Tuesday, March 20, 2018

On re-playthroughs and editing and whatever other random things

Edit-ish Stuff...
Nearly done with the revision on A Slight Exaggeration. It's significantly shorter now, as I cut around 4ish chapters from the middle bit but haven't added much in to replace it. That's not necessarily an issue, though. Should finish it entirely tomorrow and then I can pitch it back to the agent and hopefully he'll pitch it on to the editor (the one that I nearly went with as my agent when she was agenting). I like her and it would be cool to work with her. And I like this book. It's not perfect yet...well, they never are. They are never ever ever perfect and I will always want to twiddle with them BUT I do really like it. Hopefully an editor will too. :) It's got a much easier hook than Yonder & Beyond, though I do like that book too. Still waiting to hear back from the other editor about that one.

Went into the British Library again today to work on it and to meet up with Tracey, though she wound up having to bail fairly early as she wasn't feeling well. It was good to get into the city, though. I do need something to pry me out of the house sometimes. Tomorrow I will probably stay home though...and utilise my fireplace. It's still freaking cold, though not as cold as this past weekend.

In otome-ish news... 
hahaha...I was kind of having Mystic Messenger withdrawal and I wanted to build up enough hourglasses to unlock Jaehee's route without having to play through the first 4 days, so I've been playing Casual Story again for Zen. Also because now I have a Zen calling card, which I didn't the first time through. Ah, Oppa Zen... And I'd never done the normal ending for him, as I didn't realise then how easy it was to do both the good/normal ends at the same time.

So...yeah. I'm making excuses. I just like Zen. Though if I'd thought it through, I might have realised that playing Zen right before playing Jaehee was probably an iffy idea because you really wanna smack her in his route. Though, since we're traveling later this month and will be in the US, it'll be a while until I get to Jaehee anyway, so hopefully it'll be okay. I'm not even going to open the game while we're in a different time zone. Talk about withdrawal...

It is making me want to write up some more Zennish fiction though. He is such a narcissist but he's so sweet too. I didn't do a playthrough write up when I played him the first time, so maybe I'll write up a few things for some of the visual novel sections, like when the MC goes over to his house the first time. I dunno. We'll see. I've done their first Valentine's Day and his proposal after story...what else would be good to write up? Anyone? Bueller?

Also made it a little farther in Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome, though I only had about 30 minutes today, so not very far. It is funny. Have no idea which of the two weirdo guys I'm headed towards but I'm playing blind without any walkthroughs this time, so we'll see. As far as personal tastes go...er...neither of them are necessarily appealing, though I guess Miki (the blonde one) is sort of nicer? But this one almost feels like something you play for laughs rather than romance so I'm not too concerned. I think I'll go all the way through to an end and then lookup how many possible ends there are and then figure out what I'm gonna do next. There aren't a huge amount of decision points though, so I'm not sure how re-playable it will be.

Next writing-y stuff...
I've been thinking some more about what I want to work on next, knowing that whatever it is will hopefully get shoved aside when either Yonder or A Slight Exaggeration get picked up (please!!) and I have to go into edit mode. And...well...I'm not sure. All the otome I've been doing has made me want to write some romance-ish stuff. The Death's Door YA is romance, BUT it's by necessity going to have to be very tame romance. We're talking, like, maybe a kiss. And I kinda want to explore more than that.

So I was thinking about the Hildie book again but the more I think about it, the more I think that I was writing the entirely wrong story. Basically, I wrote thousands of words of back story but I didn't write THE STORY. Not that it wasn't interesting in and of itself, but it wasn't the right story. So I kind of feel like I would need to toss nearly all of it if I ever want to do something with Hildie again. I do like the character. She kicks ass. Literally. And she would definitely be up for shmexytimes.

And I think I knew that I was writing the wrong story even when I was writing it but I got stuck in a loop. That's why I couldn't finish it. Also, I seem to mostly do better when there's something fantastical to the plot and not just your normal wham bam crime fiction bloodbath. Eh, reasons. Lots of reasons.

So then I was thinking, hey, maybe there's some other useful idea that I could dust off. Something maybe even New Adult. Meh, I don't know. Logically, I should just tackle the Death book since it's partially complete and has a good hook and I do like the characters and it's in a genre I've done before.

Maybe I'll just keep writing the MM sort of fan fiction stuff to satisfy my romance craving. I dunno. I do feel a little guilty every time I take time out to write it even though it is fun. It's so low-pressure and I can do whatever I want with it. But, at the same time, it's nothing that can go anywhere.  So I do have guilt. It's not like I'm one of those prolific writers who can churn out multiple books a year. I can generally do one and I really ought to do more.

We'll see, we'll see. Blogging again has been really nice. I'm only talking to myself, but it's better than it all rolling around in my head.

Hence this very ramble-y post.

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