To the Sixes

* Facing Fearful Odds -- Still stalled out on 9-C. Not sure what to do next. Might be time to seek advice from the betas on where to go from here. As I'm getting ready to publish, I find that you can really see the arc of my improvement as a writer over the ten chapters of FFO. The project has taken a year to complete and you can see that. For a long time, I thought Chapter 5 and 6 were the bee's knees, just the best things I'd ever done (because they took so much fucking effort -- I'm looking at you, Chapter 6-A/B). Now I have enough distance to see the seams in the monster's costume.

* The Full Metal Bitch -- Chapter 2 stands at a solid 2,774 words! Hurray! Still not loving having to mash up The Chase and Bitter Work. The Toph/Iroh fight feels like it should be the climactic scene, not at the 1/3rd mark. I'm not sure what the story beats should lead to instead. I do want to cover Toph teaching Aang, and how she's somewhat more philosophical as a teacher in this AU. Going non-linear is one solution, but tricky. I'd like to avoid it if possible. Blocking out the Toph/Iroh fight has also been a bitch -- I hate writing fight scenes. At least the subsequent three chapters (3; The Library -- The Serpent's Pass, 4; The Drill -- The Guru, and 5; The Crossroads of Destiny) have clear arcs.

* Praise Be to Nero's Neptune -- Been doing some more worldbuilding, such as trying to justify the in-story civil war. I'm interested in this project but it'll take a damn long time to write. It's such a major AU that everything needs to be settled before I can leap into it. I'm doing a dry run on some of my ideas for the Siege of Ba Sing Se and Fire Nation/Colonial & Iroh/Ozai politics in Full Metal Bitch. Two of the Big Ideas that have emerged over the course of outlining it have been "What are the consequences if the Balance is destroyed?" and "What if Aang had a whole nation backing him up?". I want to make this story different from FFO, and that latter idea, of the Avatar not traveling but working within the system, appeals to me as a writer.

* Alike in Heart -- I've picked up my Big Bang genderswap again. Got about ~1300ish words in over the past day or so. It's been interesting getting to know Sonna (girl!Sokka) as a character. My main goal in this fic is to avoid writing "Sokka with boobs." If you swapped Zuko's or Aang's or Toph's gender, there really wouldn't be much changed in their character arcs. They've got high enough status (or wealth) that gender isn't as big an issue for their roles in life as it would be for, say, Sokka, Yue or Suki. Gender roles are key to the shape their lives take. Viewing Sokka's basic personality through the lens of motherhood makes for... well, something of a cross between Team Mom, Papa Wolf and a Mad Scientist. Because if Sonna is going to look after her little sister Katara, she's damn well going to figure out a way to teach her waterbending.

* Trying my hand at some short-form fanfic, just as a change of pace. Nothing worth mentioning yet.

Facing Fearful Odds -- Book 1: Walk the Earth (10 chapters planned)

Chapter 6 is 100% and in GOLD BETA (35,976 words)
Chapter 7 is 100% and in GOLD BETA (29,804 words)
Chapter 8 is ~15% done. (1,544 words)
Chapter 9 is 40% done.
      * 9-A is 100% done and is UNDERGOING BETA (11,481 words)
      * 9-B is 10% done (1,878 words)
      * 9-C is 5% done (489 words)
Chapter 10 is 5% done. (1,147 words)


Facing Fearful Odds -- Book 2: Fire and Rain (13 chapters planned)

Chapter 11 is 25% done. (7,073 words)
Chapter 12 is 5% done. (1,738 words)


Total Project Status as of 9/1/2009: Book 1 is 50% done, with five chapters remaining. (72,030 words)
Total Project Status as of 10/1/2009: Book 1 is 56% done, with a little over four chapters remaining. (106,859 words) (+ 34,829)
Total Project Status as of 11/1/2009: Book 1 is 67% done, with a little over four chapters remaining. (113,544 words) (+ 6,685)
Total Project Status as of 12/1/2009: Book 1 is 72% done, with three chapters remaining. (121,097 words) (+ 7,553)
Total Project Status as of 1/1/2010: Book 1 is 75% done, with three chapters remaining. (135,392 words) (+14,295 words)
Total Project Status as of 2/1/2010: Book 1 is 75% done, with three chapters remaining. (146,215 words) (+10,823 words)
Total Project Status as of 3/1/2010: Book 1 is 80% done, with two and half chapters remaining. (162,293 words) (+16,078 words)

Comments: February was, as predicted, a pretty average month. While I finished Chapter 7, I did part the first sub-chapter of 9 instead doing the one-shot Chapter 8. I got a goodly amount of writing done on portions of Book 2 and 3, however. However, I will say that March 2009 will see the end of primary production of Book 1. Or, to put it more plainly...

March is the month I finish the first complete draft of Facing Fearful Odds: Walk the Earth.

Come April 1st, all ten chapters of Book 1 will be done.

