Writing Update: 31/01/25

Change: +6,103

Year to Date: 23,376

I can't believe how quickly January's gone!

A frustrating week, in some ways. Started strongly--hit two thousand on Friday--but couldn't quite maintain the momentum and barely cleared five hundred by Thursday. Real world stuff got in the way. Still, six thousand for the week isn't too bad, and I should be wrapping up the Christmas story by next week. It's isn't really a Christmas story anymore, of course. Instead, it's become chapter 7 or 8, something like that. It's an odd way to write a story, and now when I go back to finish off 6, I'll have to make sure it bridges properly.

Over on Scribblehub, I've gone and deleted the bulk of Constant, keeping only chapters where readers had kindly commented on the story. I've begin reposting in much smaller chapters. I started Constant on FM, a site that lends itself to posting larger chapters and the average chapters size has generally been about 20k words. However, sites like TGS and SH seem to favour smaller chapters that are easier to digest, and it's easier to flick forward to the next chapter.

One effect of reposting this way is that it's given me an excuse to quicky skim over a chapter (previously, just a scene) before re-posting. I've noticed two things from this. One, that I used to write a lot shorter. In those first couple of chapters of Constant, individual scenes were only about 1,500 or two thousand words - now, they average about 5k or 6k. I don't know if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, current scenes are more detailed and introspective, maybe richer in texture and description; but they're also just... longer, less pacey. This is a problem I keep coming back to. I need to set myself a challenge to write something short.

The other thing I've noticed are the inconsistencies that I need to go back and rewrite or edit. For example, the new chapter nine introduces Thomas Hunter for the first time. David's flashback of their first meeting includes Julia and totally contradicts her account of that meeting much later in the novel. Whilst two characters' account of an event differing could be a fun thing to explore, in this case it's just an error on my part. Prefering the more recent version, I'll need to go back and fix the old one. As we're approaching the end--and I can finally see the final sweep of chapters bringing all this to a close!--I'm increasingly looking forward to the challenge of editing the whole thing. I've never done that before.

Anyway, for the coming week:

Monday: Chapter 6-2 released.

Wednesday: Sneak Peek at the Christmas story - or possible part four; depends how the writing goes between now and Wednesday.

Thursday: some fanart by Fralim, it's been too long. I had a different piece to share, gifted to me by a fan (not on the Patreon) - a short clip animating Fraylim's image of Stacey and Cindy - but Patreon didn't seem to recognize the format so I'm working on that.

Have a great week, everyone!