Dunmurderin'

 

The writing continues apace – albeit a slow pace (at least until today), but still, slow progress is still progress. Word counts are, thus far:

• Day 6 (August 11): 134 words
• Day 7 (August 13): 348 words
• Day 8 (August 14): 146 words
• Day 9 (August 15): 1,576 words

A lot of those words aren’t narrative, but are instead notes to myself for the next time I get the chance to sit down and write for a length of time.  I’m still working hard on the first and third scenes for Chapter Zero. Currently, I’m focusing more on the first scene, since that’s the antagonist’s scene and he’s the character I’m having the hardest time writing because, while he is a canon character, he didn’t get much screen time in the comics (not to mention, I haven’t read those comics). So, I’m doing a lot of heavy lifting on him.

But I’ve hit on some stuff that I think works well for a motivation so I’m looking forward to making some real progress. Onward!

Addendum 8/15/19 @ 1722: Yes, this addendum is in the right spot – I have the first scene of Chapter Zero written! It’s not perfect, but it’s something I can build from. In addition, I’ve started on scene three, which features the Combaticons and should, hopefully, be much easier to write.

The fact that a lot of what I’ve written has been notes rather than narrative means that my word counts are kinda/sorta meaningless at this point. Toward that end, I’ve altered the spreadsheet I’ve been using to track my writing to reflect the fact that I’m not so much writing the story this month as I am rewriting/refining the story.

Now, back to writing about Blast Off freaking out from North Atlantic hurricane induced claustrophobia.

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Addendum 8/15/19 @ 1623:  I just spent the better part of I don’t know how long exactly but probably over half an hour trying to figure out a rough idea of average Transformer heights in order to come up with a way to wrap my head around Cybertronian units of measurement (in this case, length).  I ended up creating a spreadsheet and coming up with the realization that, at least in *my* fic ‘verse, the equivalent of a Cybertronian “foot” is approximately the same as a human yard or meter.

This is all because I want to make sure that I get an off-handed reference to where the Decepticon Undersea base is located right – for a definition of right that means “my numbers-addled brain will let me stop obsessing over this stupid detail and move on already!

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Addendum: 8/15/19 @ 1704: Second verse, similar but not exactly identical to the first – just figured out the more or less, close enough for government work location of the Decepticon Undersea base, then used a longitude/latitude converter to figure out the distance between it and the location of the Combaticons’ attack. Again, this is a whole lot of work for a relatively minor detail but figuring it out makes it easier for me to continue on with the writing.

Heck, yesterday, I changed the name of a location and suddenly, the thing that had been blocking me was gone and I could continue on. It’s weird and annoying and sometimes, it’s just downright cool.

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Personal Aside: It’s things like this that are helping to convince me that I have OCD – not internet OCD (“Oh, haha, I’m so OCD, it bugs me that it’s not written as CDO! LOL!”) but actual OCD. I saw an article or a post on Facebook or something that talked about how OCD is actually an expression of anxiety and started doing some research on it and oh holy crap, does a lot of what I’ve seen sound like me.  I’m not going to go into detail here but apparently, one of my compulsions is needing to have relatively insignificant things right or at least straight in my mind before I can continue writing. There are other things that aren’t relevant to this but I’ll talk about those on another occasion.  

I’m looking into getting an official diagnosis as well, because I’m kinda tired of living with this untreated.

The actual writing of Chapter Zero has started! It was a slow grind, but I have made a start and I mean to continue with said start tomorrow! I switched the order of the scenes I came up with yesterday and figured out locations and times/dates for the three scenes.

I wrote a bit of the scene at the Joe/Autobot end of exercise party that's a good start. Hoping to get more done tomorrow.

Today has been a day of doing more thinking than actually writing. Mainly because I have determined that I need to flesh out some aspects of the story, specifically which Autobots and which Joes would be teaming up together for the joint GI Joe/Autobot training exercises that help spark the action of the story.

Some characters are pretty much givens, but since I've decided to add a chapter that goes into more detail about the Joe/Autobot team-up, I want some more names.

Thankfully, GI Joe and Transformers fandoms are the sort where finding lists of information on characters, like ranks and specialties is pretty freaking easy. And, thanks to my newfound love of spreadsheets, I've been working on a spreadsheet to help me figure out what Joes I want.

The Autobots are a little easier -- the Protectobots are a given, probably also Jazz, Inferno, Red Alert (albeit with some reluctance due to him being concerned about humans learning how to fight and defeat Cybertronians), possibly also some of the minibots and some of the standard bots I do have a mental image of Arcee and the female Joes getting on like a house a'fire. And today, the image of Snake-Eyes and First Aid doing tai chi came to mind.

If anybody has any suggestions for Autobots (or Joes for that matter), drop 'em in the comments!