Which is pretty awesome, but I won't congratulate myself until they're actually DONE done. Things are looking up, though!  :)

Facing Fearful Odds -- Book 1: Walk the Earth (10 chapters planned)

Chapter 1 is 100% and UNDERGOING OMEGA EDIT. (11,126 words)
Chapter 2 is 100% and UNDERGOING OMEGA EDIT (15,403 words)
Chapter 3 is 100% and UNDERGOING OMEGA EDIT. (7,392 words)
Chapter 4 is 100% and in GOLD BETA. (16,416 words)
Chapter 5 is 100% and in GOLD BETA (27,041 words)
Chapter 6 is 100% and is UNDERGOING BETA (35,976 words)
Chapter 7 is 50% done. (18,135 words)
Chapter 8 is 0% done. (98 words)
Chapter 9 is 15% done. (2,658 words)
Chapter 10 is 5 % done. (1,147 words)

Total Project Status as of 9/1/2009: Book 1 is 50% done, with five chapters remaining. (72,030 words)
Total Project Status as of 10/1/2009: Book 1 is 56% done, with a little over four chapters remaining. (106,859 words) (+ 34,829)
Total Project Status as of 11/1/2009: Book 1 is 67% done, with a little over four chapters remaining. (113,544 words) (+ 6,685)
Total Project Status as of 12/1/2009: Book 1 is 72% done, with three chapters remaining. (121,097 words) (+ 7,553)
Total Project Status as of 1/1/2010: Book 1 is 75% done, with three chapters remaining. (135,392 words) (+14,295 words)

Comments: December was a surprisingly productive month, especially considering the last week and a half have been eaten up by holiday family stuff. I didn't even realize I had managed to run over ten thousand words until I added up the totals for Chapter 7-A and -B. While December doesn't match the outrageous productiveness of September's monthly total, it does warm my heart to have gotten over the OH MY GOD WHY WON'T THIS CHAPTER F___ING DIE that was two months spent on writing Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 is coming along swimmingly, although it's a tale that's grown in the telling. Originally I had the outline broken into 3 parts. However, considering the hell I put the characters through in Chapters 5 and 6, I found I needed more time to for the cast to decompress and emotionally deal with what they've been through. So now Chapter 7 will be four parts long -- A, B, C, and D.


(P.S. I'm posting this month's review early because I don't want to be blogging on New Years.)

Facing Fearful Odds -- Book 1: Earth (10 chapters planned)
     Chapter 1 is 100% and UNDERGOING OMEGA EDIT. (11,126 words)
     Chapter 2 is 100% and UNDERGOING OMEGA EDIT (15,403 words)
     Chapter 3 is 100% and in GOLD BETA. (7,392 words)
Total Project Status as of 9/1/2009: Book 1 is 50% done, with five chapters remaining. (72,030 words)
Total Project Status as of 10/1/2009: Book 1 is 56% done, with a little over four chapters remaining. (106,859 words) (+ 34,829)
Total Project Status as of 11/1/2009: Book 1 is 67% done, with a little over four chapters remaining. (113,544 words) (+ 6,685)


COMMENTS: October was not the most productive of months.  I spent a lot of time hashing and re-hashing out the fight scene that made up Chapter 6-B. I even took time off FFO to write a 10,000 word AU one-shot (which will be posted here... soonish) just to get my head back in the game. I don't like writing fight scenes because they take a long time to do if I want to get them done right. Which kinda sucks, since Chapter 6-C is also bigass fight scene. Other than that, there's not much to say.

With any luck, and with much perseverance, November's NaNoWriMo will see the end of Facing Fearful Odds: Book 1.

Facing Fearful Odds -- Book 1: Earth (10 chapters planned)
     Chapter 1 is 100% and UNDERGOING OMEGA EDIT. (10,799 words)
     Chapter 2 is 100% and UNDERGOING OMEGA EDIT (15,297 words)
     Chapter 3 is 100% and in GOLD BETA. (7,396 words)

Total Project Status as of 7/29/2009: Book 1 is 45% done, with a little over five chapters remaining. (62,060 words)
Total Project Status as of 9/1/2009: Book 1 is 50% done, with five chapters remaining. (72,030 words) (+9970)


Facing Fearful Odds -- Book 2: Fire (16 chapters planned)
     Chapter 1 is 33% done, with two whole acts to write. (3,745 words)
     Chapter 2 is 0% done. (0 words)


COMMENTS: August was the least productive month so far for FFO, with the narrative problems of Chapter 5 and the subsequent reconstruction of Chapter 5' sucking up nearly the entire month. However, I feel that the project has become stronger having overcome these narrative problems which would have otherwise seriously crippled FFO in the long-term. Working closely with my team of betas is resulting in better story, and I feel this validates the "Don't publish ANYTHING until it's all done" philosophy I've been testing on this particular fanfic project. When I've finished Book 1 and it comes time to sit down and write the last chunk of Taking Sights, doing the remaining chapters all in on go seems more and more to be the smart thing to do.

It's getting exciting as I approach the end of Book 1 of FFO. This is the first long-form fanfic I'll have ever finished, so it's a big thing for me.

I'm also daunted by the sheer scale of this story, which has grown far beyond what I initially expected. If the first five chapters amount to about 75,000 words then, taking that as an average, all forty-three planned chapters of Facing Fearful Odds will total to be over 600,000 words!!

Six hundred motherfucking thousand words.

And that's not even counting the novella one-shot finale I have planned... good Lord...

Oh a side note, I wrote one whole act of Chapter 1 of Book 2 in order to get a better grasp on where I want all the characters to end up, emotion-wise and plot-wise, at the end of Chapter 10 of Book 1.