Shoot your darlings · 10:22pm Jun 14th, 2016
Warning: Serious waaaangst. TL; DR: Hunting Season is going on hiatus while I try to recover from a near critical brainbreak on it. I will be refocusing on Macromantic, Twilight's Thrones, and some other ideas I have. First projects will be Orange request from Mr. Ghostman and the winner of the 50-follower dealie, which is looking to be AJ-apotheosis.
Be ye-warned, past here is ego-gigolo/self-pity.
I was talking to my wife, and to the always awesome NineCaliber Anaithnid; this is cribbed together from my conversations with them. To put this in context, I've been editing something like 100-200 pages of other people's work per month in addition to my own. There's been amazing stuff that I've seen ahead of time and learned a lot from, but I'm basically going to ruthlessly cut back to Nine and Megapone as my primaries, and Psi-Nova and Frocto as my secondaries; Uni, Hab, if you're reading this, I owe you both a lot, please don't hesitate to ask. For everyone else I've promised help to in the past-- I'm punking out. I'm so sorry. I really am. But even my own self-editing is starting to hurt.
So, right now from a technical standpoint, I have a number of self-inflicted hells that are really hurting my writing on Hunting Season. I was chugging along merrily and even being able to write other things. Then I got some really fantastic critique from a number of people that lead to the already stressful for itself rewrite of chapter 1 into 1-2. The thing is, I flipped up things like italics for thinking, reducing the number of proper nouns, expanding description, etc.
Some of the things it would be ludicrous to fix. Like Mega's coaching on how to make a sex scene more hot-- if I were to try and bring all of it up to that standard, I'd never write again. But Jesus Christ and Sweet Celestia, did I learn a lot from that Supreme Sinlord. o7, dude.
But some things, like the italics and names things... I need to keep consistent. I have over 175K words written in Hunting Season alone-- probably 200K+, haven't bothered to count since I started to subdivide my google docs-- 37 chapters (but I'll get to that in a sec). I've gotten 16 chapters rewritten to "code" as it were (including the prologue), and it's killing me.
Next... I did something really, really stupid. I lost the thread. There's a rule of editing and self-editing I try (and obviously have failed at) which is to not go back and re-do something beyond minor corrections when you're in the middle of things. I try not to edit unfinished chapters for other people, and I should abso-fucking-lutely have not done what I did in terms of my story, at least not until I'd gotten Twilight arc finished.
I decided to go back and write in two scenes where I thought things were lacking. Then it was three. Then four. Eventually, counting the current arc, I was working on five scenes PLUS the sidestories, simultaneously. Adding multiple chapters back in the middle; if I was on my original plan, I'd probably have about 20 chapters total-- or rather, be finishing up the FlutterArc.
I've corralled it a bit, but I'm simultaneously doing an inflation-muscleworship-servant-petplay scene in one place, a sensory-dep-inflation-silliness scene in another, and where I'm going on with things to deal with fluttershy in the third.
To top it off... This is my baby. I don't _see_ sweet male dom much, except for a few awesome exceptions here and there I'd link but don't want to taint any better author with association with my garbage. I really don't see a lot of sweet male dom [fem or herm] switch [fem herm or male] sub chains, and I REALLY like that. Add to that I also like "female is built like two terminators stacked together with extra curves added on for fun" dominated by "male who is like small to GINORMOUS" mecha, and, well...
It's got my worst up/down ratio, and it's where I expose my rawest fetishes and kinks. Where I get to write what the rest of the world doesn't show. I've even pulled in things I don't think are kinky in places and expanded them because I love the world and the narration so much that it matters that it be done right. Which means, of course, that I should really only be interested in my own feedback. Do I find this hot, or pertaining to hotness, like the three chapters of Blueblood getting dommed so Twilight can take the pictures home and get Hopper to fuck her hard in a closet? Yes. So why does this matter? Why do I feel so NEEDY for feedback-- speaking of, for those of you who've wrote with critical or feedback either, bless you, you don't know how nice it is to even just talk to someone who's critical of my decisions and see what I can find out from them. For the positive, thanks, folks. So very much; this is all free and I'm never likely to be good enough to get a Patreon going, let alone commissions... your feedback and green thumbs and faves are what keep me going.
Then I over-committed on promising people editing, like I said. Add that to the sheer STUPIDITY, my heart and pain and diabetes and ADHD and anxiety meds not working right... I'm just surprised asthma and allergies haven't done much more than give me their usual spring-summer FUCK YOU.
I love Hunting Season, but right now, it's breaking my heart.
So, later today I will be dumping the updated HS chapters-- I'd been restricting those to once every two days while still trying to scramble to release Hunting Season every 4-- that I've back updated already and then I'm going to mostly focus on other things for a while, same universe, same kinks etc. but ... controllable. I will get back to updating HS, but in the course of months, with periodic updates when I feel inspired and get something completed.
You were able to recognize when overreaching was doing you harm. This is a good thing. If you continue to beat yourself up over it, I'll come to your house and beat you to within an inch of your life with your computer! You do you, for you are worthy of the wait.
We've been chatting already but... *hugs* It'll work out! Things have a funny way of working out.
4022942 *hugs* Wait until I show you what i have planned for the Oranges...
4022612 Thanks. Yeah... not been a great week. Awesomeness will still happen though!
4022965
With you involved, that is a certainty!
