I was so close, guys! I almost had two chapters re-written and edited within a week!
Well.... technically it is two chapters. However, it WAS one chapter before this week..... I don't know if that's a win or a fail.....
After last week's post, I attempted to finish chapter 3 of
Peeping Tomcat. The problem is that in
Ali's attempt to rescue my corrupted
NaNo file, she, sadly, couldn't do anything for chapters two and three. I had completely lost them when I lost my novel half-way through November. I did manage to remember enough of what I had written to quickly bullet the plot points I wanted to hit again, but the magic was gone.
So, while the majority of the rest of the story will be revisions and edits, chapters two and three had to be from scratch. I did manage to get chapter two done last week. I think it works, but I also don't think it had the same draw of the original. I feel the same way with chapter three. I'm hoping any who never read my original version - which is everyone but me - will really like the chapter, and that I'm just a debbie downer for no reason.
Aside from the magic not quite being there the second go, chapter three created another hurtle.
Originally, the chapter had Adrien, Marinette, Alya, and Nino taking the subway to the mall in order to watch a movie. On the subway, Adrien attempts a conversation with Marinette, which results in him offering to show her drawings to his father to see if he had any advice for a promising novice designer. The chapter originally concluded with the group at the movie theater, a few fluffy Adrienette moments, and a big Adrienette moment interrupted by an akuma attack.
Chapter four was then the attack itself, and Ladybug and Cat Noir taking the akuma down.
Well, in my attempt to add in more action and dialog the second go, chapter three went on for quite some time. Just passing 3000 words, I decided to end the chapter with Adrien's offer to show Marinette's drawings to his father.
This meant that all the Adrienette movie watching scenes and the lead into the akuma attack didn't make the cut.
So, I realized I needed one more chapter between three and four. My full project is now set at fifteen chapters instead of fourteen, but who knows if I'll have to split more chapters like I did to three? This thing could be twenty chapters when I'm done....
Well, I decided that if the Adrienette movie moments were going to be their own chapter, I had better make sure the chapter was properly filled out. My first run at this story introduced an original character - Louise Fabron - as an original akuma design. Problem was, she was an OC. No one knows who Louise is, what she looks like, how old she is, what her deal is, etc. Plus, the way she gets akumatized is that Chloe teases her about copying Chloe's style in a vain attempt to try to be popular. There was no way of Adrien knowing this without witnessing it, and if he witnessed it, why would he then just go about his day to watch the movie with his friends?
I had to find a way to set up Louise, introduce her to the reader, set up what Chloe was about to do, and hint at why Louise was going to be akumatized without it being obvious to the characters. I think I did it alright. We'll see if my betas will have any advice once I pass it over to them.
Either way, it introduced the new character, established a potential reason why she goes after Chloe once akumatized, didn't throw up any real red flags telling the characters they should be ready for an akuma attack, and filled out the chapter a bit.
And yet, perhaps it filled a bit too much. I tried, I really did. I hid in my room from about 9pm until a little after 1am, but I just couldn't finish the chapter. Mostly it was because I was looking up reference pics and reading the
Miraculous Wiki to make sure my facts lined up with canon. I also stopped for a half-hour to watch the new episode that aired on Sunday. The rest of the time was spent writing, and editing as I went. I wrote out a sentence, didn't like how it worked, went back and rewrote the action. I then went about a paragraph in, didn't like the direction it was going, and started that paragraph over. Rinse and repeat.
I'm now at the tail end of the chapter. If I really pushed, I probably could have finished it last night. However, it WAS after 1am, and my eyes were burning. I haven't even looked at what I wrote yet. Who knows if it's even comprehensible? So, that's my task for today: finish chapter four, and start my rework of Ms. Popular so I can get through chapter five.
Yeaaaaah, that chapter is probably going to be a complete rewrite, but we'll see how much of it I can keep.
To try to help me motivate myself to stay on top of my edits, I joined Ali's winter challenge over at
Writers’ Huddle. For those unfamiliar, it's a six-week personal challenge. You set up your own six-week goal to try to hit, and then check in each week with your progress. As a reward for continuously striving for that goal - succeed or fail - any who check in go into a drawing for an Amazon gift card. The reward is nice and all, but the accountability of people knowing what I'm trying to do, and watching for me to check in with progress does really help push me to keep on top of things.
