That Feel When...

At the point where I just sit back and wonder how this project grew to include such things as giant robot minotaurs, mystical sciency bullshit, god-like AIs, using buses as battering rams and five-year-old mountain gurus and whether or not they are silly in a good way, or just plain silly. Ah well, as long as I amuse myself...mission accomplished.

I'm over 500 pages of writing now. I ended up finishing a few difficult points, which makes me happy. Not chapter 12 though. I decided that this chapter can rot in the backlog until I'm done everything else, even though I keep telling myself that it's really not all that hard to write. I keep jumping between chapters, so theoretically at least 5 of them will be done around the same time. Also, all chapters have WRITING in them...but are in various stages of completion (incomplete chapters ranging from 10%-98% done).

270832 words and counting.

Been Awhile

Haven't used this blog much lately. Been mostly focused on sharing video work rather than writing. I have actually been slowly working on bits and pieces of writing over the last 4 months. I'm so close to finished the entire thing. My problem is finding the motivation to do so. A lot of what I write fast and with ease are elements I've been thinking about constantly. The parts that aren't done, frankly, have not been thought out in my head. I'm thinking too far ahead at this point in time. I have an overall endgame in mind now, and I know a lot of parts I need to fix, but I have to get to that point first.

Another issue is I can only write when I feel up to it, which is another reason it's taken me so long. This is something that I do for myself. I'm writing something I'd be entertained to read, rather than writing this for someone else (which would get the job done a lot quicker). Having no one expecting this from me, or worried about marks or getting paid means that I work a lot slower on it and prioritize other things. I honestly don't know how some people write hundreds of words daily. I see some posts where people have like...20 unpublished books finished and I just don't understand how they manage it. Unwavering confidence perhaps?

I keep flip-flopping on my work. At times I've very please with myself, and the rest of the time I just stare at the page in utter disgust and wonder how I came up with such drivel. That or a little of both. All I know is that I'm pining for the finish line, where I at least get that rough draft done. I want that sense of accomplishment at finishing something that I've been working on for literally a third of my life. Maybe I just made it too long. I have this vision for what I want the end product to be, and I'm not stopping until I've reached that.

In other news, I think I just gave some very bad 10-pin bowling advice. I just started bowling in a spring league and literally my knowledge of technique in this comes down to "throw the ball as hard as you can down the middle." Average is sitting around 140 right now and I have no idea if that's good or not. I'm a lot more experienced with 5-pin where my average is sitting around 180-190. Not sure what else to tell her other than to keep her arm straight and correct for the ball drifting to the right.

Colossal Failure and a Playlist

Okay not really, but I'm still not done. Not unexpected, but still. Progress report is optimistic. There are about three areas holding me back. Plan is to finish the little bits in the areas that don't make me want to slam my face into the keyboard and then suffer through the rest later.

I enjoy this.

Really.

Here's a playlist.

Consider it a remastered version of my playlist on my old YouTube account.

Random fact: I learned that "unnecessary bashing of my face into a keyboard" is a tag I have used...more than once...not just on these blogs...

Other good ones:

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN LASER BEAMS
eeeeeeeeeeeee
FRANCE
ankles
aaaaaaaaaaa
all the damn chapters
burning thesaurus
CHUCK NORRIS
faffing in brown hats
poop
pew pew pew
shoot me in the face please
squared bees
we're getting there people
god damned chapter 12

I Made a Spreadsheet

I calculated approximately how close I am to REALLY being done the rough draft. It's sitting around 71%. That said...that is the average of the arbitrary percentages I have assigned to each chapter in terms of completion, but it seems accurate. I have a lot of patch work done. There are 6 chapters out of 45 that I have not started (unless you count 1 or 2 lines plus notes), three stupid long chapters that I need to revisit, three completely terrible chapters I need to rewrite, Jason's chapter which is about 90% done and makes me want to stab myself with a fork, and the realization that 45 chapters will most likely become 46 because...some things are not explained. As much as I would like Jason to just show up somewhere for no reason, I can't really do that. Laziness is not on my side here. 

