ETA on chapter · 12:01pm Dec 27th, 2015
Man... two weeks? I don't know. I took a week off from work and my hands don't feel much better, so I've been leery of doing the chapter. Then there's the fact that Arcanist Ascendant decided it's time to take a hard look at the earlier chapters and fix them up to our current standards. I read through them for the first time in like eight months and, yeah, he's right. Those look pretty patchy to me now, and AA is noticing things I didn't, as well. This means we'll be splitting our attention a bit.
AA is being gung-ho about it, too. We've got a GDoc of the first chapter, and in the span of a day he filled it with comments and suggestions. I haven't resolved most of them yet and now I'm thinking about it, so I guess I'll go and deal with some of that right now.
The good news is, today I also did some work on the latest chapter. Yeah, I changed my mind on something, cut 1,100 words, and then went off to read a book. Progress!
I would say tack the time off to let your hands heal or find some form of relief and work on fixing your earlier chapters.
we can weight for a new chapter if need be.
Do yourself a favour and don't. I've never once yet seen a story that ended up better for this rather than half-finished and dead. No author ever ends up liking their old stuff after actually having some time to improve and look it over again, but endlessly revising stuff isn't really the solution to that. It's just one of those things you simply have to deal with.
3645774 I'm pretty sure Luna always shoots first anyway so long as Celestia isn't looking.
It's sort of legal and sort of not. But if my pain management tool makes it impossible to write, what's the point?
3645670 My job has a rule for minimum work hours per week, is the problem, and really, adding another few hundred words daily to what I already do is comparatively not a huge deal.
3645675 I forgot about that. God, that movie was nuts.
3645708 We'll see, my man. But if it somehow ends up being a choice between fixing up the early chapters and keeping a semi-reasonable new chapter schedule, of course I'll pick the latter.
And while I'm talking to you anyway, have you ever taken a look at Divinity: Original Sin? It reminds me a lot of Neverwinter Nights. I've been meaning to mention it to you.
3645829
I've read about it, but I've been burned a lot by Larian's stuff recently. I really loved Divine Divinity, but Dragon Commander sucked and Divinity 2 was one of those linear fake-open-world games that put appearances over substance so much it basically doesn't have any at all. I've considered looking into it, but I'm not sure I really want to spend the money only to have it turn out the same way. I've heard some things about how buggy it is and how it just kind of peters out in the latter half.
3645841 Well, I'm not very far into it myself, so if you're wary then I can't really say for sure that you'd like it. I'm enjoying it, though. I'd play it more if my computer had an easier time with it.
Look after your hands, health outranks facfic writing. New chapter can wait.
If quality takes time, take all the time that's necessary. Even if you just fix up the early chapters with little changes, drop a blog, I'd love to read back through once everything's hit the same level of editing.
3646421 I'll probably also change the author's notes to include links to the old versions of chapters, since there's always someone who prefers the original. The new versions are going to include details I didn't bother to mention before, and I fully expect to see complaints about making some things explicit that longtime readers considered obvious, especially since some of those particular changes are primarily there to help newcomers. The big one right now is probably the new details on Mag, including a physical description and a closer look at how she thinks.
Also: these talking heads are everywhere. They're a menace. Obviously I'm not going to cut any dialogue, but I do need to give the audience ways to picture what's happening.
3646043 It's weirdly difficult to think in these terms. I've spent the last year trying to get into the mindset of a professional writer, just to see if I can. Then I got a much more positive response than I was expecting, which only encouraged that attitude, and now I think I attach more importance to this fic than is probably warranted.
But dammit, I want this story to be publishing quality even though that was obviously never the plan, and do you know what professionals do? They edit ruthlessly. They meet deadlines. And now I'm in a situation where both of those aren't necessarily the right choice. After a year of pretending, my mental habits aren't properly calibrated, and I'm having to remind myself that this was always just a hobby--carried out in an arena, by the way, where the results of good writing are not the same as they would be in real life.
e: Welp, apparently my hands are well enough that I can write essays again. Just in time to go back to the job that pays in money rather than satisfaction.