Time To Audit My Time

Happy Summer, everyone. Are you all melted to your couch too, or is that just me?

This week just kind of went by in a blur. I can still tell you two things though.
One: I did a fair amount of writing; only getting a "zero day" on the 5th. All that writing brought me up to 12,396 words, which is just shy of my quarter-way point. I'm also still shy of the 14,516 words I should have hit by yesterday's close, but all in all not a terrible start.

Look at all of those glorious smilies!

 I had actually spent a portion of that non-productive Thursday ironically driving about 40min in order to find this calendar. More on that later.

The second thing I could tell you about this blurry week is that not a single word I've written so far this month has gone towards "One and the Same."

Whoops.

The thing is... I STILL have to finish "Peeping Tomcat," and it doesn't look like that conclusion is happening any time soon. I made this story so involved that I can't tie everything up in a neat little bow like I thought I could.

Rewrites have been going slowly. I also had to finish the previous chapter. Thankfully, I was able to do that just before updating this blog last week, but that still meant 2+ days worth of writing was spent on that chapter instead of having it done on time.

And that created a slippery slope.

With everything else going on in my life right now, it is so great to have the push of "I NEED to finish this; I'm so close!" without the added stress of "OMG! I have HOW MANY hours left before it needs to publish!?"

I can take my time to make sure I do this right. My readers deserve that much.

At the same time, though, without a definitive publish date like I did have, I feel myself taking longer and longer and loooooonger to do anything productive. I was doing so well! Thirteen weeks of updates! It certainly was easier to just edit an existing chapter than it is to practically write a new one from scratch.

This is why I know I need to make sure to have a completed story before publishing even the first chapter. Otherwise my poor new readers will fall into the same waiting limbo my "Hey, Arnold!" readers suffered.

I did try to get the story done by Friday. This past Tuesday, after I posted both the previous chapter and blog update, I diligently wrote out rough outline notes so I knew I had all my ducks in a row before starting anything.

*WARNING* The below picture contains spoilers for the final chapter of PT

Please excuse the "I need to get this down
on paper STAT" hand scribblings.
And also the misspellings, I'm trash without
that red squiggly under my words. Q_Q

I even posted the above picture to Tumblr in hopes that doing so would hold me accountable enough to post on time. It didn't work, but not for lack of trying.

The strangest thing to me, however, is that while I appreciated the six likes about the notes, I am still curious as to why I also had one reblog. Why would that person think anyone else would care about me writing notes for my final chapter?

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by Birdman, Inc

Meh? I appreciate the thought and the promotion. Don't know who it brought to my story, but I like the effort.

I also got a chuckle out of Cyhyr's reaction to my post.

Cyhyr: AHHHH my notes for chapters are NEVER this detailed! Go Girl! GET THAT STORY DONE!!! SHOW THOSE PLOT BUNNIES WHO’S BOSS!!!

Haha, thanks for the encouragement, Cy.

OH! And speaking of "brought to my story" apparently "A Plan Forms" did just that! The overall reception of this PT side story isn't staggering, but it's still decent for what it is.

FFN: 355 views, 12 faves, 12 followers, and 2 reviews
AO3: 150 views, 13 kudos, 2 bookmarks, and 7 comments
DA: 5 views and 2 faves

Total Results: 510 views, 27 faves, 14 followers, and 9 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 3 likes

Reviews:
  1. Of Course I had to read this one too. I really enjoyed this short blip! (From cassy1994)
  2. so I read this without realizing its part of a bigger story. so now I will go read the main story. lol
  3. Nice job on this! It ties in very well to the original story, which is amazing!

Not bad for a little over a week. I also don't get the 14 followers. It's marked as a complete story, and I mention what main story it connects to. Still, I appreciate the love.

As for the rest of the reviews.... well.... three of them were from BFG, who will come up again later. They are incredibly lengthy reviews mostly fan theorizing. I think the reviews combined are as long as the story itself! So if you want to check them out, you can head straight to the reviews section here. The other three reviews are actually another fantheory debate between two readers. I HAVE FANTHEORY DEBATES IN MY REVIEWS!!!! And it's not debates and theorizing over the canonical show, it's about my story and how it will end! This is flippin' nuts! Well, okay, it's not so much a DEBATE as it is a second reader asking the first to clarify their theory. Still. NUTS!

Also, I want to go back and focus on that second review. It was by marauderluverz, and "go read the main story" she did! She went through and reviewed every. Single. Chapter!

