“Gates” rewrite in progress (Patreon)

So I threatened to do it, and I am! I’m about four thousand words into a rewrite of “Gates,” the story about Sandy the ocelot and Amarylis the giant fox’taur woman.

In my last post, I wrote “the as-yet-unfinished draft definitely shows its age in some ways,” and boy howdy, does it. I can tell this was written before I really knew how to structure longer stories, which I suspect is the real reason I stopped working on it. The characters, the milieu, and the setup all feel solid, but the plot meanders, the stakes aren’t set up very well, and there’s some serious logical inconsistencies. I’m half-tempted to try to write an article about the editing process, comparing the two versions of the first chapter.

Speaking of chapters, one dilemma is that the story really isn’t structured to be serialized. I may go back and see if I can fix that, but the breaks may just get, well, kind of arbitrary. Apologies in advance if that happens.

I’m posting this because I’m pretty sure the first chapter will not go up this week. My writing hasn’t been slow—4200 words in two weeks is actually well over my usual this past couple of years, where “slow and not so steady but still determined” has been the standard. But I’d like to get a bit farther ahead in both the story and the outline. Today (Wednesday the 13th), I’m leaving for Texas Furry Fiesta, and I hope to get some writing done on both at the convention. (I’ve found that both being in other cities on vacation and being around other creative furries tends to be inspiring.) I definitely do hope to get posting next week, though!