I'm not ignorant, just careless! Seriously!

I really wish there were a gracious and graceful way to tell people that while I really do appreciate having mistakes pointed out, mini-lectures and explanations of why they're wrong are unnecessary and tend to wear me down.

There really isn't, though, and even if I successfully conveyed to one commenter that there's no need to do this, it wouldn't stop the next commenter from doing the same thing.

The personal bane of my existence is when someone spots an extra period and tells me that one dot is a period and three are an ellipses, but two is never correct. I can understand someone thinking I might need help with subject/verb agreement if I changed one part of a sentence but forgot to edit the other part, or thinking I need help remembering the difference between affect and effect if in haste I use the wrong word, but who thinks that two periods is An Actual Thing? I swear I've received a comment to that effect ten times now and it makes me feel like I'm being schooled on the difference between a napkin and a shirtsleeve.

</vent>

READER MAIL BLAG!

Okay, so I should be writing now according to my routine, but I'm also eating lunch because I ordered it in and it didn't get here until the end of my "lunch break". I think I'm going to have an okay writing day anyway, even with this interruption.

Anyway, I've seen a spike in reader e-mail... I got one after I made my contact email really visible on the Tales of MU site, and now I've got one that I believe relates to the fact that I turned off anonymous questions on Formspring. I believe this kind of underscores how much of my Formspring traffic was stuff that would be better for email in the first place, being multipart questions or more in the nature of being feedback or comments than questions.

(This isn't why I closed the nonny-door at Formspring. I really wouldn't care for those questions to follow me to email.)

Number one question in my email inbox, in fact, are variations of Why did you close your Formspring?

First, I'd like to point out that you can still 'spring me... you just need to be signed in and make your account name visible to me. You can use your Facebook account or create a Formspring account. Neither costs anything. You don't have to put any real identifying information into a Formspring account. This isn't an attempt by me to harvest your identity. It's just raising the minimum effort people need to exert to use Formspring to be a dick in my general direction and giving me the ability to block them when they do.

And that's the why right there. The specific event that prompted it was someone getting all up in arms over the idea that I don't work on weekends and me realizing how much of my weekend I was giving up to answer this person's objections. If this had been an isolated incident I wouldn't have changed my account status over it, but it sort of fits a pattern where (seemingly) one individual with a fixation or entitlement complex latches onto an issue and uses my Formspring account to hammer me until they hear what they want to hear. No more.

I'm not talking about the repetitive magi-physics questions or the ones about how I type with boxing gloves evil gods. Even if I sigh and roll my eyes a bit, those aren't really a problem.

If anybody else has questions about weekends and my work schedule and all that... take a look at the MU site right now. There was a 45 hundred word story on Friday. There was a 55 hundred word story on Monday. There is a five thousand word story up today. There will be a story of similar length on Friday.

Is this not to your liking? Is there something about this you would like to see changed about this arrangement? To put it in stark and simple terms:

Other questions in my email:

Are the incentives for the current fundraiser OTs, or something else?

They aren't specifically OTs. I'm not offering stories, I'm offering plotlines/answers. Some of them may be resolved through an OT if it doesn't fit neatly into the main ongoing story, but to use an example: the bit with Twyla in the cafeteria in the latest regular chapter? That's part of an arc, an arc that's starting because of the first incentive.

The volume change was well done, but why didn't you give more warning?

Again, I got several variations on this, and comments on the end of volume 1 and the current chapters reflect a similar sentiment.

This really underscores the difficulty of trying to communicate with one's audience. Most people just read the story. They don't read my blog. They skip any announcement posts. Their eyes bounce off any notes I put above or below it.

I really don't know what more I could have done to make people aware of what I was planning there.

And that's really it for trending questions at the moment.

Magic Under Construction: His Imperial Majesty

Started: 4/13/2011, 3:00
Status: In Progress
Last Updated: 6:00
Word Count: ~2500
Hours Writing: 2

( Spooilers! )

Today's Score

Right around 5,000 words. I had some minor disruptions to my routine midday, but I shall not dwell on them as 5,000 words is a good haul for anyone.

I continue to learn lessons in flexibility. Originally my idea had been to write straight through chapter 5 and then plow on through the start of chapter 6, but I found myself with much firmer ideas for the Magisterion story than for chapter 6. So when I got within spitting distance of the end of chapter 5, I switched gears and started the OT instead. The OT is more than half finished, and the biggest part of what it needs now is the other perspective of the last seen of Vera's story.

( Potentially spoilery musings on the OT story. )

Chapter 5's not finished, but what's left to do is not worth giving an hour block of writing to. I'll steal some time Friday before I post it to blend in what needs blending.

I've got a better handle on Chapter 6 now, too. It will be a real treat for people who like the worldbuilding stuff.

Edit For Further Musings:

These chapters are going to be getting shorter. Not terribly shorter but closer to 3,000 words more often than they are close to 5,000 words. I'm reminding myself of this because I keep trying to do the maffs in my head and going, "Wait, why did I think I'd be able to do three chapters and change in two days of writing?" and it's because I was thinking that having ~10,000 words between those two days would give me three chapters.

That's what I'm working towards: two days a week on MU to produce 10,000 words to give three updates a week... I could keep doing it as two larger updates but more smaller updates means more flexibility... one chapter can be shorter if it needs to be and one can be longer if it needs to be and it averages out more smoothly, plus there's never the dreaded Monday/Friday cliffhanger. The other days? That's when I'll be turning out Other Things. I've got a lot of stuff that's more or less in a holding pattern while I get the House of MU in order, and it really is closer to being in order than it has been since... well... ever.

Edit For Even More Musings:

The most incredible thing to me about this burst of productivity that I'm having is that it's not a burst. I do not feel manic and frantic. I am not completely unable to sleep at night or forgetting to eat and drink. I feel normal. I've had nights of poor sleep, but I'm not just so full of creative energy that I don't sleep and don't notice.

I'm also not in some perfect optimal writing place right now. I've been writing through moderate fatigue, physical discomfort, and cognitive fog. I've been writing while I'm irritated or distracted. I've been writing while it's a bit too warm in the house.

Part of this has to do with the exciting new project energy of Volume 2, which I was consciously counting on cultivating when I made the shift... but, well, again, this doesn't feel "bursty". I think the new project energy helped me get into this frame, but I think I'm going to be able to use that energy for longer than I would have otherwise. And the idea of dividing Volume 2 up into discrete individual books from the get-go means I'll be catch a boost from time to time anyway.

The important thing is that I'm not riding a high. There will be days when I crash physically or mentally because that's just the fun thing my body and brain like to do, but I'm not going to be crashing from this.

A year and a half or so of brain and life hacking is starting to pay off.