1. omg! so I have no idea why I haven't read this fic before because that first chapter was amazing! now yo read the rest!
2. loved the second Chapter!
3. really loved chapter 3. excellent characterizations!
4. Yay for chapter 4! yay for awkward adrinette! lol
5. Yay! chapter 5 was awesome!
6. loved this chapter too! I can't wait for Adrien to figure out shes ladybug!
7. poor Adrien! seems like he nearly had a panic attack there. and now I'm gonna stay up half the night reading this fic. . .
8. another perfect chapter and why do I sense an akuma coming... lol
9. wow! that was a crazy intense akuma attack! I feel bad for Chat and poor ladybug is worried.
10. this is getting so sad! but i need to read more.
11. omg! he knows he knows!
12. awww! I loved your interpretation of the kwami relationships. now onto the next Chapter!
13. this was awesome! although I don't see how you could possibly wrap up such an amazing story with only 2 more chapters. let's see!
14. awwww! this was an amazing Chapter! I loved her video. poor chat but at least now he knows.

Whoo! What a ride! Sorry, marauderluverz for keeping you up all night, but I do appreciate the love! I opened my email Saturday morning and saw 15 review notifications from her - 14 for PT and the 1 for "A Plan Forms" - and I was dumbfounded. Add in the review from cassy, which also included this review for "Peeping Tomcat" itself: "This was really good. I look forward to the next one hopefully soon."

Finally, how can I forget Jowy's Pixie's weekly reviews?

Jowy's Pixie: I hope that you're feeling better now. I can relate to the seven re-writes and writers block a lot. But you really wouldn't think you had it reading this chapter because it was amazing. Awww Adrien. His insecurities really seem to be giving him a good beating lately. Ladybug's message to Chat Noir was so sweet and it made me smile so much when I was reading it. It's so nice that she wants all of Paris to dedicate a day to him. I kinda feel sometimes that Chat Noir doesn't get enough appreciation. So this day is well deserved in my opinion.
          I really hope that Chat Noir can get this mess sorted. Hopefully once all that's over with, it might make him feel a bit better about himself - especially once everything is off his chest. I'm still curious as to how Marinette/Ladybug is going to react to all of this. About Chat Noir spying on her and him accidentally finding out her identity. There's so many possible ways this story can conclude and it has me super excited to see which direction you're going to take it.
          Another awesome chapter as always. I'm always amazing at how well you always manage to capture emotion and inner turmoil and at how well you always keep them in character. You really are a super talented writer. I'll have to check out this one-shot of yours at some point. It should be interesting to see things from Marinette's perspective. Keep up the great work and I can't wait to see what happens next! Good luck!

I really do love that I have faithful readers who make sure to review every chapter and check in every week. I think that was the main reason PT didn't do as well as expected when chapter 14 officially went live. People have gotten accustomed to the Friday morning updates, and since I replaced an Author's Note with the actual chapter no notifications went out to everyone following my story.

Regardless, I appreciate that apparently all of my faithful followers, notification or no, checked in after 8:30am on Friday. There was nothing new for them to read, unless they missed chapter 14 officially posting, but still they came. Gaaah! Love it!

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by Birdman, Inc

I also hit a couple more milestones with the story. Ignoring the one review that was accidentally posted in two parts, and the random biblical spam, I'm at 70 reviews over on FFN. I've also hit 200 kudos over on AO3, which means I now officially get more love over there, as compared to the 113 faves I got on FFN. On the flipside though, I have 187 people following the story over on FFN, and only 34 on AO3. Soooo, I take the love where I get it.

Anyway, all the love in the world isn't going to mean anything if I can't finish this darn chapter! The main snafu for me this week was that I just could not get away from having to write another flipping akuma attack! I tried. I really did. These things take forever to think up. They take even longer to write; which is why the previous two had their own chapters dedicated to them.

Despite my best efforts though, I just couldn't avoid needing another akuma. The last chapter covered four days, and I couldn't justify Hawk Moth not sending out at least one akuma that whole time. Especially when one of his enemies was being celebrated.

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by Birdman, inc

Another day was then spent on figuring out my akuma. I needed something simple that wouldn't warrant a full chapter like my other two did. Something like in the episode "Anti-bug" where Sabrina turning into Vanisher was used as a plot point instead of a full episode villain. My akuma needed to be like that. Something the duo could defeat easily and quickly so we could get back to the main plot.

I was also going to just vaguely mention that they fought an akuma or two, but Chat Noir and Ladybug really need a discussion after what happened with Terravenger. I couldn't breeze past it. I needed to SHOW the akuma.

I went to the drawing board and jotted down a bunch of notes again as I tried to build a simple and quick but still believable akuma supervillain.

And now we know why I don't draw....

It took a day away from my regularly scheduled writing, but I did what I had done with my other akumas: I wrote the story of them becoming akumatized so I better understood what their trigger was.

