Progress with Dinky's Chapter 10 scene · 6:31am Sep 28th, 2023
I spent all day Monday working on this brand new scene for Dinky, since it was a public holiday and I had extra time. Though it was quite a lot of work and I was exhausted afterward.
I've given Dinky's character arc a specific theme. Dinky represents all the people in real life who are spread too thin with interesting things and superficial social interactions (online) but are lacking meaningful in-person relationships. Everyone views Dinky as someone who is happy and successful. But in reality, she's hiding a painful truth that she isn't willing to acknowledge. When she does slow down enough to feel this pain, she quickly sweeps it under the rug and gets back to her busy life.
It seems to me like someone with tremendous powers of teleportation would have this problem. Much like the modern social media resident, Dinky is not bound by geography. It's an unnatural state of being, and we are just not built to live like that. My hope is that Dinky can demonstrate this to us all and we can all witness together what it's like when she's forced through circumstance to slow down and 'touch grass' as the saying goes.
Chapter ten opens up with a very typical morning for Dinky. She visits dozens of places within an hour or so. It was... hard to write in a style that makes sense. At least it makes sense to me. It remains to be seen how well the readers will follow what's happening. But once you get the hang of what she's doing, it's fairly intuitive to follow her flow in life. It's very much like someone using the internet, really. We all engage in spontaneous and drastic changes of 'setting' whenever we use social media. Dinky's life is just like this but physically.
As for timing, I am a bit worried about whether or not I'll be able to release the chapter on time. There's a whole lot of design work that went into this, and it's going to have to pass through a few people's eyes and then discussion before I can be sure it's ready for publishing. The rest of chapter ten also needs to be polished up because it includes Dinky now, where the 2018 version did not. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 also need to have Dinky written into otherwise finished chapters in a hopefully natural way that won't disrupt the flow of anything. We're in a bit of uncharted ground now with Dinky, and her integration is my primary effort in writing as of late.
So if all goes well, I'll be publishing chapter 10 on October 7th. I'll have most of this coming weekend free to work on it. Wish me luck!
Better late than never and you earned some rest.
Funny, due to a friend of mine, i got made to see dinky as a brave and proactive foal, but of course, still has her Limits.
And social Media, i hear ya. I struggle to find friends to actual spend time with
And funny how Things turn out, it was a common like for dinky that got e a close friend, who made it that my personal oc is a good friend of dinky, with pip