So this is the new format of my video posts, which I’m going to be working on when I have a chance over the next few weeks. I found a service that transcribes videos really cheap ($12 for two hours of footage) but the transcripts have to be cleaned up. This was my first attempt at cleaning up a transcript, lol. If anyone would like to take a stab at cleaning it up further, have at it. I didn’t want to spend my whole day working on it, to be honest, and, wow, my speaking style is…all over the place. I’ll work on that.

Eventually, every entry in a series will have a post — so the table of contents will be listed below, but doing the backlist is a lot less of a priority at the moment. I’ll have Fool Me Twice’s two posts done tomorrow for the update. This will also be the only time I cross list the video posts in the Site New update. In the future, the post will be ready and linked in the daily updates. It will also have a section on the site.  It just wasn’t ready for this morning. Hopefully this helps!

Mad World Vlog: Planning, Writing, Editing & Publishing

1.  Why Are We Here?
2.  Where Are We Going?
3. So, Still Writing?
4. This Is My Lex Luthor.
5. We’ve Reached The End. Of Disc One.

Also featured in Camp NaNoWrimo, April 2020.

Transcript

(please excuse messiness — it’s my first time, lol, and my speaking style is very…all over the place)

Welcome back to Crimson Glass on YouTube. So this is part 5 of Writing Mad World. I finished the first draft yesterday. I want to get that out of the way and say now.  I’m pretty excited about it. I wasn’t sure if I would need to make another one of these before I actually got into revisions, but I thought well, I’m making a video about Fool me Twice Today. Let’s just get it done. So it’s done.

It ended up being 653 pages 235 thousand words. Um, it’s 41 chapters. I don’t know. I lost count. That’s the reason I don’t know how many chapters technically it is because I have 90 overall chapters in the trilogy and the first 50 of them are in the first two books. So I’m going to say yeah, that’s probably about 39 to 40 chapters and it’ll probably be more by the time we’re done. So the one–the thing I really want to talk about in this video is writing an ending to the story and approaching material with an eye of reminding yourself who’s in charge. So and this is a lesson that for some reason I have to learn like over and over and over again and I really can’t tell you why.

So what happened is that I got to Monday and I have been reading a chapter a day and I was like, yes, we’re going to finish I might not get the epilogues done on time.  But that’s alright. They can be finished during the beta draft that really it. They’ re just wrap-ups. It’s really not that big deal and then I finished on Monday and I realized on Tuesday. Oh my God. I don’t really want to write the ending of the story and I couldn’t decide at first if it was just like I’m really tired. I’ve been living with the story now for 66 days at that point because I started like daily on June 1st,
and I couldn’t decide at the problem if I was having was just that I was tired because sometimes you know, you get to the end of the project you get tired, so I try to like open it up and look at it and I started to write the first scene. I’m just like I really don’t want to I don’t want to do it and I think it’s because I realized that in order for the ending to work the way I had originally outlined because some things have changed-because Elizabeth was not going to be living in a house that they were supposed to have moved during Mad World Book 3, but it didn’t end up happening and never was never a moment on the page where it made sense for that to happen and they end up not having a huge time Jump. I was going to skip six weeks at some point and that I’m not doing that.

So for a variety of reasons Elizabeth is still in the–Jason Elizabeth are both in the penthouse at the end of the story. And that matters because I need something to have happened to Elizabeth that can’t happen unless she’s an idiot and I really can’t stand when a character does something dumb like, you know, when you’re watching a movie and your kid the characters just starts like she’s like,  like don’t go upstairs. You know what you did to open that door and don’t look up like Don’t Look Under the Bed like, you know, your starts screaming at the screen at your character. That’s how I felt. Like people would be thinking about Liz and Carly at this point and I was just like this is not working and, again I was not entirely sure if it was not working because I was just really tired and so my like my enthusiasm was just gone and if that’s true, like I just got to power through it and get it done.

But if it’s because of material’s not working, which is the same problem I was having in July which is the same thing I talked about in the last video, like, literally I just talked about how you got to make this decision. So I talked to Ang in DMs and I was like, I really hate the ending. I’m paraphrasing– but I was just like this is not working. I really hate it. She’s like what’s the problem was like well in order for the end of the work people they have to be stupid. And the this thing–this can’t happen if Liz is in the penthouse. She’s like, okay, why doesn’t Liz leave the house? Why does she have to be in the penthouse?