I know it wasn't the Friday update everyone was expecting, but I hoped it would appease the masses.

FanFiction         ArchiveOfOurOwn         DeviantArt

Not only did I promote the story posting on Tumblr, but it was small enough that I went ahead and posted the story there too.

It was just this little rinky-dink story I used to work out my main one, but it still got a little bit of love.

FFN: 90 views, 4 faves, 2 followers, and 1 review
AO3: 57 views, 2 kudos, and 1 comment
DA: 15 views and 1 fave

Total Results: 162 views, 6 faves, 2 followers, and 2 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 1 like

Reviews:
  1. OMG YAHOOOOO YAY YAY YAY YAY
  2. Review from AO3 follower BFG was a bit lengthy; see below

BFG: A plot twist! I thought ladybug was just going to have Alya put up a video but getting it to over the top Chloe and ending like this is interesting. and a little ironic. this day is supposed to be for chat noir but it most likely is only this big because LADYBUG asked and people are big fans of ladybug and want to please her. I also like how ladybug may have sped it up accidentally and didn't think about how much work it would be. suits their age group and since mari usually does things above and beyond by herself by choice it seems she didn't think about other people doing that. Poor Enzo. and the Mayor accidentally causing this by thoughtlessness rather than outright meanness like Chloe is a nice touch

Like I said, I wasn't expecting much, but I felt my readers deserved SOMETHING for their patience, and I wrote it out anyway to try to better understand what I was doing with the concept. Once I was done I got to work on the actual story. And whooo boy!

Once more this week I was irritated that I had days where I wasn't sure what I did. So I decided, especially with Camp NaNo going on, that I had to go back to auditing my time. See where I've been wasting it.

Thus started the hunt for the elusive daily planner. You just can't find these things anymore. People use their phones, or they don't organize their days by hour, or both, I don't know. The local Walmart and odds and ends store didn't have one. They had weekly and monthly planners, but no daily. I vaguely recalled having to buy my previous one from a Staples or OfficeMax or Office Depot; some office supply store like that. So I looked them up online to see where the closest was. Sadly, the options were all about a 40min drive from me, at least. Sometimes I hate living in a rural town.

I drove to the only one of the options I had already been to, which meant I knew exactly where it was. I had hoped to find something closer. I didn't want to waste the time and gas to drive all the way out there and back for just a $20 planner, but it didn't look like I had a choice unless I wanted to wait for a delivery from Amazon or something.

So, on the 5th I sucked it up and did the drive. The whole day was a bit of a shambles that I won't get into because it doesn't have to do with my writing, but it was why I didn't write anything that day.

At least, after literally a 35min long hunt through the aisles to find a friggen calendar that didn't start in 2019 already, I finally got the planner. It's good until June 2019, so I need to remember to buy a replacement before then. Should probably write a note about it in my calendar....

Anyway, I've been trying to be diligent with my time auditing, and I think I've become at least mildly more productive since. I feel accountable. I don't want to write "putz around online" large enough to cover an hour or two in my planner. We'll see if that means week 2 of Camp will have a higher turnout, of both words and an actual chapter done.

I had to do a lot of redacting to hide names and
activities of a personal nature, but you get the idea.

It's not just my poor time management that has bogged down this last chapter. There is a LOT to unpack and tie up with a bow before I conclude my story. I want to make sure I do it right. Having never finished a major project like this before, I'm having a bit of a rough go with the "conclude things" concept.

The chapter so far has spilled onto a 10th page, and is at 4616 words. I'm probably only a third, maybe two-fifths, of the way through the ending I want to tell.

I'm probably going to have to chop this chapter up in two; increase PT one more time and make it a 16-chapter story.

HOW DID IT GET SO MASSIVE!?

I did manage to check off a couple of things that I wanted to accomplish. I concluded the "soup story line" and put in the aftermath of the video Ladybug had Alya post on the Ladyblog. I also wanted to show a contrast of Opening Story Adrien with his father versus Story Ending Adrien with Gabriel. Considering the relationship those two had at the beginning of the story was the main catalyst to the whole thing, I felt I needed to show that the dynamic has changed, even slightly.

I'm still tweaking that bit, but I think I'm close to getting it to where I want.

I'll then breeze through the next day's events, since they aren't crucial to the story, and get the gang to the Chat Noir Appreciation Day festivities. There the akuma will attack, and I think that's where I'll have to end it.

I'll come back for one last chapter, for reals this time, in order to show the akuma attack, the discussion Chat Noir and Ladybug desperately need to tell, Adrien's official decision to woo Marinette as Chat Noir before confessing anything - leading up to the events in "One and the Same" - and finally have Adrien pick up Marinette's portfolio to show his father in order to wrap up that subplot. I'll find a cutesy way of ending the story there with Adrien telling Plagg something to the effect that he no longer needs to spy on Marinette in her room. Something to reassure the readers that it was a week long slip-up, but he's never doing it again.

