On to Part Three

Well I'm over halfway through the story on the read-through. Now we're getting to the action.

Part Two is a little beat up, but in a good way. There's a lot I left undeveloped, and a lot I can add to make it fit even better into the story, which was a main concern from the beginning. I've got my notes and while I'm sure when I go back and fix things this part will take more time than the first, I'm not worried.

Going into Part Three I've got to look at a lot of pacing, and this is where many of my main logistical and agreement concerns lie. My notebook's about to get much busier.

So far I've had mostly local problems, and very few if any that affected larger parts of the story and plot. Going forward there's going to be bigger problems. I'm going to try my best to brainstorm solutions as I go, but also to try my best not to get overwhelmed.

It's hard changing something you spent so much time creating, and I find myself wanting to be lazy and saying that something's "good enough." But I can't allow myself to fall into that trap. You don't get better by accepting your faults, but by striving tirelessly to fix them. I have to stay vigilant, no matter how much more work I discover has to be done.

Here's hoping everyone's having an inspired week, as I am.

Reading Through the Mountains

I'm most of the way through Part Two now, still, whichever. It's been slow going this week because I've been doing a bunch of other projects as well. But I'm actually being productive, so that's good!

The Mountains section of the manuscript is as I remembered, a lot of fluff and just pretty things. I'm not going to cut any, just add a lot of information and character development that I was too lazy to put in while I was writing it. I'm going to make it a more important part of the story.

This is just a quick update, my eyes are drooping as I type this and I have a lot to do tomorrow. Sleep tight, everyone.

Wow, That Was a Month.

So this is good, instead of once a week I seem to be keeping very nicely with a monthly posting rate.

Oy.

I finally started editing again, life and being generally in a funk having kept me from it almost completely. This week has been good, though. I'm almost done with part two, and I seem to have different opinions on things than I did while anticipating problems, which is both good and bad. Good because some things don't need to be cut or completely rearranged as I had thought, but bad in that I need to add a lot, especially to part two. I also have found myself thinking things like this:

(Photo: actual note on the manuscript that I found minutes ago)

One habit I've discovered is that of making half-baked characters. Especially with fantasy stories, the cast of characters can become overwhelmingly large, and I'm not that experienced with handling that kind of responsibility. Apparently I can kill hundreds at a time, but God forbid I actually develop a minor character past a name and vague profession.

So I have a lot of that kind of thing to fix.

This weekend I'm going larping again- one of the few activities I've kept up with this summer and is keeping me relatively sane.

Or at least, as sane as someone can be when they rely on larping for a sense of normality.

So I won't be getting any editing done tomorrow through Sunday, but there are people at the event I'm going to ask about some things. I know of others who write, and certainly most everyone there is familiar with fantasy writing. (Seriously, so many there are such amazing storytellers.)

Hope everyone is having a good summer so far!
Have a safe Fourth of July!