How I Write These

A Gordian cycle story goes through the following stages:

- The first draft is written in a physical notebook, with editing notes randomly strewn in the margins, headers, footers, wherever. Sometimes this is preceded by a page or so of planning/outline notes, but sometimes that part's all in my head if the vision is strong enough. If there's poetry involved, I'll devote a page at the back of my notebook to it so the iterations and rewriting of that can expand and take up space independently of the main space.

- The second draft then consists of typing it up to a doc on my computer, making the various changes I've made notes on and any more I think of as I go. I then give it another read-through and do any tweaks that present themselves now it's a single coherent document. I write the translator's notes during these passes, they're not part of the initial physical draft (although the parts relating to the in-universe textual history tend to occur to me during the initial planning stage, since they affect the story's basic shape).

- The third draft consists of reading it aloud to my girlfriend, and seeing what she has to say as my editor, and anything else that stands out to me as I experience it this way too.

- And once I've made the changes from that I upload it!

I've never done a project this way before--normally I just dash through a story in a single doc, give it one editing pass and go "yeah okay" and upload it. So this one's a bit special for me.

The potentially more pretentious reason for this process is that it makes it feel more authentic to the style and metafiction if it works as a physical manuscript and an oral recitation; but even if that's pretentious, it is kind of true. The other reason, which is more widely applicable, is that passing it through multiple mediums and methods of interacting with the story (writing and crossing out words pen on paper, typing them on a keyboard, speaking them aloud), sorta forces it through my brain at different angles and makes me think about it more thoroughly.

So that's a lesson I'll definitely take through to future projects, even if I don't exactly do this whole process for them.

The main exception is the longest entry, the Destruction of Arsiyyah, which I'm currently working on--I set aside a new notebook just for that. It starts with what came out to four pages of notes to make sure I have all the events and characters sorted out, and then I left a couple more pages blank to come back and write out the verse while I get started on the first draft for now. It's working so far! Assuming it doesn't take up the whole thing, once it's done then I'll let the rest of the notebook be general-purpose and let myself write/draw other stuff in there, but I want to make sure the whole Destruction draft fits in it first.