On
So, it's been 3 months, and there's been a bit going on between now and September. First and foremost, I started drafting pieces of book 2 (yes, we want to do another book) and doing character studies in November. I'm probably going to pick up a 4thewords subscription next year after how much fun I had during NaNo 2023.
December I took a break from writing a bit to compensate for how much I was doing in November. The plan is to ease back into it Janurary/February - then again, my plans have failed before.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to what 2024 brings - I'll hopefully see you all there. For now, I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite parts of The Case of the Crawling Shadow. @lazyninjartist handled the opening section during draft 1, then @fioriisketches and I came in to embelish and adjust dialogue. It's one of the chapters that's changed the least since we started, I think.
Today is a bit of a funny day, so I decided to do some editing. At the time, I was kind of surprised how far into the book I had gotten editing wise.
I am also horrified at how much extra work/chapters I keep adding.
When I edit, I have a few duties I try to do. These are as follows:
Check continuity
Catch weird spelling/grammar
Adjust pacing where need be
The third one is the problem child. You see, prior to this I would predominantly write drabbles that would be anywhere between 20-5000 words in length. As a result, the pacing of a novel-sized text is not something I've had to think about at any point in my writing.
Granted, I read a lot of books and have gone "oh boy this is SLOW" or "oh shit I guess this a race now", so I can identify pacing issues. Applying it to the novel though has been, at times, a nightmare.
During draft 1, I and the others would write disjointedly because it made getting the words down easier. We all wrote at different times and for different lengths, so it made sense.
Sometimes I would write drabbles like I normally did to explore the characters, and they would just end up in the book. When that happened, I would try to "stitch up" the bits I wrote to make sense in the story we had written so far. It's only in drafts 2 and 3 I've started to do things in order. As a result, there are some chapters with some wild pacing.
At least four times during editing Draft 3, I have split one massive, long chapter into 2 more easy to consume chapters. Conversely, I've found thin, sad chapters I've had to plump up with character moments and hints of back story. I'm not even the only member of the team doing this - @fioriisketches wound up doing the same "split the big chapter" approach when fixing up a late game chapter where Makoto has a run in with the culprit.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, every time I go to look at the chapter list to see how far along I am in the editing process, I notice that I am adding more chapters to edit, and thus can't just count how many chapters are left.
I am firmly in the end of Act 2/start of Act 3 turf, but oh my god, it is both funny and horrifying how much more writing we've ended up with in my attempts to make the pace quicker at times.
So, the last two months have been moving at a rapid pace. The third draft feels like it's about halfway done, but it's still too early to start talking about beta-reading and whatnot.
Since I'm working at the moment, I thought it might be nice to talk about my writing/editing routine. It might be nice in terms of catharsis, as well as gives me a little break from my edit today.
So, let me break down how I survive working on this and my job as a pathology collector. Spoiler alert: this is a very, very long way of saying "take some breaks".
What Is Your Current Writing Routine?
Unless I have time off, I only edit on Sundays. Sometimes I'll get spicy and do some the Saturday evening, but more often than not I'm dicking around playing video games and decompressing from work.
Now, sometimes I'll plan some extra writing time in around work, but that can be a little bit of a nightmare.
How Long Do I Work For?
I don't talk about myself much online, so let me give you some context. I'm in pathology, and my roster is a mess. In fact, Wednesday and Thursday I don't know where I am until 6am that morning, or the previous afternoon if my boss has had time to plan. Monday and Tuesday meanwhile I work two shifts that are both three hours long - this used to be eight hours accumulative, but the evening shift had its hours cut. Friday I work five hours and on alternate Saturdays I work three and a half hours.
So, this sounds manageable, right?
Here's where it gets weird. First of all, the mornings of Monday, Tuesday or Friday I can get redeployed elsewhere, working either longer or farther away. One time, I worked from 8-2pm, then 3-6pm about 30 minutes away from the first location. Early in my career, my boss was so short staffed I wound up working close to 12 hours. Never again.
Wednesday and Thursday meanwhile I've more or less been locked into a 9.5 hour shift because few other staff know how to work that particular room.
In summary, most weeks I work about 36 hours, not including the weekend or redeployment. That translates to 75.5 hours per fortnight, just 30 minutes shy of full time hours here in Australia.
How Do I Manage These Hours and Writing?
For those of you who haven't worked in my industry, there can sometimes be gaps as wide as 2 hours between clients. During this time, it's best to do the store orders, stock counts and any miscellaneous tasks since there are a lot of those.
