Stray

Well.  I can't say I'm writing quite yet, but I'm actively editing again.  I finally got past the wall I ran into following that harddrive crash at the end of 2022.   Rushing to recreate my novel in early 2023 led to me associating an awful feeling with the act of writing.  I just didn't want to do it.
          
          I've been working on roleplay stories since September to stretch my creative muscles.  It helped.  A lot.  I started thinking positively about writing again.  And now I'm about to start editing chapter 10 for Bone and Blood, so I can post it.  I already posted new chapters 8 and 9 this week.
          
          And today, a new aesthetic.  I've been brooding on it for a month.  What I had before represented a colorful project I've put down.  One I likely won't pick back up from a long time.  For now: I write depressing and dark things.  I want my user handle and imagery to match that.  I don't think it'll make any difference in my traffic, but it affects I how feel when I'm getting in the zone.

Gonna be late on chapters for a while, I think.  I have a lot of life stress coming up.  A non-promotion promotion making me team lead for the largest dev team working on the most complex product my company has.  I'm a mid-level developer.  Every other team is half the size of mine and headed by a senior dev.  Getting all of my wisdom teeth removed.  My birthday.  All this has my baseline anxiety levels way higher than usual.  That means I'm exhausted.  I'm stuck focusing on winding down, getting enough sleep, and trying to keep up with my chores instead of being product with my personal projects.  So anyway, I'll try to finish the read-through for the next chapter of Bone and Blood in the next few hours, but it may take until tomorrow afternoon.  I've already had a 2 hour nap today, and I still want to sleep more.  I may not make it to 7:30 before I turn in for the night.

And I just realized I coded until I crashed last night and didn't post a chapter. Haha...  Gonna do that this evening after I finish with my social plans.

Okay, Bone and Blood Volume 1 exists again.  The next chapter will be up on Friday.  I'll try to get the next First 150 review done before then.  I prioritized recreating the last two chapters of Bone and Blood this weekend to get that off my plate.
          
          I've settled on finishing the drafts for Crenulation next (hoping to update the release date for that to early 2024. That way, I can get all of Bone and Blood Vol1 posted, and immediately switch to posting edited chapters for Crenulation.  While I'm editing Crenulation, I can draft Bone and Blood Vol2.  Hopefully, the timing works out perfectly, and I'll have a consistent flow of content.

So, my new reviews thing is going a lot better than I expected!  When I've done reading for folks on deviantArt, it's been a little hit or miss.  Some respond a little positively, and others.... they just wanted to be told what was good.  They end up dismissing everything else.  Explaining why I was wrong because I don't understand STYLE.  The two peeps I've reviewed so far were excited about everything!  The pros and the cons I pointed out.  That's a wonderful culture shift.  I hope I can keep meeting people here who are excited both to share their story AND become better writers.

Got my April Fools App done for the day, and I'm back on remaking Bone and Blood Vol 1.  Already at 80K now with an estimated 12K words left to go.  I'm really struggling with where I'm at.
          
          The chapter I just wrote and the one after it were brand new in my overhaul from 2022.  I have no reference for it outside of my memory, and I didn't anything other than "the characters arrive in the city and find a homeless guy with crutches."  Once I saw the length wasn't going to work for what I had written versus the next stage (stealing said crutches), I realized my characters had a major argument... and I know the essence of it, and know thematically what it was supposed to be, but damn what I ended up with ain't great and doesn't feel like what I had before... and I don't remember what I actually had before.
          
          So, I'm trying to figure out if I can rework that scene right now, or if I need to keep going and not slave over it until a few months have passed and I have to post the damn thing.
          
          In the meantime, I've been doing more map research for the 1920s.  There are so few maps of the areas I need, and most don't tell you anything.  Which, fine, it gives me room to make shit up because there's no reference.  But I like to have my fiction tied to real landmarks.  I was able to find aerial photographs from 1947, and those were pretty telling.  Got me on a tangent of figuring out what highways existed at the time.  Between all that research I put together a when/where timeline to add to my chapter tracking document.
          
          Now that I have months associated with chapters, I might make a few weather references here or there to help the reader get a sense of exactly how much time "for months" means when I have time skips.  It also made me realize what my time skips were.  The story starts in May 1926, but it's April 1927 by chapter 11 and May/June 1927 by the end (chapter 40).
          
          Anyway, I'm writing or something.

After being overwhelmed with doubt and taking a several month break, I'm back on recovering my lost novel.  I'm backing it up on GitHub every time I finish a writing session now, so I will NEVER LOSE MY WRITING AGAIN.
          
          Anyway, it's at 70K words now.  The draft I lost was 82K.  I've got 8 chapters left, that in their lost form were about 18K words, so I'm expecting this draft to be 6K words longer than what it was before.  I don't hate that.  I've been marking down scenes that I know are brand new (and the few that had a significant change in presentation/theme/ect).  I don't hate any of it, so I just have to make myself stop asking "but what if the lost draft was better written?"  It's an unfortunately fruitless question.  I remember what I wrote, but not how I wrote it.  I can't compare and pick the best version.  I can only develop what I have now.  I'm just happy that I shared some of my favorite scenes in screen shots on discord.  There's one about a group of homeless people ragging on one another while arguing about the results of the Kentucky derby that I was afraid I had lost forever.  Nope.  I have it. :)
          
          I want to say I'll get it done this month, but I have a code project I want in place for April 1st, and I have a lot of social obligations this month.  Finishing may be a task for April.  And once it is, I'll be back on schedule.  Posting a chapter one a week like I had planned, and back to writing my short stories for Crenuation of maybe launching straight into the second volume of Bone and Blood.

Heyy!!
          Sorry for plugging in like this but it would really mean a lot to me if you could read my story - "Better off dead". It's a murder mystery!!
          and if it;\'s not too much trouble, could you share your feedback too?
          Anyways have a gr8 read and a gr8 day ahead!!! 
          https://www.wattpad.com/story/335952340-better-off-dead

Been rewriting my lost chapters.  My failed drive was stolen in the mail on the way to a data recovery specialist, so it was definitely not recoverable.  Fuck my luck.  I'm at about the 1/2 point now.  I'm struggling with the chapters because I'm trying to remember the new things I had done to amp of the themes and characterization that were not in my original draft.  My original draft was only ~50K words versus the final which was 80K.  That's a lot to remember unprompted.

Posting my next chapter of Bone and Blood will be delayed.  I lost 3/4s of it in a failed drive.  Not sure if it will be recoverable, because I'm still waiting to hear back from the people who have it now, so I can pick it up and send it to their recommended expert.  I'm not up to dealing with reposting the chapters I did have backed up on dA right now.