I thought well, she wouldn’t leave because you know the way the story works is–it’s a Monday in the story and Cam’s just come home from the hospital on Friday and he was a premature baby. So, you know, she’s he needs a ton of care of right, you know hands-on and Jason would be in Crimson Point. So like he’s not going to leave him alone with a babysitter to go have lunch. Like she’s not after the story I just told–not that she can’t do that–but I’m just saying it’s been it’s been less than four days since he came home. She’s not going to leave him with a babysitter just to go out and have lunch–like she’s just not there the point in her life.

That got me thinking — does Jason have to go to Crimson Point? Why can’t he be the one that stays home? After that I sat down my restructure my final chapters based on, you know, Liz leaves Jason stays. That was Tuesday.

I wrote two chapters hour and a half and then yes, Wednesday. I wrote the two chapters. And then yesterday I finished and I wrote the last chapter and it’s all done and it was just like that simple. It was just a matter of and for some reason being very very psychic and knowing exactly the right question to ask me. And me taking a moment to realize just because I outlined it some way–I mean, there are a couple of things that do get lost by it not being the way I anticipated. There’s a Michael thing that I was hoping–I really would have liked to have come full circle on but it’s okay that it’s not there. I think overall the things I get by making the change are better than the things I lose and I can still look for a way for that to be full circle later on, like in revisions. I was really–until I made that choice to make that change–I was really thinking about Why don’t I just write what I originally have outlined then I’ll fix it and revisions but in by fixing them like I would just I would basically have to rewrite it. And I’m just not in the mood right now to create more work for myself.

Like it’s one thing to write something get to the end of it and think that didn’t 100% work or een 90% work. Like that’s the way I feel about the middle part of the story–the middle 17 chapters that were written first but ended up being in the middle because they don’t fit now–I know how much work they’re going to need. So the last thing I want to do is create more. For myself, I don’t ever want to go into a scene thinking it’s alright, if it doesn’t work. I’ll fix it in revisions. I’d rather have that attitude after I’m done. Like there’s a Laura and Carly scene. I was really I wrote it early early in the whole draft and I was like, I thought that might be a relationship I could play with but they’re ended up not really being room for it. So when I go back through edits, I’m probably gonna end up removing that scene and that’s okay. Like I like that scene. I’ll probably post it somewhere isn’t it as a deleted scene, but I you know, it doesn’t really fit with the overall story ended up telling so that’s different though, because that was me playing around with that characters characters in a scene hat isn’t bad. It just isn’t going to fit the narrative I can cut that but it’s another thing to go into a scene thing. Yeah, this is not going to work, but I’m going to fix it in reisions. Anyway, like I don’t want to create that work for myself.

So mad world book 3 is done. It’s going to be released to the well done. I used on so subjectively it’s going into revisions. So it is Friday the day that I am filming that you guys are probably seen this on Saturday if This video worked because this is now the third time I filmed at the first time I messed up the audio. I’m not great at this. I’m using a new camera today as you can probably tell from the quality. So apologies and I’m messing up where I’m supposed to look because I have to look somewhere different now–apologies for that as well. I am not a professional, you know.

I’m taking the next few days off Friday and Saturday and on Sunday and Monday, I’m going to reread the whole thing and make like large scale notes about what are specific stories I missed. What are some specific things I want to do and then I’m going to go through a chapter. By chapter breaking it down making like I’m going to plant it chapter by chapter and then go through a chapter by chapter.

So I’ll check in with you guys next week because I should be kind of closer to getting into a full-scale edit. I really am thinking that the first 15 chapters are probably just clean up go for consistency–Spellings,  typos just stuff like that. There’s a couple of points. I want to hit a little harder. It’s the middle chapters that are probably gonna need the most work and I think that I’m going to make sure that I have at least 17 days of just working on them.  Alright, so today is August 7th. I’m taking off today and tomorrow so it looks fresher on the 9th and the 10th. I’m going to reread and then by the 16th, I want to start working. But now that I’m looking at that–that only gives me two full weeks to rewrite all those chapters in case I need to rewrite all those chapters.

You know what though? If I have to take part of September to go through the beta draft. That’s actually okay because I’m end up taking a whole week from revisions this point. So yeah, so that’s the goal is August 31st. If I don’t make it it is what it is. It’s okay. The better my beta draft is the easier that third draft is so the October 6th 8th shouldn’t shouldn’t change a lot. I’m not really I see no reason with the first draft being done in August whiBye.le you guys Not have it in October 6. All right, so that is part 5 of Writing Mad World. I will see you guys next week with part 6 in which we will have a better sense of how much work I’ve created for myself.

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