General Blathering: It’s been another goodly stretch of days since the last time I had the chance to sit down and work on Common Cause, though not as long a gap as the one between Days Seven and Eight. Part of the reason for the gap this time around is because my work schedule has changed again. Long story short is, I am working the early morning shift at work, so I’m having to acclimatize myself to that. So far, so good. This is (hopefully) going to be a temporary change.


So, today, I came to one of the local library branches where I like to go and do my marathon typing sessions. I tend to vary which ones I go to, because of some weird discomfort with the idea of being seen as a regular. Today, that kind of got shot in the foot, since the library I chose was having an emergency evacuation drill.


I showed up at the library, found the computer I wanted to use, settled in and decided to go to the restroom before I got stuck in for the day. After the bathroom, I put some money in the pop machine to get a cold and tasty beverage (the fact that I can buy a pop at the library and drink it in the library is still just a mind-blowing thing). It was right after I put my money in the machine that a guy came over and said something to the effect of “We’re having an emergency evacuation, we need you to leave the building.”


Of course, I’d put a five dollar bill in the machine. I hit the change return button, hoping that the machine would give me the bill back. It didn’t. So I stood there, waiting for 20 quarters to be spit out and watching the guy checking the bathrooms. I gathered my change, went over to the computer station where I’d logged in, logged out and left the building while the guy was informing other people that they also had to leave.


It was around this point I heard him say ‘drill’ to some other patrons and was like, “…ok, either he didn’t say ‘drill’ to me or my still sleepy brain just drifted over the word ‘drill’ in favor of focusing on ‘emergency evacuation.’


Once I got outside, I ended up following some of the library employees who were going to their safe meeting space (mainly because I didn’t know where else to go and I wanted to know when I’d be able to go back into the library and I figured if anyone would know, it’d be the librarians).


It wasn’t a long wait; I got a nice little walk out of the experience and the librarians were like, “Hey, how’s it going?” Of course, now I think my attempts at remaining semi-anonymous/under the radar are kinda shot, but it’s all good.


Actual Revision Information: Once the evacuation drill was over, I came back to the same station I’d logged into before and logged back in. Since the computers keep track of how much time you use, I found out that the whole exercise took about 4 minutes. Fortunately, I had over 590 minutes left (seriously, this particular library system allows you 660 minutes of computer usage per day; it’s crazy! Crazy awesome!).


Once again, sitting down and doing the actual typing/revising/writing of the story is the most difficult part of the day. It’s especially difficult for this chapter because, as I’ve said previously, this is where I need to tie all the plot threads I’ve been spinning into a cohesive whole (aka the thing I’ve been trying off and on (mostly off) for the last thirteen years).


One thing I’ve learned as I’ve been doing this rewrite is that there are some problems with internal consistency that were either in this story to begin with or that I’ve managed to put in during the rewrite because I’ve altered some earlier points. Because of this, there are now some places where I’m going to need to edit and/or alter earlier elements of the story and there are other parts where I’m going to have to write new bits, whole cloth, to help this piece hang together.


None of this is necessarily particularly difficult, but it’s more than a bit frustrating. At the moment, I’m focusing mostly on typing up Chapter Five, but including notes about where I’m going to want to change things when I go back through for the next series of rewriting and revision. Which is going to start, if the typing goes well, on August 1st.


Well, huh….: And, we’re done. As of 1906 on Tuesday, July 30, 2019, I have finished typing up an entire draft of Common Cause. The total word count – which includes a lot of notes to myself for the next round of the rewriting process, is 25,064 words. This story isn’t complete, not by a long stretch. I’ve got at least one new chapter that needs to be written and may end up inserting a new chapter near the end, which may become the new epilogue with the old epilogue either being chucked out entirely or turned into epigraphs on the previous chapters. Right now, I’m done for the day and I’m looking forward to going home and eating some delicious food with my girlfriend.


And figuring out just WTF I’m going to be doing with myself tomorrow….


W00t!

 Chapter Four is done! Basic bookkeeping fapping about word counts away!

Total word count for Common Cause is now at 18,464 words, which puts me at 107.53% of the original 17,171 word count (admittedly, 'original word count' in this sense means 'word count of the draft I'm working from and have decided is the source material because of reasons). 

Chapter Four is now 5,470 words or 139.01% of the original 3,935 word count. The other chapters shook out like this:

• Chapter One went from 2,713 words to 4,239 words for a 156.25% increase, 
• Chapter Two: 2,542 words to 3,576 words (140.68% increase)
• Chapter Three: 3,804 words to 5,179 words (136.15% increase)

Chapter Five, which was written back in 2007, but which has never been posted, is coming up next. I'm probably not going to start working on it today because I have to leave for work fairly soon and I'm at a pretty decent stopping point for the day. I'm also thinking, I might not work on it until next week, when I'll have a couple days where I can spend more time working without having to worry about making sure I leave in time to get to work.

