More depression stuff; what will, hopefully, be the near future for "No longer Necessary" · 3:02am Sep 22nd, 2019
Story time. True story instead of amazing technicolor dream teenager story, unfortunately.
Saturday night, when I should have been sleeping, my sister drove me up to her place. Sunday, when I should have been finishing No longer Necessary, I was watching her kids all day. After the kids got to sleep (an hour late, I believe) I tried to finish the story but I was low on sleep from the night before and I couldn't squeeze 12 hours work into ~5 hours time. On Monday, a building exploded. (One fatality, seven injuries.) On Tuesday, which was supposed to be the absolute last day I was at the farm for this visit, I did not go home. On Wednesday I did get home, which also meant getting back to my pharmacy only to find that the medications I needed weren't available because . . . reasons.
I'm kind of hazy about details after Sunday. I was already off a med. I have to go to sleep absurdly early (small children, though not children quite as small as my sister's, have later bed times than me) to be well rested, and I'd been up late, later, and passed midnight central on the nights of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday respectively. For an example of hazy details, I thought the fair was closed but the vendors were still there on Tuesday (my sister needed her kids watched because she was working as a vendor) but the news seems to suggest that the fair was only closed on explosion day (Monday.) I'm not sure which source to trust.
Anyway, meds are important. So too is sleep.
Yesterday (Friday) was when the med I was off hit me in full force. I was . . . not sure how to describe it really. It was like I was in desperate need of sleep (I wasn't, actually; I was mostly recovered) but not so much as in "I'm tired" as it was "I'm on the verge of falling asleep; isn't that nice?" Today started out much like that, and by the time I pulled together enough to attempt to get medication (and confirmed that it was ready to be picked up this time) I had about 49 minutes to walk to the pharmacy before it closed. The walk took, I think, 55 minutes. So no med. Tomorrow is Pharmacy Closed Day. Earliest I can get med is Monday.
Now, this isn't my most important med. Not having most important med would hit me with SNRI withdrawal in a real hurry (Fun fact: "brain zap" is a technical term), and I actually ran out because I've been having trouble with getting my most important med filled and everything else sort of went on the back burner. This is, however, an important med, and being off it will fuck me up. As in, the reason that my life has really, really sucked for over two and a half years is because I had to go off it for months when I broke my ankle (bloodclot risk during and after surgery) and I never recovered.
So that is, to some extent, where things stand.
From a fiction writing perspective that's not particularly good because it means that any momentum I had with respect to No longer Necessary is well and truly gone. If you want to see what that may look like, I was so sure I'd get the already written (but desperately in need of revision) chapters of Take A Look Around My World revised and reposted fairly quickly. I lost the momentum associated with that story; a year later, it's still just a prologue.
I don't think we're quite there with No longer Necessary, but things are definitely going far worse than they would be if I'd been able to get my meds.
While they might not necessarily be what I'd want in an ideal world, I do think that the prologue and the first four chapters are decent enough. When I'm in a good head-space, I'm hoping I can go through them, clean and polish them a bit, and move on. The currently unnumbered final chapter is honestly pretty crap. I posted it for two reasons, one is that I was writing it into the night, I was kind of loopy, and I wanted to have something to show for that effort. The other is that I was interested in how people would respond to Wallflower thinking through the Anon-a-Miss-like incidents from Equestria.
The whole "Wow, it's just like Gabby Gums" thing comes from hindsight, if you don't know it's the CMC I don't think that's automatically where you go. I feel like it's one of the places you go, but not the only one. Without the benefit of knowing how the story ends, I'm not even convinced it's the most compelling one. I wanted to know how people would respond to that.
The answer, it turned out, was "not at all".
So, that needs to be overhauled. I've never been completely sure how to approach that particular part. I've considered various things. The story up to that point is told in simple chronological order, so sticking to that makes sense, on the other hand I can see reasons why it might be better for "This is what Wallflower did" being one chapter and "This is what Sunset did" being another. On Zaphod's third hand, the story is about Sunset and Wallflower, not about Anon-a-Miss or the Memory Stone. I can also see how it might be best to push the details of what Susnet and Wallflower are each doing to solve the other's problem into the background and focus exclusively on what's going on between them and with each of them emotionally.
That's always been the part that was the least clear and most squishy. I know exactly what happens, but that's not the same as knowing exactly what to show or how to show it.
After that things start to wrap up. Now that I'm no longer shooting for a certain word count, I can take more time to show that if I feel it's necessary, but it's no secret where any of this is going. Wallflower and Sunset using their improved emotional states to tackle Anon-a-Miss and the Memory Stone's side effects respectively is partially what they'd do anyway, but it's also each of them making a last ditch effort to fix the problems they're identifying in their relationship. Once those two things are tackled, they're out of distractions.
At that point I could wrap it all up in one chapter; I'm probably going to have it take longer since I'm no longer pressed for time or space.
And that's the plan. Polish the prologue and Chapters 1 through 4, overhaul the chapter after that, and then write the end. Most of the story is already written and available to read, there's not that much left to do, and I'm hoping I can do it before I lose touch with what it's supposed to be.
Probably can't start it till I'm back on all my meds, though.
I'm sorry hon, that's a really really shitty situation to be stuck in. Not having meds for even just a short while fucks me up too
I think you're on the right track focusing on Wally's and Sunset's emotions and relationship instead of the logistics of their problems. Of course that's easier said than done, but after all I've read from you, I know you can do it and do it super well.