I may be done by Camp's end....

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by Birdman, Inc

I'm good at this.

Probably doesn't help that I go off on writing side-tangents though. Along with writing that akuma side story, I also wrote up a Miraculous Ladybug essay I had been meaning to do for months now.

Before I even rejoined Tumblr I was finding different Miraculous Ladybug themed posts on it. One of the main reasons I decided to do the Tumblr thing again was because of how frequently I was on it anyway.

Well, after the episode "Glaciator" came out in January, I saw everyone going "poor Chat Noir"/"Poor Cat"/"Poor Adrien" and I was like, "yeah. Pretty much." Then I spent a great deal of time trying to find a post to see if anyone else noticed what I did about "Glaciator." In an earlier episode "Riposte" Marinette was crushed to find out that Adrien only thought of her as a "good friend," whereas in "Glaciator" Adrien was ecstatic that Ladybug thought of him as a friend.

This, plus all the time I've been in Adrien's head for PT, made me really think about the differences between how Adrien loves Ladybug vs how Marinette loves Adrien.

I saw a few posts on Tumblr asking why everyone seems to be sympathetic to Adrien when his feelings get hurt, but rarely does anyone show Marinette any pity. This made me think even more about the differences in how the two leads love each other.

Then, on Sunday, when I had over four hours to myself and was enjoying them on the front porch, when I should have been working on PT's last chapter, I found this image on Tumblr and went on a tangent instead.

As I went down this image and read each intersection, I realized "D'awww, I was right. Adrien IS truly in love with Ladybug." I also realized that I was right about Marinette as well... she's not in love, she's a young teenager obsessed with Adrien and mistaking it for love. No shame in that; I did the same thing with my elementary school and middle school crushes, and none of them were even famous. It's hard to know the difference between obsession and true love until you've experienced the later, or had the former pointed out to you.

Still, it solidified everything I had been thinking of since "Glaciator," and I was determined to write the essay I had been sitting on for six months.

You can find it, along with the above image, on Tumblr here. Since the essay is attached to an already existing Tumblr post, I have no clue if anyone will pay any attention to it.

I do know that it got two likes though. That's a start.

Anyway, writing the essay without first outlining it, doing everything on the fly, which also meant quick research to make sure I was quoting correctly, took me about an hour or two to write. I then caught up on Tumblr again, and stumbled onto a post comparing Felix Chat Noir to Yuri Plisetsky from "Yuri!!! on Ice." For those who don't know, in the original concept of "Miraculous Ladybug" the series was supposed to be an anime, and Chat Noir's civilian form was called Felix. He was the typical anime rich kid who is rude and snobby, but secretly and desperately wants friends. He was considered too cliche and eventually reworked into Adrien.

Anyway, it wasn't just his personality and character arc that was too cliche. Like I mentioned, I found a Tumblr post comparing Felix to Yuri, and yes, they do have a passing resemblance. I'm sure if I ever got around to watching the anime I'd notice personality similarities as well that would make them more similar.

On the other hand, about a month ago, while Omnibladestrike was over showing us the anime "Medaka Box" I noticed another anime character had an even more striking resemblance to Felix in his Chat Noir persona. One of the main supporting characters: Kouki Akune.

I mean, look at this craziness!

Naturally, because I don't trust my memory anymore, I'm afraid I can't re-find things on Tumblr, and I hate the "schedule for later" and queue mechanics of Tumblr, I had to use the Felix/Yuri comparison post as a springboard for my own comparison post. And I had to do it RIGHT THEN.

Thing is, I didn't have any pictures of either character. So I spent time scoring the internet for anything that might be a good comparison shot. I then went nearly frame by frame through the Ladybug PV to find the above shots of Felix Chat Noir. I then spent more time editing the photos to be side-by-sides. By the time I was done and posted my response it was nearly another hour later.

My entire uninterrupted evening alone. Gone. Used up for tedious and unneeded things instead of working on my story. I even told Omni that I was going to be focused on my chapter, so we'll have to raincheck our weekly anime binge.

Part of me feels like a loser. Another part of me is glad the two things I've been really pondering about for weeks/months now are both out of my head. I can move on.

Side note, the original poster of the Felix vs Yuri comment came back to say "Wow, they really do look alike!! :O" So I may have converted at least one person.

Which is all grand and whatnot, but I need to focus.

*cracks knuckles*

Time to get at least this first half of a two-part conclusion done already! No more delays! No more distractions! No more procrastination!