Damn it Jason you ruin everything. 

So 71%.

The document itself is a poor representation of the final page numbers and word count, but it's currently sitting at 423 pages and 228,000 words. How am I not done this yet?

BEFORE 2015. It needs to happen.

I am super antsy about sharing any of this. I enjoy writing it, and I make myself laugh, but the reason it's taken so long is just it doesn't quite meet my level of expectations. And if it doesn't even meet mine, how can I expect it to be good enough for other people to lay eyes on. I've debated sharing snippets of it for a long time. Maybe... 

shdfaiasdnasoidnanosdas 

That almost looks like a word

All right

k 

fine

HERE.

He stepped lightly on the catwalk, especially in one section where the supports holding it to the wall and roof seemed a little loose. He could see a figure lying prone on a section of the catwalk near the middle. He noticed a ladder down to the second floor on the far side. Ash had not moved and barely acknowledged Dedrad when he arrived. Dedrad sat next to him, back resting against the rail behind him as Ash grabbed a couple bands from the little pile next to him.

“Why are you tormenting the research team?” Dedrad asked after a moment.

“Bored.”

“Training and facility duties not enough to keep you occupied?”

“Woke up late. No one told me to do anything, so I'm conducting an experiment.”

“An experiment?”

“Yes, I am determining the average number of elastic band shots required to piss off members of the research team. Joey is the control.”

Ash fired an elastic and it found its mark in the back of Joey's neck. Joey placed a hand on his neck where it hit and looked around behind him for the culprit. Ash chuckled and loaded another.

“I see you're a real man of science.”

“Poten wants me to apply what I'm learning. Just consider this applied physics.”

Ash adjusted his aim and angle, and fired an elastic into the back of a woman working at a computer. It hit her coat and dropped to the floor unnoticed. Ash made a disappointed noise.

“As much as I don't want to encourage you, experiments need to be repeated for accurate results.”

“Tried it with a gang once.”

“Really?”

“It was hilarious until someone got stabbed.”

“That person wouldn't have been you would it?”

Ash chuckled.

“I honestly can't tell if you are being serious or not.”

Ash fired another couple of bands. The two of them had to duck when the second projectile hit a man in the face and he gazed wildly about to determine where it had come from.

Dedrad's Interlude

Knock another interlude off the list. Dedrad's bit has been re-written in full. It's a lot better than it used to be. He actually has some fricking character in it now. Before was just so...bland. Some of the parts in this section might actually be the best of my writing in this project so far. At least I think so. It's good because this section is more than a little important for developing some character relationships later on...and attitudes in this world. Helped to really expand what's going on in the world of WMRR. Anyway, I'm happy.

Word count is still around the 180,000 mark as I deleted an entire section, which was basically  just shlock I wrote so I could wrap my head around an event.

I really want to take a week off and go to Lake Winnipeg and just...write. That and eat cookies and lie on a beach. Those things are good too.

Budding

The monster chapter became two chapters. The only problem is that I need to change my plans for chapter 18 and what I'm writing about there. I think I might have to switch the OH I JUST THOUGHT OF WHAT I COULD DO. I might just be a genius at 1:30 in the morning. Of course this means I need to finish chapter 12 finally, but that's OK. Well maybe not. I haven't been so stuck on anything I've written in my life. Ugh. Regardless, I have an entire interlude to complete before that has to see the light of day. Perhaps I should begin meditating on this section a little more and it'll come to me. Anyway, I just thought I'd say I'm about a paragraph and a few lines of dialogue from finally finishing chapter 16, which is now also chapter 17. I will be moving on after tonight.

Also, current word count: 115,488 and page count: 206

We're well into the latter half now folks. For the first time ever I can see a conclusion to this work in the near future. 

Architects

Broke 200 pages a couple days ago. I think I only really realized the significance of that milestone today, especially since I've finally reached and surpassed one of the points of this story that has been playing in my mind over and over again for many years. It took a slightly different shape than I had pictured it for so long, but it works better. I still have no idea how I came to write it the way I did. My mind is...strange. Maybe I melted my brain when I got heat exhaustion in Rome.

