Tag Archives: story

Nuts and Bolts and Progress!

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I try to do too much at once. I have been sitting on the same story now for over a decade. Obviously, it’s evolved. It’s nothing at all what it was when I originally envisioned it, but my problem is that I have a bit of a hard time committing to any particular version of the story. Who knows if, come tomorrow, I’ll see the story from some new, unforeseen angle and what to redraft the whole thing through the filter of the new vision.

Also, I can’t fully settle on what events should happen when. Lots of ideas, but they’re all disjointed. There’s a few overarching themes I have in mind, but very little substantial glue to bring it all together and hold it there in a way that feels quite natural. At least not just yet.

What is becoming more and more obvious to me is that certain things cannot be planned. There are a great many things which can only be discovered during the writing process itself. I’m finding myself increasingly guilty of letting ideas evolve exclusively in my head on their own to such a highly specialized extent that they suddenly start having very little in common with the heart of the rest of the story as a whole.

Instead, when I take to writing my ideas out in the direct context of actual story material, no matter how simple and incomplete they may be at first, they’ll at least have the benefit of being cohesive with the over arching vision. I’m now facing a turning point where I may need to open myself to some serious pruning. Eventually, the lofty and abstract concepts I’d like to feature in the story will make their appearance, but will they express themselves to the same refined extent which they currently exist in my head, or will they take an unexpected turn and show me something new instead? I’m getting closer to finding out each and every day.

Speaking of which, I’ve been busy the last couple of days. I’ve written a chapter for my story, Elyen, and will be looking to get some feed back from friends soon enough. If all goes well, I’ll share it online for anyone who’s interested in actually reading what I’ve been working on, rather than reading me talking about what I’ve been working on. Keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks.

Also, I drafted up a short poem called “Intentions” (originally called “Pretentious”), hosted on Wattpad. If you get a chance, please check it out and let me know what you think! It’s a quick read.

https://embed.wattpad.com/story/10888194
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Lesson Learned?

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You know what sucks? Losing something you spent a lot of time working on. For example, a nearly-ready-to-publish draft of a short story.

I take autosave for granted. In fact, I’m taking it for granted right now with WordPress, which, if I might say so, is precisely what it’s designed for. Anyone disagree? Not that I care. My blog. My rhetoric. Anyways. The funny thing is, not everything in life has autosave features (believe it or not), even if it seems like certain bits should. For example, Wattpad doesn’t have a native autosave feature.

So.

When one is working on a typed something something, doesn’t matter what it is, if one happens to be doing this using Wattpad, one would be wise to consider manually clicking the save button every so often. Another way of thinking of it is to compare this recommended strategy with one that this author highly discourages: The one who is perhaps not so wise might draft up a lengthy typed document of whatever sort, and even if it falls short of being a masterwork the likes the world has never before seen, it still requires due diligence to proofread and edit the whole thing. After a long day and a late night of typing, such a task might best be served with a fresh set of eyes, as would be the case after getting a good night’s sleep. Wouldn’t want to be hasty, skimping out on a quality clean up prior to publishing, now would we?

However, one might happen to notice an icon in the system trey awaiting their attention in the morning. An icon, as it so happens, indicating that updates are ready for one’s computer. Perhaps, never having any prior issues with installing updates before, one might be tempted to rubber stamp all updates as soon as they are made available. A sensible notion, keeping up with security fixes and what have you. And certainly, just because the updates in question happen to be specific for the browser one evidently happens to be using to type the soon-to-be-published literature, there is no mention that following through on said updating process might cause the sturdy, never-failing interweb-bearing application to suffer, how shall we say? A ‘minor’ hiccup.

What could possibly go wrong?

Ah yes! After a good night’s rest, a fresh batch of updates successfully installed, it is now time to — oh whatever. You already know how this story ends. I didn’t think to save my shit. Not even once. I leave all the data in the text field, let it sit over night, install an update for my browser, everything freezes, aaaaaand…

Gone. All gone.

🙂