Hey it's me Mario vriddy... talking about... writing!! Everybody, act surprised!!! Haha. Thanks for indulging on my last post related to this. Rationally I knew it was just my brain being silly but sometimes knowing doesn't help, you have pop that cork by actually getting the stupid thoughts in the sun where they can burn the way they should.

Anyway! I'm nearing the end of this round of cursed witch revisions. Current tally: 87 hours over the last 4 months. That makes it longer than the actual chunky round I called "prose editing" (where I added tons of descriptions and worldbuilding too) which took 81 hours over, huh. Five months. Would have sworn it was 3. So this round will probably end up around 5 months too (to be followed by another round of proofreading in a couple months or so, with all the new stuff I need to look at). However, the work felt a lot nicer overall thanks to allowing chill fic breaks, I think. I still need to be careful how I handle this to avoid Shiny New Project syndrome, but I think that went well.

I basically have the last chapter/epilogue left to edit, as well as the last scene from the previous chapter. The beginning of that penultimate chapter also saw extensive changes that I'm SO EXCITED ABOUT, sets up more worldbuilding and also sets up some of the foundations for the sequel that I'm really really excited to get on with writing hopefully soon.

However, I have to figure out what I want to do with the ending itself. ( Read more... )

I will absolutely need another set of eyes on this version. Even if I were to change nothing else and leave the epilogue as is, the story leaves the readers with completely different feelings now. Antagonistic(ish) characters that were easy to hate aren't anymore (...I think). I need to understand if this works for other people, too.

Normally after a big round of editing I'm like "THIS IS THE FINAL ONE I AM SO SICK OF IT" but... I'm not totally sure if fixing some of the major issues didn't make formerly minor ones more obvious now, and I'm curious about what's been surfacing *pokes* *pokes* I'll have to see what I think when I'm done for real, and get an external perspective. I think it's also interesting that I believe I would have the stamina for another round (however, no interest in spending another 80+ hours on it). I also like that I'm being more cautious about working on the ending. My previous way of doing things meant that I was so sick of it by the end I always rushed it once the end was in sight. Allowing small mental breaks, but not ones that completely take over (just one or two days here and there) has been really fruitful for my process, I think.