Alright. New game plan.

So I have a bit of a new idea of what to do now.

Because I was running on some accidental self-imposed restrictions I was trying to write my current project in order, from beginning to end, in order to do a serial release. I'm now realizing that was probably the worst thing I could have done for it. I was running my mental and creative faculties dry in an attempt to plan out everything such that I didn't write myself into a corner. What I didn't really bargain for was how multithreaded and complex the story was, and let me be the first to tell you, never try and write a complex story beginning to end. It's exactly why I found that I needed to rewrite the entirety of the chapters I had written.

I distinctly remember some writing advice I received from a teacher back in school: "Always start writing your story from the end." I figured I was doing enough just by having the vague events I wanted to happen throughout, but it turned out that was nowhere near enough. She meant it literally: Actually write a draft of your final chapter first. I need a big, final goalpost on the page, with a set of other goalposts representing major events that I can focus on leading up to, also on the page for me to reference to. I think I'm going to heed that. All I will do serially now, most likely, is my final proofread leading up to releasing the chapters.

Another thing that was doing: It greatly inflated my beginning. After mapping out those goalposts with estimated chapter numbers, I realized that there was a massive gap of "Not much big stuff" in the beginning. I had thoroughly mapped out how I thought I wanted the first leg of the story to go, and unfortunately it resulted in far too much time passing before things got "good." Even I was like "Alright, when can I finally get through this front matter and get to the juicy bits?" Like, there's a problem when you're saying that when the thing you're writing has the "Thriller" tag on it.

So here's the new plan: I still want to release some things in the more near future while my big project is in the oven. Therefore, I'm going to aim to release side stories set in the world in an anthology format. That's a more casual, more isolated thing I can release serially which will still give people a good look at the world I've been putting together, as well as just a good break from trying to make sure all my plot threads are in order and this actually flows into the big payoff I just wrote and oh dear Celestia the pacing's all off and... Yeah, that stuff. Short stories have a lot less of that.

I hope these kind of journal style entries are entertaining and/or helpful. I want to make sure I'm documenting my process and all of my mistakes throughout it, if only for future me. Now if you'll allow me, I have a bombastic climax to write :3

-Spoon