FozzieBare: Blog

From the outside, you see someone posting a lot of great stuff (Don Lockwood, ProfessorC and Jay Cantrell comes to mind for me, but that's just my favorites, I'm pretty sure that you can fill in a different set of names).

Seeing the way they do it week after week, story after story, chapter after chapter. I sometimes imagine their writing process must be like this:

Great author sits at high-end PC in a yoga like trance, facing an empty document..

Great Author: OMMMMMM..

(15-20 pages of awesome stuff appears on screen, like magic.)

Great Author: That was easy.

(presses Post)


I am NOT a great author. So, I want to clue you in on how the rest of us not-so-great authors tend to do things. At least for me recently.

Me:(doing anything BUT sitting at my computer, like for example, trying to SLEEP (big time for me), or driving to a doctor's appointment): Hmm.. That's a good idea. And if we do that, then we can move the story there.. and I think we can build off on that a bit earlier than planned. I just gotta remember it when I sit down.

(me, later that day sitting at the computer trying to marshal all my previous thoughts into one coherent whole, and watching the muse turn it into the Gordian Knot of confused ideas)

Me: Um.. I R STUPIDFACE? Where.. wait.. mo.. that can't go there, it needs to.. no that's not even IN THIS CHAPTER, WHERE'D THAT COME FROM.. ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE SAME STORY I WAS WRITING BEFORE?

(dam finally breaks, and I get a couple pages done, frantically writing, fearing that if I stop, I won't be able to get going again.)

Me: Ok.. I think that's.. oh my god, so many spelling mistakes. Wait. Did I name the city Tortar or Forfar.. who's actually talking in this paragraph. Why did I ever agree to do this? Be consistent, Foz. Is it jump gates, jumpgates, or Jumpgates. Is a little consistency too much to ask for? Apparently so.

(spends hours rearranging the story to fit, try to fix the worst of the grammar errors and the formatting)

Me: Ok, that's a good enough state from now (emails the pre-readers editors)

(five minutes later)

Me: Wait, I can add a little bit here, make this clearer.. oh yeah, and then this section works better if I put a bit of description of it.

(edits half the document, meanwhile my poor Pre-readers do their best to edit and proof read the unchanged document I sent them and get them back to me)

Me: Wow, they caught a lot of stuff. Thank goodness for pre-readers/proof readers. Wait. I changed that.. and that.. and that..

(frantically tries to incorporate pre-reader changes and my changes all together, in a mad panic)

Me: Well, I think that's ok. Let's hit post.

(five seconds after hitting post)

Me: ARGH! I missed that, and that.. but it's small, I hope noone will notice.. I can always repost a fixed version.

(someone pings my mail pointing out a mistake that I had made that no one caught)

Me: Why do I do this? I should have gone into an easier field, something like a used condom salesman.

(someone writes me telling me they like the story. Heavenly choirs ring out, angels singing, the whole nine yards)

Me: Oh yeah. That's why I do this. So where do we go from here? Where do we go, sweet literary child of mine?

And off we go again. Or to throw one more musical saying in there from Emerson Lake and Palmer.

Welcome back, my friends

To the show that never ends

We're so glad you could attend

Come inside! Come inside.

(post edit: And I prove my point, by having to come in and bold a couple sections I missed. Oy Vey)

Work to build up a queue continues.

I have two chapters of FTMD out and checked.

Working this weekend to build that up to four, as well as start the Rogue Rules queue.

Happy Friday all.

Didn't get much writing done today, (Massive Migraine), but managed to get some down of Rogues Rules 4).

As always, your thoughts, comments and votes are welcome.

Now, back to bed

So, just now, I sent my pre-readers two Chapters for FTMD, what will be Chapter Four in the story, and the second interlude, dealing with some of the events of Chapter Four.

Right now, it looks like you guys want to make sure that you have at least one chapter a week of each story to look forward to, so this is what I'm going to do.

Until I get four chapters ahead of each story, I will be posting one chapter for each story each week. Probably FTMD during the week, Rogue's Rules on weekends. But once I have four or more chapters in the buffer, I will post chapters more frequently but not dropping below four chapters waiting, that way, even if something should go wrong, I'll still have a month of material ready to post to you guys.

Oh, and I threw an Easter Egg in chapter 4. One eagle eyed reader spotted a common mistake I made in Chapter 1, and I reference it in Chapter 4.

May the stars light your path till next we meet (a common Farewell in the Terran Federation)..

Fozzie D Bare

So, first of all, nearly 10K downloads across all my stories this week.

I'm flabbergasted. I'm shocked.

I question all of your collective sanity.

No, not that last one, it means so much to me that you guys read and comment and vote on my stories. When I started to write again, I hadn't set a number of views as a goal, but if you told me I was going to get 10,000 views in a week (9848 according to my story portal), I would have hid under my desk, unable to write, thinking there was no WAY I could write something that so many people would enjoy.

I would have been wrong.

So, I spent a lot of today writing, and I have the next interlude for Free Trader Mary's Dream already written (it will follow Chapter 4 in the storyline. Chapter 4 itself is about 50% written, and I hope to finish it in the next 24-48 hours.

That brings me to my question to you, the people that I write for, the reason I do this. Would you prefer I post chapters as soon as I get them back from the pre-readers, or would you like a preferred, guaranteed schedule of one to two chapters per story a week?

You'd likely get more of the story quicker if I just post as I go, but a set schedule means that you would have a guaranteed chapter waiting for you on a schedule, also allowing me to build up a backlog of chapters to post in case the muse temporarily abandons me.

Anyway, whatever you decide, I'll follow. Just keep reading, and writing, and voting.

Even if y'all are crazy in praising me so much ;)

Fozzie D Bare.