So, my challenge is to have "Peeping Tomcat" done and sent to my beautiful beta volunteers by the end of the six weeks, which happens to be my sister's birthday. So technically I have to finish before that weekend so I can have time to visit her, and also peek in on my godson to wish him a happy birthday as well.
Yes, this also means that my betas get PT mid-March instead of mid/end of February like I wanted. However, it's clear that I'm taking longer with this project than I anticipated. Plus, if they can get me notes by the end of March, and I can get revisions/edits done for at least the first chapter in a week or so, I could start posting at the beginning of April, which is still within my predicted schedule. I could do this. Hopefully.
Right now my break down is like this:
- Finish up chapter 4 today
- Get the akuma attack figured out so I could get chapter 5 done by the end of the week.
- Monday is the start of the challenge. I'm aiming to have chapters 6 and 7 done by the close of the first challenge week: February 4th. At least chapter 6 is a fun one of Cat spying on Marinette yet again, so that one should be quick to revise/edit.
- Week 2 of the challenge will be chapters 8 and 9. The problem there is that chapter 9 is a second akuma attack. During NaNo I had nothing planned for the akuma, so I skipped over the chapter, only jotting down bulleted notes on key things that needed to happen. Which means the hardest part of writing Miraculous fanfics still needs to be figured out and written. I might not be able to complete that the same week I edit another chapter.
- Week 3 I want to make sure chapter 9 is done, if I couldn't complete it the week before. Thankfully, chapter 10 is what I used as the teaser preview chapter of this whole project, so that shouldn't need too much editing. I aimed to also have chapter 11 edited, and possibly started on chapter 12.
- Week 4 needs chapter 12 done, and then chapter 13. This should be my "catch-up" week if I haven't made it to chapter 13 by then.
- Week 5 will be when I edit the last two chapters of Peeping Tomcat, assuming I haven't had to split any other chapters in the rewrite process. Then it's off to the betas!
- Week 6 will be "catch-up week" to make sure PT makes it to the betas if I hadn't sent it yet. I'm assuming I'll fall a bit behind. Mainly because I'm a slacker despite my best efforts, but also because my re-write projects always seem to be bigger than I give them credit for. Finally, I do have that resolution to post something new at least once a month, and I haven't even THOUGHT of writing anything but PT this month. I need to pause and work on a nice prompt or something this month, and again next month. That will probably slow my editing progress down a bit.
So that's my challenge. What do you think? Is it challenging enough? Is it too daunting? Do you think I'll make it? I'm really hoping to push so that I can. Deadlines. I have such a love-hate with them. At least I'm better at them now than I was in school. Trying to write a 50,000+ word novel the night before wouldn't go well.....
The other thing that might slow my writing progress, though, is the fact that I still have to finish up
Ender's Game. This week I've kind of put the book on pause. In part it was so I could spend the time writing to try to catch up. In part it was because I got to the point where Ender and Bean interact, and I want to sit with both books and read the same scenes twice - once in Ender's Game, and once in
Ender's Shadow - in order to see in real-time the differences a POV change makes.
I have to admit, though, that part of the reason I stepped away from the book is because it was annoying me. Ender's Game annoyed me the first time I read it too, but for a different reason. Originally, it was because, in order to make sure Ender was at his peak when they most needed him, the adult military used as teachers at Battle School and Command School did cruel things to Ender that no kid should have to endure. I was pissed for Ender and wanted to smack the teachers, even if I understood why they had to do what they did.
This go, though, I'm annoyed because of a pet peeve of mine: chronology. I'm huge on timelines and timing; making sure things line up like they would if it were real life. Not so much anachronisms. I don't pay enough attention to when things came about, unless it's glaringly obvious like a digital watch in the 1920s. For me it's literal timing.
Does a story claim that a trip took way longer than it should without explanation as to why? Did a character reference something that happened months ago as if it was only a week or two? Does it take one character longer to do something than another character claimed it took? Can the characters not agree on what day of the week it was? That sort of thing.
You may have noticed me complaining about stuff like this in the past.
In "Ready Player One," I was pulled from the story a couple of times when the narrator stated that it was a different day of the week than it should have based on context clues. Something like Wednesday being only three days after Friday if you put the in between events in order.
In an episode of "The Office," which takes place in Scranton, PA, a pregnant character comments about driving to Allentown, PA for a Lamaze class. However, if anyone has ever driven from Scranton to Allentown, they would know that even on the turnpike it's at least a forty-five minute drive. Was there really no closer Lamaze classes? Did the writers just go "the only PA cities people know of are Scranton, Philly, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Allentown"?
