memory bank

Mentally returning to this tree and listening to the water flow by, while I juggle a suddenly busier than expected time.


I woke up from such a cool dream this morning. Like, I considered for 3 seconds closing my eyes again, then remembered and sat up, like, WOW I DO NOT WANT TO FORGET THIS. There was a prophecy, which I failed to stop, and DRAGONS flying against a night sky, stunning and overwhelming and terrifying. Incredible sight.

Been turning prophecy thoughts in my head all morning since, like poking at a loose tooth. There were so many different reactions to the prophecy coming true in the dream. Absolute panic, of course, but also "guess the castle from the prophecy was this one *shrug*" and I'm just... poke, poke.

A lot of editing thoughts as I find my feet with the new method.

General status/Learnt last week:

I suspect this more extensive way of doing structural editing might be merging two rounds of editing compared with what I did with the cursed witch. Last time, the "structural" round focused on general cohesion for plot and characterisation as well as pace. Then in the following "prose" round, I added a lot more descriptions and enhanced the worldbuilding, with the occasional new background character. This time, it feels more natural to include a fair bit of worldbuilding where it fits as well (and that's great, because there's the occasional plot impact, and getting that in early is helpful!). Even if this round takes me a fair chunk of time (especially when including the month of prep), this could still be significant time-wise because I usually need at least a 6-week break between rounds. But tbc since I still have to see how long this will all take anyway!

In general, I'm very happy because I'm adding loadsa new words, haha. I've already written more than March and April COMBINED! This is not actually very impressive!! Because I only wrote 520 words in March (was doing revision preps, which I don't count yet) and 1.5k in April (was mostly proofreading) XD

I feel like the pacing for this novel is going to be a lot better. With every scene, I'm being more deliberate about having questions and putting down puzzle pieces and also setting up smaller reveals on the way. I'm realising just how effective revealing something can be for raising curiosity. One of my big faults is trying to keep things secret for the sake of "the mystery", but that can also make the stakes way too vague at times. The reader doesn't know why they should care.

Having said that, I've only revised 4 scenes out of 47 48 (had a bit of scene mitosis this week!), so that might not sustain itself well, but I'm super excited to find out. I'm moving slowly but this all feels super cool.

Another discovery/experiment: I thought that because I did so much preparatory work, it would maybe be easier to edit in the evening when my brain is not as fresh, but that hasn't really happened. For example, I had to consider which PoV to use for the new scene the evening I tried, and I just couldn't answer the question. Like, what are the stakes for each character? What's the impact for the order in which the information is revealed in the story? Where else or in how much time can I bring up the information that PoV X won't know?

However, if/when I try again an evening session, I'd like to remember to look at the smaller questions I skipped. For example, there's a plot-relevant flower I must describe, and what it looks like exactly isn't super important but it needs to be specific. I need to sit down with that and return to the description I skipped soon. (Because it's so important to the world, I think inworld people would use it as a comparison point for colours or shapes or other things.) I've also got some slang to make up!! Like I've got a few swear words, but I want a worldbuilding-relevant equivalent to "thank god" too, considering what this population has gone through. And there's a missing nickname for a childhood friend. It should be charming and evoke closeness, but also be embarrassing to an adult. Lol.

I know I mentioned before I wanted to improve my sentence craft but that will have to wait. My head is too full already with all the new stuff I'm learning to apply in this round of revisions. Maybe during the 6+ weeks break, whenever I'm done with this round? Who knows!

Projects:

• Only Soul Thief, and happy with that! :D I'm in the phase where it feels nice to be working on a chunky project and knowing exactly what I'll be working on next.

Next week?

Just keep it up with the revisions in general.

Additionally, I did send the Cursed Witch to a couple of beta-readers, but everyone is busy so I don't expect to hear anything until next month. Still working out technical kinks for 2 more beta-readers, so hopefully resolve that by the end of next week! I should try Ellipsus again at some point and investigate if my beta-reading issues from last time were resolved...

And that's me! Lots of learning so I'm very happy. Any creative plans for the upcoming week??

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