 So, since I’m not wanting to get immersed in writing Chapter Five, I’m going to immerse myself in projections about how long Chapter Five might end up being. These projections are rough estimates, based on the average percentage increase in the previous four chapters (approximately 140.61%):

• Chapter Five – Original word count: 3,935 words
• Chapter Five – Estimated word count, once revised: 5,390 words

It’s likely that Chapter Five is going to end up longer. It may also end up being split into two chapters. Originally, I’d planned that Common Cause would be six chapters and an epilogue, so that would be within the spirit of the original draft.

There's also an epilogue which is the puniest of the series:

• Epilogue – Original word count: 344 words (seriously, there's not much to it)
• Epilogue – Estimated word count, once revised: 484 words.

The Epilogue though, will probably end up being either higher, since I want to add more to it, or shorter because I might just drop it, since I’m not sure how much it’s going to add to the story. I do kinda like it though.

Rambling Thoughts:

I’m anxious about starting Chapter Five. This is where all the threads I’ve spun out over the last 18,000 words need to come together into a coherent and satisfying whole. Now, this is a draft so I’m not expecting to write perfection the first time out, but I do have to make things make sense and at least lay a groundwork for making further improvements to the story.

It also doesn’t help that this is a story that has remained unfinished for twelve years (thirteen, if you go back to when I first started the story). It’s become something of a bête noir, as I’ve mentioned in other posts. The fact that this story has remained unfinished for so long has, despite me knowing this is ridiculous and superstitious and highly illogical, left me with the feeling that until it is done, I cannot expect to be able to finish any other longer, more serious work.

So far, the rewrite has been going well. Like, really well. It’s only taken me about seven days to get to this point, with most chapters taking between one to two days to finish. Chapter Five will likely take me longer, even if I start writing it tomorrow, I’m expecting to have to put in three to five days’ worth of work into it.  Because of how my work week and my girlfriend’s work week shake out, the nice thing is that I can spend my days off at the library plugging away, listening to YouTube videos and occasionally people watching.

One of the things that I think has helped a lot with this revision – other than the fact that I’m working from previously written material -- is that I’m not spending every single day writing it. I’m taking breaks in between and giving myself time for my mental batteries to recharge. How well this will work for fiction that hasn’t already been written will remain to be seen, but I am currently, cautiously optimistic.

 

 

Chapter Three is done and I am on to Chapter Four – which was the last chapter I posted. It’s the longest of the original chapters and it’s where the majority of the action takes place so I’m expecting it to take a few days’ worth of writing to finish it.

Word count thus far is: 15,525 words or 90.41% of the original word count of 17,171 words. At the rate I’m going, I’m expecting to hit 17,171 words soon. Possibly even tomorrow if I seriously pound the keyboard before work.

My initial plan was that the rewrite would maybe double the original word count – which would technically be 34,342, but let’s round that up to 34,343 because palindromes are the bestest thing ever! Now, I don’t know if I’ll get it that high, but I’ll settle for something closer to 25,752 which is slightly under one and a half times the original length.

Really, the palindromic numbers are just a way of setting an interesting goal. The story will be as long as it needs to be.

Ok, so technically, it's Day 6, but I'm only counting the days I'm actually working on the story as part of this blog-a-long (until I forget).

I'm now at 7,815 total words (or 45.51% of the original word count). Chapter Two is now 3,576 words long.

I'm debating whether or not I want to start Chapter Three today or if I want to wait and give myself a bit of a breather. I'm thinking I'll probably be taking a break since this feels like a good place to stop for the day and faff around doing other stuff before I go into work.

Have a good day folks!

Probably not going to post an update every time I work on the Common Cause rewrite, but I figured I'd make a quick post about how the first day went: so far, so good! I got off to a bit of a slow start but I'm most of the way through the first chapter now and am hoping to get Chapter One done tomorrow.

ETA: 7/2/19 @ 2312: I was originally thinking this would be more or less a simple case of retyping the story and making a few corrections here and there, expanding some things, etc. Today showed me that that is not the case.

When I first decided to re-tackle Common Cause, I went through it and took notes about stuff I wanted to change, places where I thought I'd need to add stuff, ideas I wanted to rework or to tighten up. I learned today that I missed a few ideas that I didn't realize at the time were important. And that was just in typing up the first two scenes and part of the third. Going to be really interesting to see where this trip ends up.

The draft of Common Cause I'm working from clocked in at 17,171 words. Today, I wrote 2,048 words, which means Common Cause is 11.93% finished!

Title: Realization
Originally Posted: October 20, 2000
Author’s note: This story takes place a couple days after the Generation One episode “B.O.T.,” the episode where Swindle sold his teammates for parts after Superion blew everybody but him apart with one really lucky shot. I wrote it mainly because I was curious what would have happened to Swindle after the episode ended and his fellow Combaticons got their hands on him.
This story has appeared in the fanzine "Con-Quest" (issue #29).

( Realization )

Title: Training Exercis (On-their-knees Combaticons)
Originally Posted: July 2, 2006

( Training Exercise )