Gosh, it's over. What am I going to do with all my spare time? I'll tell you what I'm going to do--I'm going to sleep and maybe vacuum a little. Exciting, yes? Well, I'm excited about it.
What have I learned from UB?
1. Longer chapters are better. This is a matter of opinion, but it has become sealed in my head that longer chapters are better. Forget trying to make chapters into nice bite sized pieces. If you're posting 80,000 words, is it better to post 2,000 at a time or 500? Even if you're posting the 500 more often, the readers are still going to have to read 80,000 words by the end AND they won't have to click as much if the chapters are longer. Plus, readers probably won't wait with bated breath for 500 words like they would for 2,000. They're more likely to wait for about 2,000 to be posted before coming back. Again, this is all just a matter of opinion, but this is how I justify my opinion.
2. Having more chapters makes for a very long sidebar that looks freakish. I worried that the sidebar would become longer than the chapters. Point 1 would've made this problem null.
3. Preparing chapters ahead of schedule to post over time so you aren't always stuck in a bind the night before trying to edit the newest chapter is something I really should try doing. It would be so awesome.
4. I need to only have ONE project going at a time. Trying to post UB while editing Scary Mary made me really scattered. If I'm posting a story, I want my only priority to be that story. I'm done editing SM now anyway. I just need to get layout right and it will be DONE.
5. Readers are so nice. When I had to go on hiatus because of life issues, readers offered to lend a hand, and I was so touched. Even though I didn't take them up on it, the offer alone helped. Readers are also really good at catching mistakes. It was cool to have their eagle eyes catching what my sleep-deprived blurry ones missed.
All in all, I'm happy with how everything turned out. I hope to start a brand new project in a few months.
UB Over!
UB almost over!
OMG, next week is the final chapter of Unicorn Bait! I hadn't realized how close to the end I was. I can't believe it. I don't know if I should warn readers or not. I mean if I don't, I don't know if that will startle them or not. A lot of readers were afraid I'd ended the story when Naomi went back home and funnily enough, that had been the original ending of the story.
Should I warn readers? I think I better. It'll soften the blow. I'm so happy everyone has read and enjoyed this. It's done me a lot of good.
Writing about Me
A while back, Eli over at Novelr wrote an article saying that web writers need to build community among their readers. He said the only way to get readers talking is to talk to them. One way to talk to readers is through a writing blog.
In the back of my head, I thought, "Gee, I have a writing blog. Haven't done much with it, but even so, readers have come by to check it out and leave comments. Maybe I should try doing something more with it." Then I felt guilty because I've thought this before. I've thought that I should update this blog more often, I thought I'd written a post saying just that (but now can't find it) and if you look at the archives, you'll see that hasn't happened. I've barely posted once a month.
I've been too formal or stand-offish with my entries here. I've usually been reporting things from other sources, not discussing my writing. I didn't think anyone would want to read posts about me moaning that I don't wanna work on UB, but maybe I should talk about my writing a bit more. Here's an example: During edits of chapter 53 of UB, I couldn't think of a word and trying to think of it sucked up twenty minutes (or possibly more, though I don't want to admit it) trying to Google the word. It was a sort of carrying bottle (And aw hell, it JUST CAME TO ME) and I didn't have any luck finding it, and it drove me crazy. What was I trying to think of? Wineskin. That's what I wanted Naomi to carry when going to the special god spring, but I COULDN'T THINK OF THE DAMN WORD. So it became a jug with a carrying strap, which do exist, but it wasn't what I was picturing, and I can't believe the word just came to me. I was driving myself crazy. Googling antique water bottles, and looking at wikipedia's entry for drinking vessels. I knew wine could be carried in it so I looked at stuff dealing with wine too. I thought for a second that I wanted canteen but that wasn't right. I looked at Rider-Waite Tarot cards because I thought it could be on one of them, and yeah, that was getting a little off course, and I didn't see it on any of them anyway. I needed a search engine where I could've drawn what I wanted, and they spit back the word because I knew what a wineskin looked like but couldn't remember the name. Now I have the word, but don't know if I want to change it. Bother.
So yeah, I'll try to write more entries here about stuff like that. My process or whatever you want to call it.
I also made the feed for this site appear on UB so readers can check it out if they want.
Really, I should write a post here every week about the most recent update and link to it from the chapter, but I'm scared to commit to something like that. We'll see. For now, I'll try really hard to write more posts here about just what I'm doing in general like I'm working on the Lulu edition of Scary Mary. I'm in the middle of chapter 8 of that. So a little over halfway through. I really want to pick up the pace with that.
And this post is much longer than I intended. See this is what happens when you let a writer talk about herself. You get WAY more than you bargained for. If you want to complain to anyone, go to Eli.