Currently sitting at 115,000 words at the moment. I still have a couple of small gaps to fill in for the juggernaut that is chapter 16. Let's see...we have a battle, an escape, a journey, a confrontation and a consultation all in one chapter. There's a hell of a lot of information that I packed into a couple of pages with intersecting thought processes, but it really all needs to be told from one perspective. The only other option I could think of would be to put the next interlude between the escape and the latter half of the chapter. Actually...that might work. I need to refer back to this post I think. For now, I'll leave it as is.

I reread a lot of what I wrote while I was travelling and noticed that it really wasn't that bad. My writing style has evolved some, and some slight changes (that I can thankfully pick out without too much difficulty) need to be made, but for the most part, it's fairly solid. Chapter 1 needs to be rewritten and chapter 3 needs to be heavily revised, but the other chapters are easy enough to work with and edit as is. This is good considering that this version, most of it technically version 2, not 3 (in the case of the first 4 chapters and the one interlude) was written about 3 or 4 years ago. I'd have to look back at my posts to figure out how long I've taken between each chapter to determine my work ethic for the last few chapters. Based off of my past motivation levels, I have BREEZED through chapter 16, monster that it is, in less than a couple weeks (if you ignore the 5 week hiatus in the middle, where I actually continued to work on it, in my mind and in its review on my e-reader).

So theoretically, after tonight (or tomorrow based on how long this tough little part will be) I will have chapters 1-11 and 13-16 finished. Chapter 12 is still a huge problem for me, but I will need to finish it within the next couple of weeks if I am to continue the narrative. It's...a little more crucial for the final 13 or so chapters that need to come. I'd like to say I'm close to the end, but I'm really more like 60% done. A few of the chapters to come WILL be short (the only chapter that will match chapter 16 in length I believe should come much later...near the end).

Lastly, I know, almost with 100% certainty how I will end this book. I think I will be happy with this ending. I want it to be an ending that leaves it open for the second and third books I have planned open, but at the same time with enough of a conclusion that I don't have to panic too much in beginning the next step. I don't even think I SHOULD be thinking of the next step yet considering I've been working on this for EIGHT YEARS. I started this when I was 15 or 16. I'm 24 now. Granted, I needed to hone my writing skills...am still honing them in fact. Honestly, I think they will always be in a perpetual state of honing. There is no perfection in my writing. Though if I have to be egotistical, just this once, I have delivered some damn good one-liners. Well, at least I'm entertained by them.

And it's all about having fun right?


My that was long-winded.

Productivi---wait...

I think I had something important to say, but I've long forgotten it.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/websites_stop

I probably fall under category five...though it's not quite accurate. I think you have to be somewhat popular (or under the impression that you're popular) for that to work. This blog isn't intended to inflate my ego though...it's suppose to keep me on track and record PROGRESS. I'd put stars and fireworks and magical rainbows and unicorns around "PROGRESS", but I ran out.

SO LET'S INFLATE MY EGO

April 27th, I will be participating in a reading with my classmates and other students from the creative writing department. I am advertising here because I'm delusional, but also in the hopes that I can fill another few seats. The event starts at 5pm in the John Dutton Theatre at the Public Library Downtown. So come and join us to listen to the work of people infinitely more talented than myself. That or you're welcome to come heckle me. I'll be the awkward one...probably wearing a brown fedora.

Also, this is where research for one of my papers has led me:

http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/archives/2007/03/top_15_unintent.html

Number 12 demonstrates why I hate the Fantastic Four comics/why I find them creepy. I also have Venture Bros to thank for this.

http://www.movie-moron.com/?p=888

These sites have nothing to do with my topic. I can't even remember what I was searching for.

I also have some research to do for the upcoming election. I'm irritated that we're voting AGAIN, so I'm going to figure out what all their platforms are, why I hate each party and other relevant information to deduce who I will vote for. I think I might even post this on my other blog as a rant...because that's all I do on my other blog.

Also, Art Spiegelman is in town this week. Yay.