What I’ve been up to lately:
- Watched 3 seasons of Mad Men. Depressing but compelling show about complete douchemongers.
- Wrote 5 story arcs for City of Heroes. Got that out of my system (for now).
- Romped through Double XP Weekend in CoH.
- Beta tested (yep) more CoH stuff.
All of that is now behind me. I’ve had some fun, refreshed my creativity. Now it’s anachronauts time.
(It’s funny, but all that time I was anxiety-worrying “I’m not doing enough to contribute to the world because I’m not working on my creative projects!” which, as my sister helped me figure out last night, is incredibly ironic when you consider that what I was doing was consuming the creative projects of others, which is what they wanted me to do with their work, which is why I’m doing the same work for others. CIIIRCLE OF LIIIFE)
I’ve also figured out how to get over a plot problem. It WILL require a retcon. I won’t be saying what that retcon is until the time comes, though, otherwise it’s less Chekov’s Gun and more Chekov’s Rocket Propelled Grenade. I seem to be using those a bit clumsily lately, but I’ll polish ’em up in post, I guess.
So. More to come. No hardline deadline ETA for it, but I’m on the right track. Also, note that PAX will cause more delays, but I have the week after it off, so it shouldn’t be too delaying.
Lirazel says
PAX!
Does that mean you’re coming to Beantown?
Jen Gagne, Psycho Happy artist says
Tragically no, this one is in Seattle. :( Our travel arrangements for the Boston one went all sideways so we diverted to Seattle this year instead.
Lirazel says
Pish! Also, tosh!
Oh well, there’s always 2012…
Carlo says
Thanks for the update. Re: retcon-ing, I thought you mentioned a while back that one of the advantages of the Kindle format was that you could update earlier published works and have folks re-download them. That would seem to be an option. Also worth nothing that minor changes used to be a lot more prevalent in between different print editions of published works, as authors adjusted things more to their liking (or editors did), so maybe that wouldn’t be so bad either. A thought, anyway.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
I can update the Kindle books — and I’m planning to do so, with a lot of typo fixes and the like. But I prefer not to stick a retcon in anything that’s been finalized. By that point, I should have enough confidence in the work to let it stand, and then work around any issues.
It’s not going to be a problem. I finished the changes — two paragraphs in Stars Fall 01, and that’s all I needed. They’ll be posted on Monday along with the new sf03 scenes.
Gordon Tyler says
Are you going to rewrite older stories to rationalize the retcon?
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
That’s the plan; I’m going to go back in and edit the relevant stories so that there’s no gaps. After all, all the Stars Fall chapters are technically still in draft status for this very reason. I’ll indicate on the blog exactly what changed and where when the time comes.
I rarely have to go back in and make changes once I’m done, but I like to reserve the right to do so if it makes a stronger story.
Jen, Psycho Happy artist says
It sounds like what you plan here is not so much a “rewrite older stories” scenario as it is as a couple of small edits.
So presumably when you summarize the edits, that’ll be enough for the audience to get the gist. I mean, they won’t have to reread entire chapters or anything like that.
(Of course you’d have the right to do full story rewrites if necessary, but I’m throwing this in here to try and give Gordon a sense of scale. To sum up: I’ve never seen Twoflower rewrite whole stories before.)
Gordon Tyler says
I’m wondering if it’s going to affect books that have already been published.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne says
No, not at all. The changes I’ve got in mind are minor and only affect Stars Fall.
There are things I WISH I could retcon from earlier stories — bungling Una’s floating point decimal, for instance — but I’m not going to be touching anything printed.
Jen, Psycho Happy artist says
I laugh openly and mockingly at your anxiety-worrying!
Anyway, when you get back around to anachronauts, that’ll be nice. :D
You make the retcon sound like a big deal, but this one is pretty minimal. Anyway, we should all be used to it considering you’re giving us the opportunity to read stories in draft mode. Your draft mode is a heck of a lot more final than not, so we’re lucky.