Spoiler-safe, brutally honest. What I wrote, what I learned, what broke, what's next.
Took the chapter VI bridge sequence apart and rebuilt it without the lantern motif. Costs me 800 words and one of the audition scenes; gains me a pacing line that finally holds.
"Kill the line you've quoted to friends. That's the one keeping the chapter alive on life support."
Next week: rewrite the courtyard scene with two POVs colliding instead of trading off. Probably wrong. Worth trying anyway.
Hit 51k this week. Removed 4k of it on Sunday morning. Net gain: ~3k of words I actually believe. Word count tracking turned off — replaced with a checklist of scenes that need to land.
Process update: writing in 90-minute blocks, three blocks a day, six days a week. Sundays for editing only.
Soft launch. Three lore cards up, one in draft. Subscriber list at 247 — not bad for a project nobody has heard of yet.
If you're reading these from the start: thank you. The early notes are usually wrong. They get less wrong over time.
Brutally honest, never padded. Coming soon: tags, RSS, a proper post archive.
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