All About Act II

Hiii...

So, I know that it's been (checks notes) more than three years since my last update here, but please give me a second to explain. I told myself that I wasn't going to make a post here again until I finished the Act II draft. I know that in the last update in December of 2017, I said, "Oh, I'm going to publish this story in 2018 and it's going to be awesome." Yeah. That didn't happen. Lots of things changed for me in 2018; I moved to the States, lived there for two years; now I'm back in Canada. And all through that time, I kept to my promise, that I wouldn't make an update here until I finished the draft.

Well, since I'm making this post, there's good news. I just wrote out the Epilogue today. Over the course of these past few years, my pace has waxed and waned, and there have been multiple lengthy periods where not much of anything got done. On top of that, the story ballooned well past the length that I had expected it to be. All told, the draft is 201 223 words long, and I would expect that most of the modifications I make to it as I work toward the second draft are going to be making it longer. But I think that it has been worth it. I was shaking with emotion as I typed out the final climax of the story. It's been a long time coming, but it's good.

The main reason why I didn't want to make intermediate updates is that I didn't want to pressure myself into making short-term promises that I was going to break. I did that a lot over the lengthy process of writing Act I, and it was not the right way to go about things. In keeping with that, I'm not going to commit to a hard timeline for getting from here to publication either, but here's a rough guide of what's going to happen:

1. I have a moderately-lengthy list of changes and fixes that I want to make to the draft. These range from fixing up minor details and continuity errors to rewriting whole scenes. It will take some time to get through this, but when it's done we will have the full second draft.
2. At this point I will give the story to a couple of prereaders that I trust to give me some honest opinions. The changes they suggest will be implemented into the third draft, which is the one that will actually get published.
3. Once the second draft is done, I will be engaging with artists to obtain the cover art, maps, and the two illustrations that the story will require.
4. When the third draft is ready, I will start publishing it, one chapter a week, on Thursdays like I did for Act I. As Act II will be fully complete at this point, I will start work on Act III then, and hopefully, given that the publication for Act II is going to take a long time, there will be a much shorter gap between II and III than there was between I and II.

Overall, I'm just going to say I hope to get things out this year, if possible. I'm well aware that the editing process is likely going to be painful here, but for right now I'm over the moon because the draft is done.

Never give up on your dreams.

Warm regards,
cursedchords

Comments

[PresentPerfect]

yo, welcome back and congrats on getting out of the States while the getting was good :')