"Do It Right" is Hard Sometimes · 2:53am Aug 8th, 2016
So, initially, I had planned to release “Grading on a Bell Curve,” the next short story involving Sunset Shimmer in the alternate timeline set up in Applications, last Monday. When I had an “emergency vacation,” that threw off my timetable quite a bit. So I retargeted it for this Monday.
That being said, I finally took the time to do the last few points of my personal editing process. What is this, you ask?
1. Write the story.
2. Have a couple beta readers look at it.
3. Let it “bake” for a week without reading or touching it so I can get some mental distance.
4. Go through the comments and edits left by beta readers.
5. Get it polished up with some sort of advanced grammar check (I used Grammarly this time)
6. Physically print it out and do an “audible” edit where I read the entire story to myself.
7. Have Dream Painter (read: wife) proofread it.
8. Get the last edits in.
9. Poke at it a few more times because I’m OCD.
10. Publish!
One problem. When I got to step 6 today, I started ripping the story apart and I realized...I was getting bored. When the author gets bored with his own story, that’s a bad sign. When I suddenly remember a bunch of other things I want to do? Not good.
Soooo...now that I’ve bled all over the physical copy of Bell Curve and I need to go buy a new red pen...yeah, you’re going to have to wait a bit longer.
Stupid perfectionist tendencies. I blame Twilight and Rarity.
But, in truth, that is what all this is about. During my “emergency vacation,” I ended up reading some of my non-MLP stories and realized they’re pretty darn good. However, I’m out of practice when it comes to writing. I need to get my head back in the game. That’s what these stories are for: to learn and to shake off the cobwebs.
I guess I could do my follow-up to Lost Time, but seriously, that story completely K.O.’d me emotionally. Not sure I’m ready for that. Although one of these days I need to do my follow-up for “Taste of the Good Life” by Eakin.
But what I need to do is write. On this vacation, I didn’t do that and I lost a ton of momentum for these stories. I need to get that back. So, I’ll throw this up on the blog, beg your indulgence and get back to work.
