Having to work a fair chunk of Saturday, it felt like I didn’t have any time at all, but after doing the update, I had the burning desire to have at least have accomplished something, so I did some writing on Chapter 20 of TWH. From here, I need to switch gears over to EM3 so I can have next weekend’s update ready (but before that, I still have a review post to make). With work-work, the new season’s viewing, the previous seasons’ backlog, reconstruction efforts on the site, story progress and more, time management is going to be critical in the foreseeable future. No promise on how well I’ll strike the balance. We’ll see what I can do. Stay tuned.

I finally got around to doing some story writing and got Chapter 19 of TWH pretty well done and ready to go for the weekend update. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it in an earlier post, but I’ve got the remaining chapters plotted out and it’s just a matter of getting them written. I’ll see what I can do on that front. Stay tuned.

I continued to implement the edits to Tico1 up through Chapter 11. Once I’m done reconstructing the site (or whenever I need a break), I’ll continue the proofing work from Chapter 12. I also did a quick pass with the spellchecker through Tico2, 3 and 4 to add to the custom dictionary and see if I couldn’t catch anything that slipped past me all those years ago. One small thing which typifies how obsessive I can be over little details is the spellings of “civvy” vs. “civvie”. I favor the latter, but then I decided to change it to the former, only to finally decide that “civvy” is the singular noun form and “civvie” is the adjectival form, thus warranting another pass through all the manuscripts where citations of the word can be found. I’m sure no one else does this (the distinction between “civvy” and “civvie”, that is), but at least this way I’ll have internal consistency.

I mentioned before that I was adjusting the rendering of dialectic speech and that was the main thrust of the day’s efforts, but I was also making some adjustments to stage direction and such as I went. Small changes, but they add up. Once I’m done, I’ll have to compare how the wordcount has changed. Anyway, it’s back to the grunt work, so look for further updates in the Road to Reconstruction series. Stay tuned.

Since I saw fit that my earlier proofing work warranted one of these posts, I’ll do so here as well. As you may recall, before all this nonsense with the site began, my proofing work had extended to the Space Arc shorts and Tico1. Well, as I was reconstructing their pages, I was implementing the edits I had made two weeks ago. For the shorts, there wasn’t much to change, but with my reworking of the dialectic speech in Tico1 (which will of course extend to the other three books when I get to them), there’s a bit more elbow grease being applied. As you might imagine, I’m kinda thankful for character like Matt whose speech is stiffer and more formalized. Less work for me. Anyway, life needs rigor and so I’ll continue on my way. There’ll probably be one more post like this as I get caught up on the proofing work I’ve done so far on Tico1, but probably not another one for a while unless I take a wild hair to do some story writing as a change of pace. Stay tuned.

You didn’t expect to see one of these, did you? I wouldn’t have either, but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’ve had a burst of inspiration recently while proctoring finals and I’ve figured out my plan for the next four chapters of TWH. As all my proctoring and grading are done and I was left with two more days in the workweek, I considered bringing my laptop to the office so I could continue my work on the site. However, due to the time required for the file transfers for updating Drupal, I opted to leave my laptop behind to finish that while I was off at work. (You’ll hear more about that in my next Road to Reconstruction post.) So, instead of reconstructing pages on the site, I used my time to write on Chapter 19 of TWH. A different sort of productive use of my time, but a welcome one. It may be a little too optimistic, but if there are no other major disturbances in the near future, I might even be ready for a story update by next weekend. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Well, let’s see what I can do. Stay tuned.

I did a little proofing on Tico1. Not much because there was something about a graduation ceremony that folks were making a big deal about. I would later go on to implement the edits to JJ2 and TWH. I’ll work on the Space Arc stuff I’ve done tomorrow. Not exactly thrilling content, I know, but maybe I’ll do a little actual writing as well. Stay tuned.

I continued to proof Tico1. I’m enjoying immersing myself in the story again. One thing I’m noticing, though, is that my writing for dialect has become more refined since I wrote this, so reworking that to make it more consistent is going to be a bit of work. (And I can remember going back over the manuscript a several years back as well, but such are the joys of the iterative process.)

In other news, it’s been brought to my attention that the version of PHP the site’s been using is well out of date. When I tried to update it, the site stopped loading, which means that I’m going to have to migrate to a new CMS. That’ll be quite the undertaking I’m sure. I knew support ended for my current CMS years back, but I figured so long as everything was functioning, why change? Well, we’re reaching the point where that’s no longer the case. Currently I’m looking into using Drupal. It’s supposed to have a bit of a steep learning curve to it, but apparently it has some built-in functionality for adapting to mobile browsers, and that’s something I’ve been meaning to do for the site for a while now. I know it won’t be as simple as plugging in my current database, so I’ll have to roll my sleeves up and have at it. This will go well with my intentions of modernizing my code and doing some other tweaks to design. Fun, fun, fun. Stay tuned.

I finished going over TWH and at least managed to work out a general game plan going forward (albeit with no actual story progress), then I went through proofing the Space Arc shorts and went on to Tico1. While story progress on TWH would be ideal, I am at least doing something productive. At the rate I’m going, we probably won’t have a story update this week and I’ll just move on to EM3 next week. I’d like to have something more interesting to report, but expect more of the same for the time being. Stay tuned.

I continued to proof TWH and I might’ve finished, but there were festivities of the day to attend to. In the evening, I started sweeping the Space Arc shorts, which will lead to me proofing them once I’m done with TWH. What about actually writing on TWH, you ask? Well, as soon as I figure out how to fill the gap between where we’ve left off and the final few chapters, I’ll get right on that. Will it be done in time for the weekend? Stranger things have happened, but I wouldn’t advise holding your breath. Stay tuned.

I finished my sweep of JJ2 and started in on TWH. I’m hoping that the reread will help open up the path I need to go forward. Perhaps I should’ve focused on that in the evening, but instead I found myself making adjustments to the tags in a lot of the entries here. There were some changes I’d made since the time of those posts and for archival purposes, I wanted to make sure they were properly accessible. For instance, both EM and JJ were originally written without plans for sequels, but now that sequels have been written, it would stand to reason to think of them as EM1 and JJ1, so I made a point to add tags for both. Also, it was interesting going back over the record of my progress 8, 9 years ago. Hard to believe it’s been so long. Also, as far as progress goes, some things never change. Anyway, I’m going to try brainstorming while doing further adventures with the spellchecker. Stay tuned.