Tyto

Wattpad is the first website I've seen REMOVE the ability to report for bots. I guess they know their audience.

Just posted the updated version of the Specialized Writing Guide. It contains all the info from the old guide, but with better formatting and more useful advice. I decided to keep the old version instead of removing it, at least here.

The old writing Specialized Writing Guide will be overwritten this month. With how long it's been up, I'd rather delete it and not have bad advice up. But some might prefer having both available. Which seems like the better option?

The whole Dying Stars trilogy is finally done forever! Unless I ever decide to rewrite them to fix some of their glaring mistakes. That won't be anytime soon, though, as I have other ideas for Warriors fanfics, particularly one that's been swirling in my head for years now. It wouldn't be any trilogy or long story or anything, but the more I think about it the longer it gets. I want to keep it novella length and make the story far smaller in scope than any of the previous ones. I'd also imagined it in Japan rather than the nondescript Western forests of canon Warriors. But I'll work those details out next year. I know for certain I want to write that. As for any future ideas, we'll see. I still have plenty and want to write. Choosing whether to do more Warriors immediately or something original aside from the NaNoWriMo stuff (inspired by Sunnyfall) is something else I'll have to figure out. I've had a few original ideas kicking around, but I don't like starting new projects when I've already decided to finish one. I also have the writing guide to go over one last time.
          
          Most of all, though, I want to get into animating for MAPs. I've got enough prior experience to know where to start and relearn everything I've forgotten. I see all these amazing MAP parts out there and it looks fun. When MAPs and stuff were first showing up, I didn't get in on them because I was trying to be normal. I'm sure if I would've stuck with Ga'Hoole or Warriors after middle school, I would've been in every map I could in high school. Now that I have easier access to the tools and knowledge (but less time, sadly), there's no reason not to try. It still feels like I'm "too late" even though I know that isn't true. At the very least, I'll learn how to draw doing it. Or maybe not.

"Warriors: The Last Ancestor" will update at least once a week until it's finished, with deviantart updates lagging behind.

I've finally found the time to finish editing this fanfic. It's been too long since I've started and it's taken much longer than I thought to finish it, especially since I basically restarted and rewrote it. That means I can take a small break from writing to practice a few animation programs I have, starting with a Toon Boom license I had from school (with how dated it is, though, I expect to either upgrade or go with something else). I've always loved animation and want to try doing scenes in a few MAPs. It's been a while since I've done any animation work, though, so learning another program couldn't hurt. I have some backlog of the Warriors Fanfic writing guide to get out there. Some of the sections I thought up in the middle of last year and just never finished them because of this fanfic. I think it's the best of the three in the set and I really liked challenging myself with the narrative structure (a parallel narrative with one side in reverse chronological order and one moving forward starting from the middle of a "story," a bit of a weird one). I absolutely can't stay away from writing for long, though, and will likely start writing another fanfic by the end of the year. A much shorter one, I've already decided, of an idea I thought of in 2015.

3/4
          Editing is taking longer than I thought to the standard I want to hit. I said in a previous post last year or something that it would probably take a while because I have to edit part of a first draft written almost four years ago, another part written a year ago, and another part I finished about four months ago. I have basically just rewritten the entire first part of my fanfic because I really don't like what I wrote about. All the themes and motives had to change to match what I wrote a few months ago. And, due to the weird formatting of the story, it is taking longer than I thought it would, even longer than I thought I meant by the word 'longer' last year. I hope to start posting by April or something because I believe I've had it for too long. I don't know whose waiting, but I still want to finish this.
          
          Also, with how much I am rewriting and how small the chunks of time I have to do it, it is messing with my editing. It would be like giving a manuscript to for developmental editing that you wrote several years ago and they give you back places where the story can be changed, chapters to cut, etc., only for you to not even want to tell that story anymore. Because the themes of the entire story have changed, I basically have to write a second first draft for part of the story. I know some writers can do this, write the same book over the course of many, many years. I don't want to. I'm sure if I took less breaks during the process like I did with this one, it would've been fine. Consistently writing over the course of a year is way different from writing all of a part in a month and waiting a year to write another part.

I wanted to post my fanfic by January and another by the end of the year, but I've been trying to edit my work closer to how a professional editor would do it. That is, make a pass for character inconsistencies, plot holes, adding/removing chapters (using parallel, reverse chronological narratives makes this tough), and making sure themes and motifs are kept up throughout, another pass for tone, syntax, word choice, and dialogue, another pass for spelling and grammar, and a final pass for formatting (more relevant for print). I want to edit like this going forward because I want to write and edit like a pro even though it's a hobby because it would be nice to self-publish original work, and I just don't want to deal with the costs of editing and making sure every single word is perfect when I don't plan to make writing an income stream. Having a book published is just a cool thing to do in my opinion (assuming it isn't some kind of spam). Also, the faster I can edit the more fanfiction I can put out. So far, writing it takes far longer than editing since I never have any guaranteed time to myself. Outlines help with this a lot, I'm told, and I've never written a story without one.
          
          Editing like this is a slow process since I've never done it before, but it's been much easier than just having at it in the margins of a word document. I feel like with some kind of standardized outline, complete with sections for editing, tone, and the like this would be even easier. And I have wanted to put one out there for Excel/Spreadsheet outlines since I don't like most of what's out there. Also, no one outlines in Excel, so there's not much out there.

I've noticed something in my writing that doesn't match with other work: chapter length. I don't usually follow any kind of consistency. It's one thing for the final chapters to be a little longer than the others, but I found one chapter in 'A Reign of Thunder and Lighting' that's 10k words and another that's less than five-hundred. Even in what I'm writing now, I have a few chapters at about 10k and a very consistent bunch near the end. I have no idea what this actually means (probably nothing), but it's just something I've noticed. Sometimes, the chapter probably shouldn't 'just be as long as it needs to be' because it keeps the internal critic too far down; If some information is too short to be a chapter and irrelevant, maybe it can be tacked onto another chapter. That 10k word chapter could've been broken up or shortened rather than basically being two chapters in one. Again, I have no point for typing this. It's just something I've noticed fishing for references in my older fanfics. I usually let my inner critic have its way, too.
          
          I also didn't miss 'rogue' being 'rouge' in that book. I'm sure I'll get around to changing that, but everyone reading seems to know what it's supposed to be.

I've been looking forward to a short break from writing, probably because I've been doing this one story for so long. I started it before the pandemic, didn't touch it for a while, restarted it twice, and wrote pretty much all of it in the last seven months. It's the longest I've ever taken to write anything (but, in my opinion, the best of the three fanfics I've written) and it still isn't done yet. I am, however, going to finish it before the end of the year. I don't like moving on from projects unless they're finished or scrapped for good. No putting it on a shelf and saving it for later unless it's really small. And I've been on this one for way longer than I'd ever want to be again.
          
          I also read LEGACY: TIMELESS, a follow-up to LEGACY. It's better than the first but runs, in my opinion, much longer than it should with how many plot details it adds and how many details the characters unnecessarily keep from each other. Reading both of these and Onewhisker's Confession has actually improved my on-the-fly editing skills and is getting my reading speed back to where it was in high school.