Long Time No See

Keeping up with my blog (and the posts on my Patreon, for that matter) kind of fell off my task list the past couple months. I've been struggling with my writing since February. 

First, my rewrite of DH01 went off the rails. It got bloated and meandered a lot, and I finally stopped writing on it. When something goes that bad, I usually cut to the last place where I feel the writing did everything I wanted it to, but I wasn't pleased with any of it. 

At the same time, I was working on phase outlines for two or three other projects. Those were going better, but I wasn't happy with those either. My displeasure with these was a little harder to pinpoint until I realized that they seemed too long. I was using the phase outline system that my friend Zette usually employs in the writing of her stories, and while it was easier to progress with this system than it was with the plot-card system, I found I missed the plot cards and eventually gave up on those.

What enabled me to give up on all these projects was my friend J.A. Marlow's Twitch streams. Jam started streaming a couple months ago, and in one of her streams, she shared her plotting spreadsheets. She very kindly shared them with me when I asked her to, and I've been plugging my stories into them since then. Thanks to the plotting spreadsheets I feel I finally have a handle on my stories. 

But doing all this plotting means I'm not writing fresh fiction right now. To fill that need, I've started work on creating a story web in Archivos for my Discordant Harmonies series. It's been going well so far. The pages for each element require a summary and a full article, so I've been setting up files for it in an Archivos Scrivener for the things I need to write in. I don't have artwork for the elements yet, but I have plans for getting it. I'll be posting these on my Patreon, so if you want a sneak peek, come support me!

Since the Move

It's been a while since I've updated my projects list to the right, and I think it'll be a good idea to go into a little more detail here. 

First off, I'm still working on DH01's Developmental Edit/Rewrite. This is going pretty well. I've been using the original draft as a guideline and filling in the stuff that I left out in that first draft. This story is turning out substantially different from the original draft, while maintaining the same plot arcs as that first iteration. For what it's worth, I plan on leaving the copies I have on Wattpad up there unless I get to the point of officially publishing the series. At that time, I'll decide if I want to leave the roughs up. Either way, I plan on giving the books new covers if they get that far.

I'm also continuing to work on the phase outline for the rewrite of The Prophet of Venjhelin 1 that I started a couple months ago. Right now, I've got over 200 phases on it and the ideas are flowing well. Originally, I intended to rewrite this as I am DH01, but that didn't want to go, so I tried the phase outline to see if I could get things moving, and it's worked quite well. My goal on this outline is to get 10 phases a day, though I haven't been as consistent with the daily aspect as I hoped. It's still progressing well, and I'm really enjoying fleshing out the characters and plot.

Most recently, I've started a phase outline of a story I completed in rough draft and have tried rewriting a few times since: Married to the Moons 1. Like with my usual first drafts, even with the outlines I used to do, the story was very much a candybar scene story. The phase outline is helping me flesh this one out too. I've already gotten 60 phases on it, in just one day of working on it. If you'd like a sneak peek of the outline for this one, I've excerpted a few of the phases in a post for my Patreon at the Bicycle level. 

Previously, I was working on transcribing Front: Or My First Completed Story EVAR!!! Since our big house move at the beginning of January, though, I haven't been able to work on it. I may try to do so within the next few months, even if I'm still stuck on my laptop, but I'm not making any promises.