Just Another Brick in the Wall · 6:46am Aug 23rd, 2012
College. I dunno what to expect, I dunno what to prepare for. I'm headed out of state--like, way, way out of state--for college on Saturday. It's gonna be a new start, a fresh experience. I won't be familiar with anything or anyone. So, it's hard to make predictions for what the future holds for me.
But, I am a writer. And writers can almost always make two predictions: A. There will be writing. B. There will be delays.
In this case, both are true. The story of Roads is a long, difficult one that is going to require a lot of work on my part to finish. Originally, I had planned to write "Stories" as a novel-length fic, followed by two sequels to be written at my leisure. A few months ago, I realized that the sequels tied into the beginning of the story more than I had originally planned, and have since decided to bundle them as an epic. Which means that there are still several thousand words left to go before Roads' journey is done. So, there will be writing. There will always be writing.
But there will also be delays. Particularly this week. Now, ordinarily, I shoot for about 7-10 days per chapter. Less, if it's one of the shorter chapters. Sadly, the upcoming installment of "Stories" is to be a shorter chapter (It's looking like it's going to be about 7-8k words), but with all the lag of one of the bigger chapters. Sorry about that. It's just that I'm incredibly busy, what with packing for college and trying to see my friends the last few times before I leave them forever (and by forever, I mean for the three months until I come home for Thanksgiving break. They seem about the same to me. I'm temporally shortsighted), so I've only been managing to get about ~1k words in per day. Which is way less than my average of 3k per night. Add that to the fact that I've skipped a few nights of writing due to drinking/being hungover, and you get a very, very tired author who is very, very behind on his schedule.
At present, the draft of Chapter X of "Stories" is only about 6k words long. So, it's gonna be another night or two before it's done. And then I have to send it to my editor. And the thing about my editor is, he works a night shift. In a different time zone. So, usually, whenever I'm awake, he's asleep, and vice versa. Usually we just try to get one or two nights in where we both are willing to stay up/wake up early to finish each chapter. Which is great. I have a fantastic time editing my fics all at once. But the thing is, with me going off to college, I'm gonna lose a couple of days of potential editing. And most of those days happen to be his days off for this week. So, I don't know when Chapter X is getting edited. But I'll get to it as soon as I can.
But wait, there's more! I got really dissatisfied with looking back on the first few chapters of "Stories." So I decided to rewrite them. I already did Chapter I, and just recently I finished a draft of Chapter II. But here's the deal: I like bundling my updates when possible. It's not very entertaining to anyone who's caught up on the story to release a story update that's just a rewrite of an old chapter, and it also sucks to release an update with a new chapter but have the old beginning still intact, because that means any new readers who see the story on the EqD updates page are gonna have to wallow through the cruddy old beginning. So, I want to release the Chapter II rewrite with Chapter X. But only the draft is done! And remember what I said about hit-and-miss editing scheduling?
Exactly.
So, long story short, I'm hitting some snags and delays right now. But I'm working on it. The new Chapter II, and the Chapter X update will be ready for you guys as soon as I can swing it. And then I'll be back to my regular updating schedule after that. Hopefully. Like I said, college. It might slow me down. I really have no idea.
But don't worry. More "Stories" is coming. Much, much more.
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the fact that I'm spending a lot of time working on this short story I've got going. I can't really say much about it now, but hopefully it's gonna be totally worth it. More information on that later. Anyway, busy, busy, busy.
You're a freakin' slow writer, you know that?
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I just take my time. I like to savor every sentence. Like a delicious word-steak, seared to perfection on a flaming keyboard of awesomeness.
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I was being hypocritical, if you didn't notice.