Caught up!

Hey all,

I finally finished reworking the chapters of Mothership Eta I had previously published, and I'm now ready to continue putting new stuff down! I'll admit progress was slow; it's much less exciting to edit than it is to create. There were a couple of pieces of advice that stuck in my mind as I was working:

Number one: if you want your story to be really good, don't edit it. Rewrite it completely from the beginning instead. That's definitely not going to happen for Eta. If I actually wanted to publish a completely original story, I totally would do a complete rewrite, but for a piece of fanfiction, I don't think it's worth it. Especially something that's taken me this long already!

Number two: I did mention this in an earlier post, but I really do think it's important enough to bring up again. John Scalzi (of Old Man's War and Redshirts fame) had a note in his first published story, "don't write the 'one story that matters to you' as your first." I do kind of have one story that matters, but I don't know if I'll ever write it down, simply because I doubt I can do it justice. Eta wasn't a story that mattered to me, and I think I'd be majorly disappointed looking back on it if it was the one that mattered!

I kept thinking back to Scalzi's words as I edited the first few chapters, and even more so as I kept going. Those first chapters really were garbage compared to the later ones. The best way I could think of to describe them is as having substance, but no style. In addition to a lot of awkward structure, weird transitions and whatnot, there wasn't a real voice I heard coming through compared to later chapters or later stories. I'm positive this is why complete rewrites are recommended, as instead of trying to twist the existing story to make it fit what comes later, you can do it right, from scratch!

The weird thing is, there was a definite point where I realized I had a lot fewer edits to make. I think I settled in to the feel of the story around chapter 10, and from that point on I had style and substance both. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with inexperience, but I'm wondering also whether part of the issue was not having the characters fully fleshed out. Honestly, I was probably about as lost as Rusty and Dewdrop were in those first chapters!

It'll be interesting to come back to these later chapters in the years after I finish them to see if they're just as unrefined as I think the early ones are now! Writing is honestly a pretty neat time capsule, and it's one I'm glad I get to share with everyone!