However, doing all these tasks take up about 15-20 minutes of your day. In fact, it's pretty easy to complete them all in the first hour if no clients show up.
In my company at least, you can be sent to rooms where there is nobody but you on site, and your clients are in the single digits.
You can probably see where I'm going with this.
Once the daily chores are done and there's no clients, I will whip out my journal and set a timer for 10-15 minutes, taking advantage of the excess float time. If I'm doing a big chapter, I might even do a draft on my lunchbreak if it's long enough.
In fact, a good chunk of Draft 1 was written like this.
This Sounds Exhausting
Well, that's because it is. There's no nice way to say it, but there's a reason there were 5-6 years where I posted nothing on Tumblr. Writing on the job takes away time that I might have otherwise used to rest in between clients.
It's all about finding balance. I do it on days I have the energy, but if I had a busy day or things have been going badly I won't touch my pen.
I'm sure most of you have heard a variation of this advice: find the gaps in your day, maybe get up earlier or stay up later if you need to, so you can allocate that time to write. That's basically what I do, but sometimes you need to take a break.
The problem for me while writing Draft 1 of Case of the Crawling Shadow, at least for a while, I would try to cram writing into every spare gap I had. This is a side effect of doing Camp Nanowrimo in 2022, but even going into Draft 2 I tried to keep up that momentum.
I wore myself down until I feel like a nub of a person. I was trying to do 3 chapters worth of editing a week, and suffered for it.
What's Happening Now?
At this point, my goal is to finish the Case of the Crawling Shadow's third draft so we can start sending it to beta readers. It's about 50% done, but going slowly. My body is still a bit grimy from the whirlwind drafting process, and I've been working resting into my editing time.
With any luck, we'll finally be able to start getting the ball rolling this year. I'm pretty excited for it. For now, I am alternating editing this chapter and building a McMansion in Sons of the Forest.
So, it's been a hot minute since I talked about Cryptologists. During the Christmas period, the three of us had a blanket agreement to take a break, and take a break we did. I buggered off to the US for a spell, then came home jetlagged and ready to get back to editing.
At the moment, we're in the third draft. It is the most excruciating part of the editing process thus far.
At this point in writing The Case of the Crawling Shadow, there's really only two big things we're fixing narrative wise. That <i>should</i> be a good thing. Sure, it'll be a lot of work, if the three of us just fix <i>that</i> we're good to go, right??
Nope.
You see, the problem I've been reading The Cast of the Crawling Shadow for so long, that I keep catching myself skimming. Given how this is meant to be our last draft, if I don't catch any dodgy spelling or weird sentences before this draft is done, it's probably going to end up in the book. Sure, we have beta readers, but it seems unfair to give them a book that isn't ready to be published.
One way I've tried to get around it is using Hemingway, doing the structural edit one chapter at a time. For people who've never used it, it's designed more for short form writing and not-so-much editing a novel. That said, the change in document layout has been great for my tired eyes and its focus on clarity forces me to reassess our chunkier sentences.
Unfortunately, Makoto, Alex, Cissy and Tim all use a lot of adverbs in their dialogue.
To be fair, that's just how people talk - in fact, it's how I talk. That said, I can't help but cringe every time I see the word "just" shoved into a sentence. While I'm not aiming to remove them all or even get to the limit per chapter, it's significant enough that every time someone opens their mouth I wind up going "can they word this differently and still sound natural". If the answer is no, it stays.
One of the big jobs I've had the last few weeks is changing a major plot element in the book. Originally, we wanted to have Scott appear after his murder and confuse Makoto about his time of death since for the first half of the book he's working under the assumption ghosts aren't real in this setting. Due to a change in focus, we ended up axing this idea so the last 3 weeks I've been going in and removing references to ghost Scott.
I'm doing this at the same time as the structural edit.
My general rule right now is doing 1-3 chapters a week since right now that's all my schedule is allowing for. With any luck, all 3 of us will finish our read throughs and edits soon.
If you live completely alone here’s your friendly reminder to step outside for a bit before the worse part of the existential dread starts to set in again.
You know the one. The layer underneath the regular existential dread that you only get to access if you don’t leave your apartment for three days.
Go to a coffee shop or walk your dog or something.
Talk to yourself out loud. Play your music out loud. Laugh out loud when the chance arises. That feeling when you haven't used your voice for a while, or the silence that comes from a lack of human voices is a one-stop ticket to The Dread.
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