Daily-ish reISH Report: 

Got distracted yesterday by reading too many old attempts at starting reISH along with the 1.5 prior attempts at a timeline and got overwhelmed by the enormity of the thing all over again.   I started thinking, ‘Shit, I cannot do this, if it’s this hard to sort out it’s probably not do-able and/or I shouldn’t be doing it.’    

And then I got a lovely comment on reSWAN!   Just when I needed it!   And I felt like reISH was conquerable again.  Just gotta go in little chunks one block at a time.   I think I got as far in reSWAN as I did because I just thought I was writing ‘just this one more’ chapter for every update for like 10 chapters haha   So I’m trying to stay focused somewhat like that here.  Just this chunk of the summary/skeleton for now, worry about massive implication later, adjust as needed while you go, etc etc

Today we had surgery on the opening, grafting parts of one previous opening into the new one.  Feels a little like one of those surgeries where you have to wait to see if it takes before you can declare it successful.  Alternately one of the ones you do in order to facilitate the surgery you actually want later down the line.   Truth be told, a lot of the material I have is still sort of ‘opening’ or, ‘opening-adjacent’, which feels a little embarrassing considering how long I’ve been working on this disaster.  It’s just that what feels like the beginning keeps moving.  I start in one place and then realize as I’m writing that I need more before that beginning in order for it to have some strength I need later.  

Much of this is untangling when we meet our two new cast members.  I do have the scenes of meeting both of them written, though the one is in more danger of changing than the other.  

I want to avoid writing too much out of order or too far ahead because I just know I’ll end up with A) people in the wrong mindsets and/or B) things I love that I will be upset to have to get rid of For The Good of the Mission.   So it’ll be work I either have to do a second time to make fit or work that I can’t make fit and will have wasted?  Something like that.

Also went back to the 777 chapter in reSWAN to look up some garbage and got sucked into reading the whole thing again and was like ,’wow, that was great, I just need to do like, like, 20 more times’.   (Just imagined someone reading this and thinking there are 777 chapters in reSWAN and wanting to assure them both that this is not the case and that they were not totally unreasonable for thinking that to be the case.  Anyway)

Also dug up a ton of old files and I forgot I had started a file called ‘bits of SWAN that don’t suck’, which is exactly what it sounds like, it was parts of the original story that I thought were good but that were not in reSWAN so I could give it to people like, HERE, now you never have to read the thing I made in 2005, you have all the highlights right here!  

So I guess a lot went on in the background of the story today.  But it is moving, and both my opening pair are willing participants in the narrative this time instead of crying and going home, which is Nice, Thanks.  They are establishing some baseline before collecting their first plot coupon (but also like some plot spare change, and a plot bobby pin, also some plot lint), and then maybe I will feel like the foundation is sound enough to build some of these walls higher.  

god i hope so