Two Chaps of Weeaboo #2 in next post. In this one, a dive into why I'm binning the third chapter (Patreon)

The newsletter thing kind of fell off, but I thought I would revive it for a moment to give you a little more insight into how I write things... and why breaks are good.

The first chapter I wrote of Vol. 2 started in in the middle of a conversation. Liam was sorting out the gains from the battle of the Floating Quarter with assorted NPC's, and generally lamenting that they wanted to spend his hard earned loot on practical things, instead of comforting weeb things. It was silly, but contrasting the tough minded NPC's with the die-hard otaku was reasonably funny idea, and a good way to reintroduce the charciters to anyone reading Vol. 2 months after reading Vol. 1. Except... as I wrote it, I liked it less and less.

For one thing, it skipped directly over Liam counting up his loot! That's a genre convention for a reason. You need that payoff for all the suffering. There needed to be an accounting scene, but that didn't fit in the chapter I had written. And what about all that Sky Realm stuff that the system mentioned? That needs to be introduced too. If a whole new mechanic is appearing, we got to at least take a sniff at it early on.

The original Chapter 1 cannot be Chapter 1, as it doesn't do the jobs it needs to do. But that's fine. It is the current year. I'm not writing on vellum. Nothing easier than inserting new text. So I knock out what would become the chapters I'm posting in a couple of minutes, and then come back to the chapter I started orgiinally. The scene has been set up, we should be ready to go.

Except that the original Chapter 1 still sucks. I'm not doing the usual author "Fetch me my fainting couch, for mine own art disgusts me!" schtick. Sometimes you just gotta look at your work and recognize that it's not right. In this case, it committed compounding sins. First, it didn't tell us anything about the charicters we didn't already know. Second, if the purpose was to reintroduce the reader to those charicters, I could do it much more efficiently than spending most of a chapter on it. Lastly, and most damningly, it reset Liam back to where he was at the start of Vol. 1 mentally and emotionally.

Ever see someone try too hard to be funny, and it not only stops being funny, it accelerates past cringe and finally just makes you uncomfortable? Like, "I don't want to be here" uncomfortable? That's what happened. It tried to be funny, but if you met the Liam in that scene, you would hate him. He was being stupid and petty not just for his own amusement, but for the nostalgia of what used to make him happy.

I tried to to play it off. Soften the edge a bit. Little references to how incredibly cursed the whole situation was, how comforting and soothing he actually found those weeb tropes to be. The importance of maintaining his mental health. The techinical term for what I was doing was "lampshading." It can be done well. This was not done well.

The more and more I wrote the chapter, the more and more I disliked it. His desires were, when looked at even slightly critically, incredibly selfish and frankly abusive. It wasn't him, and it wasn't who he had become by the end of the first book. So I killed the whole damn chapter. Something that I don't do often.

This whole situation was the product of lazy writing. This was "I'm tired, I need to write, I have a quarter-good idea so I'm going to just play out this scene." I clearly didn't understand the assignment for the chapter, and most unforgivably, I was betraying my own story. I needed to close the tab, step away from the computer, and go do something else. In this case, walk the dog, cook dinner for the family, etc.

Writing is an artistic medium. Nothing wrong with fucking around and trying new things. There is something very wrong when you fuck around and shit on your own work.

This all sounds terribly bleak, and like I'm in some bad mental place, but that's not it. It's a relief when you see what the problem is. Why is this chapter not working? Because you didn't treat your work right, and the results could only be bad. Of course your soup sucks- you used gasoline instead of stock. Step away. Reset. Get your head straight. And then go back in.

So that's what I'm going to do. Weeaboo is going to chill for the summer. I'm going to step away. Reset. Get my head straight. And then go back in. Consider the two chapters I'm putting up as rough drafts, basic ideas about how the story is going to expand.

And If you are banging your head against the wall, if you keep digging and keep not getting anywhere, if your work just isn't coming out right? You can step away too. It's a good time to refresh and recharge.

As always, thank you so much for your support. It makes all this possible. So I'm going to write you the very best books I can.

Warby