In Miraculous Ladybug, the heroes only have five minutes after using their powers before they are forced to transform back into their civilian selves. And yet it seems to be five minutes real time instead of show time. For instance, in one episode, Ladybug is on the roof of a hotel that's about twenty stories tall, and she has one minute left before she transforms. She somehow manages to race down the stairs to the ground floor and still have time to briefly talk to Cat Noir before hiding in a closet so he wouldn't see who she really was. This is possible because in real time there's a cut between Ladybug running through the roof exit door and her running out of the ground floor stairwell. From her realizing she had a minute left and the actual transformation change it was almost exactly one minute real time. There is no way, even with her super powers, she was able to get down the stairs in the split-second needed for her to also hold a conversation with Cat before her minute was up, in her time.
In Ender's Game, things seemed fine for the most part. The only real hiccup thus far is that at the beginning of a chapter two of the teachers are discussing the fact that Ender had been in the program for a year and a half. Later that same chapter, presumably within days of the earlier conversation, Ender's older sister Valentine mentions that Ender had been in the program for two years. It's easy enough to explain that away though, since Valentine is ten or eleven at the time, and even though she has the mind of an adult, it's easy for a child to just roll the years over; if it's past the half-way mark it's closer to two years than one, so he's been gone two years.
The snaffu comes from Card's inability to properly link Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow within the same timeline.
I specifically took longer to read Ender's Shadow so I could take notes on the main elements from Ender's Game that were referenced. That way I could know where Bean was in relation to Ender when I re-read Ender's Game. Going back through my notes, Bean was placed in Battle School just before an attack on Ender. In Ender's Game, the attack referenced happened a day or two after his seventh birthday. Then it jumps to Valentine celebrating Ender's eighth birthday, which meant clearly nothing of any note happened to Ender for a solid year, even though the first six chapters or so covered only a year in Battle School. Cut back to Ender and he's now about nine and a half and is getting control of Dragon Army. Again, it's odd that nothing of note happened to the kid now for 30 months when something major happened to him nearly daily the first year he was in Battle School....
Anyway, if Bean did arrive just before the attack on Ender, as it's implied, then Bean turned five right around the same time Ender turned seven, making them only two years apart. Yet, Bean is only six, having been at Battle School barely a year, when he was asked to put together the roster that eventually became Dragon Army. It's strongly implied in Ender's Shadow that Dragon Army was then formed, and Ender given control, within weeks - at the longest - after Bean created the roster, which he gave to the teachers only a day or so after being given the assignment.
This means Bean is six when he joins Dragon Army.... but Ender's nine and a half.... which means there's now a three-plus year difference between the two. Not only that, but Bean being asked to create Dragon happened about a year after he started Battle School. If he joined right around Ender's seventh birthday, then when Valentine was celebrating Ender's eighth birthday it would roughly be Bean's year anniversary with the school, and he'd be asked to create Dragon. What happened to the other year between Valentine's celebration and Ender being nine and a half and given command?
The whole thing makes my head hurt. How did Card miss this!? He obviously went back through Ender's Game in order to pick out the scenes where Ender and Bean interacted in order to get the dialog and actions right. It would make sense that he just re-read Ender's Game in order to take notes on what he wanted to include in Ender's Shadow. So how did he lose a year in the process!?
While I calculated that Bean was pushing eight by the end of Ender's Shadow, even the teachers called him six, to which Bean responded "I think I'm seven..." So, Ender's Shadow covered two, maybe three years. And yet it covers three, possibly four, years in Ender's Game for the same points: the attack on Ender through the end of the Bugger war.
HELP!!!! I can't seem to push past this and get back into the story. However, the month is drawing to a close, and I need to get this story done in order to still try to get a book a month read. Plus, it's due back at the library on the 27th, so either I have to renew it or I have to be done by Saturday. Technically, I have to have it done by Friday since I won't be able to get it to the library on Saturday, and I don't know if it will be considered late if it's in the overnight box the evening it's due....
Oh, and in other news, it seems I'm back to my "normal" readership of about 20-some hits per post. The previous couple of months of 500+ hits per post was most likely people looking for Miraculous season 2 info. They probably realized I don't have it and gave up. I haven't had more than 30 hits per post all month. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and I know that the 20-30 of you who do keep popping in genuinely want to know what I have to say.
So thank you.
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