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I have a lot of work left to do on my Five Figure Fanwork Exchange before it goes live on the 22nd, although I did successfully post 57K words by the deadline, back on January 21. Still, there are missing scenes, two missing chapters at the end, and the whole thing needs a read-through and a good edit.
It's not usual for me to publish anything to AO3 in such a half-baked state. I blame the facts that (1) this is a long fic, (2) it's also an ambitious fic, (3) it's all original characters, in an original setting. It's SO HARD to make things up that are completely original!
In any case, I've found myself avoiding the work that's necessary to finish this off well. So, to motivate myself, I signed up for a pinch hit on Rare Femslash Exchange, due in just 3 days. I am telling myself that I can work on that pinch hit only once I've put in meaningful work on FFFX.
It's working, because I just edited the first three chapters, adding lines here and there, making the characters' motivations clearer, cleaning up awkward words and phrases, et cetera. It took me about 90 minutes, and these first three chapters are pretty solid now.
Another 10 chapters are pretty much done, and will require only that same level of editing -- which, I estimate, will take me about five hours total, if the pace I just set can be used to estimate.
Of course, I also have 5 chapters that are only half done. They'll probably need more time than a mere half hour each.
And then I have at least another chapter at the end to give the characters a real happy ending instead of the current truncated one.
I doubt I'll be able to get through all that this weekend. But using the Rare Femslash pinch hit as motivation is actually working. I was excited to sit down and revisit these characters just now. It's reawakening my interest in the story, which I have been neglecting for the past three weeks after burning out on it while rushing to post on time.
Humans are funny creatures. If I had worked on this for half an hour a day for the past three weeks, I could have been done by now. But no. It's like I always have to make everything harder for myself than it needs to be...
It's not usual for me to publish anything to AO3 in such a half-baked state. I blame the facts that (1) this is a long fic, (2) it's also an ambitious fic, (3) it's all original characters, in an original setting. It's SO HARD to make things up that are completely original!
In any case, I've found myself avoiding the work that's necessary to finish this off well. So, to motivate myself, I signed up for a pinch hit on Rare Femslash Exchange, due in just 3 days. I am telling myself that I can work on that pinch hit only once I've put in meaningful work on FFFX.
It's working, because I just edited the first three chapters, adding lines here and there, making the characters' motivations clearer, cleaning up awkward words and phrases, et cetera. It took me about 90 minutes, and these first three chapters are pretty solid now.
Another 10 chapters are pretty much done, and will require only that same level of editing -- which, I estimate, will take me about five hours total, if the pace I just set can be used to estimate.
Of course, I also have 5 chapters that are only half done. They'll probably need more time than a mere half hour each.
And then I have at least another chapter at the end to give the characters a real happy ending instead of the current truncated one.
I doubt I'll be able to get through all that this weekend. But using the Rare Femslash pinch hit as motivation is actually working. I was excited to sit down and revisit these characters just now. It's reawakening my interest in the story, which I have been neglecting for the past three weeks after burning out on it while rushing to post on time.
Humans are funny creatures. If I had worked on this for half an hour a day for the past three weeks, I could have been done by now. But no. It's like I always have to make everything harder for myself than it needs to be...
