Hammer Down · 2:59am May 28th, 2018
So the hot news in Hellville is that 50% of the beta draft went out to readers on Friday! 
Also pictured: early Beta
Part of me feels exultant, triumphant, and other superlatives, because getting a reasonably clean and solid 50% has been such a huge undertaking. But then part of me just feels frickin' exhausted, because there's really only one consistently available block of time that I've been able to steal from during a 24-hour day for lengthy editing sessions, if you catch my meaning. 
And now part of me's like, "aaahhh, I've still gotta finish the rest!," because that is absolutely the main thing.
There's a phrase that comes to mind when I try to describe the last few weeks of editing To Serve In Hell: the title of this post.
Perhaps it comes by virtue of the speed and intensity that I'm trying to bring to this process. At some point a few weeks ago, I committed to it in a way that has consumed most of my waking mind since. I have edited before but never like this. I'm finding that it's one thing to nitpick and polish a story, but it's another to try to cram a WHOLE FREAKING NOVEL into your head and to try to make meaningful alterations in your mental model of the thing on-the-fly. It's something I never could've done if I hadn't just taken a stab at writing the whole rest of it back in November. But I'm also glad for a lot of the prep work I did leading up to November, because there have been a couple of things from the initial plan that didn't make the page that I'm going back and inserting now.
The other thing about that phrase comes from the sheer amount of Hammerfall that I've been listening to of late.
Theme song from the recent festivities
As I mentioned a while back, I had a couple of go-to Judas Priest songs that I played to get myself into the writing mood back in November. Judas Priest's lyrical content can be grossly oversimplified into broad categories such as speed, passion, and making questionable life choices while doing passionate things at high speed--which sounds a bit like the process of drafting a novel, ya? Whereas Hammerfall's lyrical content can be oversimplified into broad categories such as maintaining intensity over time, enduring the onslaught of enemy forces, and pushing back hard against those forces while doing guitar solos. Right now that's exactly the kind of bloody-minded determination that I need to tap into in order to keep pushing through this phase of things. Especially the guitar solos. Writing needs a bit of flourish, no? A soupcon of panache? 
I'll tell you what, though; on the off-chance that I do decide to write more novels after this, I'm definitely going to do them smarter next time, in accordance with the lessons I've had to learn the hard way this time. Life is short, and ain't nobody got this much time to spend not getting a novel written.
Hammerfall? HAMMERFALL!
(Something For The Ages)
Looking forward to reading the next chapter!
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That song is amazing! Such a strong display of their instrumental prowess, and a high point on an album full of high points. Then of course they cap it off perfectly by shouting, "piss!"
That reminds me: at some point in the future I'm considering doing a "Soundtrack to the Apocalypse" post featuring theme music for several of the main characters. I don't know if people would be interested in that sort of thing. But I mention it because track 1 on No Sacrifice, No Victory is definitely one of the songs for one of the characters. And it's not even Shadow Pony.
If I do that, though, I'll probably wait until I've been able to add Shadow Pony's actual character tag to the story. YE DOGS AM I LOOKING FORWARD TO ADDING HIS FREAKING TAG. I mean, it's probably not going to come out of left field for anyone who's been paying attention, but it's just something I don't want to do until the moment is right.
Gonna be getting my commenting gloves on.
HammerFall is good fun. I've been getting down with this recently