Progress Report (Patreon)

Another great week!

I was able to write pretty much every day — except on the weekend, of course, when I rest and recharge. And while my rhythm wasn't as fast as I'd liked due to the lack of a first draft to build on, it was still nothing to scoff at! I averaged about 2k words a day, making this final third of the chapter almost 17k words.

When I started the re-write last Thursday, things were going so fast that I thought I'd be almost done by now but alas, I severely underestimated the amount of work I had in front of me! Fight scenes are always daunting; both because I think I'm not very good at them and because of the amount of variation each of them always entails.

Plus, I want to do better in this second book. So, I'm really trying to make things... I don't know, just better 😋. Whether before I would maybe cut corners because I didn't feel like writing a whole secondary action sequence, I'm refusing to do it now.

Your weapon of choice is, of course, the biggest variation but there's also your Combat stat, whether or not you're wearing armor — whether or not the fight stars as a surprise or on equal footing... it's a lot, and the dialogue tree before that was a lot too.

This seems like I'm complaining, but I'm really not! I cannot WAIT for you guys to play this because I'm so, so happy with how everything is turning out!!!! I said last week how happier I am with this version of the chapter, and this week I'm even more convinced the re-write was the right choice. It just... takes more work and time than I'd like.

So, where exactly am I? I'm so close to finishing the last variations of the big dialogue trees — also, speaking of dialogue, I really like how this whole thing went down 😊. After that, I need to write one more fight scene (smaller, thankfully) and a chase at the end of that. This chase, and its consequences thereof, was the idea that came to me in the night and made me do the rewrite in the first place, so you can imagine how eager I am to get to it!

For next week, I won't be greedy with my goal: I want to be done with the chase scene. Then, it's only a matter of writing the very last scenes of the chapter - where all the affluents come together and merge into one deep, wide river.

And that's it! Have a great weekend, and spend it doing something you love that makes you happy. I will probably be taking advantage of these sunny days to take my dog, Nero, on a long walk to the beach. He's just like me: addicted to the ocean ❤️🌹