Firewins

...done but I don't feel done, haha. Not just because I have another round of proofreading ahead of me, which I usually track separately since it's such different mental work from editing, but mainly because I wanted to do the pacing check as part of this round of revisions. I haven't broken down the new big chapters into more reasonable sizes yet either (the well-known phenomena of chapter mitosis).

However! This is complete, and consistent. There are remaining areas of weakness I am keenly aware of, but I made all the changes I wanted, and I dealt with all of the implications of the new changes all the way through to the end. There are no "actually her best friend should be a dragon" with half the chapters still having her as a human (oh my god, brain, this is a joke, please don't take it seriously, don't make me do this). So it should read coherently.

Which DAMN, that is pretty cool isn't it?! :D

Tally:
About 92h of work over 84 days
About 13k words added for a new total of 56k

THANK YOU ROUND 1 BETA-READERS FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE <333333333333 💖💖

Right now, I'm thinking a lot about a quote. A quote that I cannot find again, but maybe someone will recognise it and I can update the post? It goes something like, "There's something I wish every new writer knew about the gap between your skill and your taste, and how your taste is always better than your skill because you've honed it for longer. But that makes it hard to be satisfied with your work, and you should expect that."

Edit: It is a quote by Ira Glass, thank you annofowlshire :D

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit." (Full quote)

After the last final (heh) draft, I was unhappy with how most characters beside the two MCs seemed flat, and it came up in the feedback, too. It was sort of intentional at the time in that my main concern was figuring out whether I had the stamina for writing and editing a novel, and thus, driven by despair, I took shortcuts wherever I could justify them because I was terrified to lose steam too early. I fixed what I could in the initial edits, but not that. After this round though, this is much improved and I'm a lot happier with the result.

However, now, I'm looking at [redacted] and being unhappy with that bit....... but two kind souls already volunteered to beta-read and I don't want to influence what they'll think :D I'll see what comes up then. But also I feel like I could keep finding things that could be better forever, and at some point you've got to move on? I dunno. This is hard. I'm also not sure how I'd go about fixing this. I'll have to see what comes up in the feedback.

My vague current plan:

• Let It Rest, though not too long. Focus on a couple of fic projects I have dangling, think about something else.
• Outline the potential sequel, with the snowflake method again since that works well for me
• ...Maybe write the first draft, maybe not yet. I tend to underwrite, and between that and the detailed outline my first drafts tend to go fast especially compared to editing
• Do the pacing check. That'll likely mean rereading a PDF on a tablet or something, so I can experience the new shape of the story in one go. If I was good and virtuous, I'd probably do another post-draft outline too, but this morning's vriddy would rather stab a fork through her little finger than do another one of those. Future vriddy may have a different opinion but I doubt it
• Break down the big chapters, change the small bits that need changing
• Tiny rest, depending on how long the previous 2 steps took (not long, right? 🥹)
• Proofread and YEET TO BETAS, possibly scream into a pillow for a while

Also I figured out how to actual export the novel from Scrivener which is a massive relief hahahaha. First time. I'll be watching a few tutorials on the Compiler to understand better how it works. It seems like it could be pretty powerful and versatile if I actually knew what I was doing.

In the meantime I might get a headstart on the pillow screaming... I think it's only starting to dawn on me now that wow. I did do it? It is done? Of course there is more work ahead, there always is, but I have a massively revised coherent-ish draft in my grubby (virtual) hands wow. Wow wowow

I ended up taking a few more days away from the cursed witch to edit the fic I'm writing for the sunflower_auction, which was good both because I really like what this fic turned into!!! :D I hope the recip does, too! And I guess it gave my brain more time to think about the ending of the cursed witch.

And the conclusion is that it wasn't enough time and I still don't know. There are elements of the resolution I'm still unhappy with, no matter what angle I look at them from. And in the last post, I was thinking that removing the more obvious f/f bits to better set up the f/f/f endgame in the sequel would work well, but the thought of removing the most obvious queer bits and ending up with a story where the queer storylines are all subtext or background massively, unexpectedly bummed me out. Huge downer, mentally. So I'll have to work out a different solution. I'm playing with different ideas that could work to set things up without making it all look dusted and done (and may incidentally "solve" the "relationship is too perfect!" comment I got) but I have to be careful because it is the end of the story and I want a generally hopeful ending, and not something half-baked that leaves the reader frustrated and opens up new narrative question marks way too late in the story.

However, I can't leave the draft alone any longer. Letting projects hang midway is the worst thing for me, I just really struggle to pick them back up and remember all the threads I was working with. (One of the reasons I'm dreading returning to the Soul Thief because I was midway or two-thirds of the way through creating the post-draft outline back in January, and I don't know where to pick it back from. I can't just pick up that outline again. My brain will try to remember what I meant to do and think then, rather than just do it. Realistically, I probably should restart that step from scratch and treat all previous notes as extras, as if someone else (vriddy from the past!!) had taken a look at it and left me a few partial notes, but redoing work I know I already did before is also a bummer.) (I'll figure it out for sure, it's just more energy and way more activation energy required overall, so I really don't want to do that to myself when I can avoid it at all.)

So! My current plan is to leave the ending as is with no major changes. Just do the smaller edits, add the conversations and easy missing bits that had left people with questions in a couple of places, and leave myself good notes about the problems I see and the potential solutions I have in mind. Then let it rest, don't even do the pacing stuff yet. I'll do a reread in a couple months (without reading the notes!) and see what I think then.

That way, I'll still have a complete story to work with when it's time to hammer down the final pieces. I'm not overly worried either because I'm happy about the changes I made up to now (well, also worried it all sucks, but happy generally). It's only the epilogue and the last bit of the previous chapter I'm gnawing on, so about 5k words out of 57k that'll likely need reworking. Hopefully my brain comes up with something cool in the background XD Counting on you, brain!!