One Piece: Pure Corruption

...but come computer stuff prevented it. A new SSD and Windows 10 install later, there's still one little obstacle remaining in that my workflow has been thorougly fucked by that I really don't like the new version of the program I use to write and now I can't even revert to the older version for dumb reasons. I'll try to get some stuff written anyway, but I might have to migrate to another program.

Eesh.

/Kenny

So last week, I went back to work at my hourly employment thing. It had been closed since March due to Corona.

...but last week I also went to a job interview. And today I went to my first day of work on that particular job.

So I have a full-time job now. I no longer have to job hunt. My free time is now completely free time.

I still haven't heard back from my proofreader. But I keep writing. I think I've solved the problem I was having. Things are looking up.

/Kenny

Anyone who actually kept track of the chapter progress page would have noticed a bit of a jump recently. Chapters 047 and 048 both jumped straight into proofreading, while chapter 049 spiked from basically nothing to over 3500 words. Just looking at the numbers, you'd think I did some serious writing. The truth is... something else.

Now, don't get me wrong, here. Me doing a bunch of writing is what made this happen. I'm not trying to lie here. But the statistics, just as a cause of what the meters I've established mean, do it for me. Not that that was ever my intention with them, and they still serve the purpose they were meant for.

I didn't technically finish writing two long chapters and nearly finished a third one. No, what happened was that chapter 047 got too long. It was in its current form going to break 4k words, which I don't want happening. Breaking it mildly might be fine, but this was going to run nearly 5k words in total. So, it had to be split. What was 047 became 047 and 048, and both of them, now in the proofreading/editing state, clock in at under 3000 words each. Because what is now 048 had to end at a very specific point, the point that 047 was planned to end on, so I couldn't just end 047 around the 4k word point because that would put that scene in the wrong place. So I split it into two and finished up both before I sent them off to proofreading.

And pretty much the same thing is going to happen to chapter 049. At ~3800 words, there are huge chunks missing, so it's going to get split once I figure out where to split it. I've got a bit more wiggle room here - none of those chapters need to end at a specific point - and what's in my current chapter plan labeled as chapter 050, formerly known as chapter 049, might get folded into what's going to be chapter 050 after the split.

In short, my initial chapter plan for this volume definitely ended up running away from me.

I've also done some work on something that's going to be important before the end of this volume that won't be much indicated by the progress bars, except that I have to get it nearly finished before the final chapter of the volume can be completed. So there's that.

Also, while several chapters are now in proofreading, that part of the process has hit a small snag in that my proofreader's wife recently gave birth to their child. So. Y'know. Not as much time for that.

Hope you're staying safe in whatever part of the world you're in!

/Kenny

Turns out that, yeah, working on another story for a while cleared some minor mental blocks I was having for the Pure Corruption chapter I'm working on. Instead of trying to force through the initial idea I had, after writing the other thing and then pondering the chapter again, I realized what I should do with a certain segment of the chapter and from there I believe it's going to be easier to get through the rest of it. Success!

That said, I haven't written too much on either thing this week - I've been getting some things done in the apartment instead. Got some boxes out of the way, optimized space, assembled a bookshelf that I've started populating. I've lived here for over 8 months by now, so it was about time...

/Kenny

So between 2004 and 2015 I was part of a fanfiction project called Next Era. Astute readers will notice a similarity to the URL. Yes, next-era.net was the domain we got for the website for it back in the day, and I still use the same hosting we got for it at the time. So when the time came to put this website up, putting it on a subdomain to that felt fitting. Anyway, it was a Mega Man X fanfiction project, and the final story published for it was one of mine, back in 2015. Since then, the most that was done with it was myself putting down pieces of a draft for something intended to be a finale to the whole thing in 2017-2018, as it never got a proper ending (well, I also broke the wiki while trying to update it in 2017, but that's irrelevant).

You're probably seeing where this is going.

Last month (starting in February, but anyway) I played through the Mega Man X Collections on Switch (do as I say and not as I do: Do not play Mega Man X7). This, especially Mega Man X8 for reasons, just got me in the mood for telling stories in that universe again, stories I was planning but never told back in its heyday... I had a lot of ideas in those days. Ideas that never became anything. Some ideas were in some ways transplanted over to Pure Corruption, some characters definitely owe parts of their personalities to Next Era characters. I can directly trace Rink back to one of them, even if Rink is very toned down from that "source". So anyway, I ended up doing a complete rewrite - a full remake, really - of the very first Next Era story I ever wrote, contacted two of the peeps from the old crew, and really did start writing one new story, one I had several plans for back at the time but never wrote. I thought I did start writing parts of it at some point, but I can find absolutely zero evidence that I ever did after digging through documents.

This in no way at all means I'm giving up on Pure Corruption! I'm rather hoping it's going to be a net positive, giving me another creative writing outlet, and the Next Era stories are chiefly oneshots of varying lengths, rather than one chronological chapter-by-chapter story starting at the very beginning and going to the very end. So it's a somewhat different approach to writing those stories, which could be useful to loosen up some writer's blocks I absolutely have from time to time. And I absolutely promise that Pure Corruption is where my main priority lies - it's absolutely my primary project and revisiting Next Era is, for the time being, a side gig. I still can't believe I'm actually doing it, but now I really, at the very least, want to finish this one I'm currently writing.

So... yeah.

Me getting in a writing mood just in general is good too now that everything is annoying and I don't get any work and don't make money.

Bah.

/Kenny