Finishing Act 1

Well, act 1 is complete. I’ve never written any fiction before (at least beyond like since I was five), and while I’m sure anyone with writing experience could find a dozen mistakes per chapter, I’m still going to pat myself on the back a bit for finishing what’s effectively an entire novel. I don’t know exactly how many words are in chapters 0-62, but I’m guessing between 80k-90k, which is give or take novel length. I’m sorta following the standard multi novel series process, though since it’s being released chapter by chapter on the internet I’m also just doing whatever I want. I’ll continue the numbering scheme (Act 2’s prologue will be chapter 63), and A2 prologue will be closer in publishing date to A1 epilogue than the A1 prologue and epilogue will be to each other.

How I got started with the project

Like many of my projects: I was bored.

More specifically, though, I was bored while at work. In 2018 I was in my first year of college and working part time at a grocery store maintaining meat processing equipment. I didn’t need to speak with people much, and I couldn’t have music/audio going, but it didn’t require my mind to be too occupied. I already usually have something random bouncing around in my mind, and after hours of college work, something more interesting to think about in between college and bed was a nice break from the more mentally tasking college stuff.

Between 2018 and 2024 I got acts 1, 2, and part of 3 done in my head - but only drafted like four chapters. The first dozen or so chapters were definitely the hardest to get set up, and every couple of weeks/months when I went to write I’d inevitably just re-write one of the earlier chapters since I kept changing exactly how it would start. Besides, I was short on free time - and while drafting stuff out in my head was a nice break, sitting down at my computer and drafting took up time when I could be doing something else. I kinda put it on the backburner for several years, but in April or May of 2024 I decided I’d give it another go and started from chapter 9 - circling back to the earlier chapters once I had drafted everything else.

Working on chapters I had set in stone and having some more free time made things a lot more enjoyable. I sometimes get tunnel vision when I start something new, so by June I had already drafted 61 chapters and posted the prologue (22, 41, & 42 were last minute additions to set up future events or round out the story a little). I started by getting a first draft of each chapter - writing most of it in either Emacs or on physical paper, then got everything organized in Joplin and did a quick once over. After that, it was just a matter of doing a deeper proofreading of each chapter and posting it.

Future Chapters

Speaking of my process, I’ve already begun working on the next part. The first and last half dozen or so chapters are pretty much set in stone, so expect a few A2 chapters coming soonish. The rest, however, aren’t quite as set in stone. While the events are pretty much planned out, as you can probably guess by the latter half of A1, it’ll be split between Earth and Domum and I don’t quite have a timeline of how the two semi independent storylines line up. After the first couple of A2 chapters there’ll be a bit more of a wait as I get the rest of the A2 chapters drafted before returning to posting them once or twice a week.

Other Things on my To Do List:

I’m not totally finished with chapters 0-62, though. Things on my todo list include:

  • Getting a PDF/Epub together for easier reading, which I’ll share via direct dl, torrent, and IPFS.
  • Putting out a new torrent on Postman’s I2P tracker. The latest torrent there is chapters 0-33.
  • Posting A1 as one large Nostr post under the blogging NIP (NIP-23). It supports markdown, meaning I can do a table of contents and embed images, so I’d like to see how the protocol would work for such a big project.
  • Sharing the Elthrice alphabet, or more specifically, how to read it. I planned on sharing it when I posted chapter 47, but just never got around to it.
  • Another proofreading of the chapters. Mistakes slip by even the best of proofreaders, and I’m far from the best. Also, between sharing the prologue and the last chapter, my fiction writing improved a bit - further warranting more proofreading.

Beyond that, I’ve also got two more blog posts that I’ll probably make. Both are reflections and my thought processes on the book’s contents so far, one about characters and one about everything outside of characters. Nothing too spectacular, just random tidbits or elaborations on why I wrote something the way I did - with a few bits of lore and stuff I felt I couldn’t fit into the writings themselves without hamfisted dialogue or a random lore dump of a paragraph.

Anyway, if you made it this far through my ramblings, thanks for reading.