My Own Worst Enemy · 7:47pm Sep 19th, 2016
The next chapter of New Tricks is being written, and it's almost ready to be published from an objective standpoint. There's just one problem: it's clinical, cold and efficient. It's got no soul and no heart of which to speak, just a tangled mess of wires and electrodes that keep it going steadily in one direction with no heed for the wellbeing of individuals who have fallen to the left or right in pursuit of a place in the narrative.
There's a reason for that, but it's an outlandish sounding one that I was hoping wouldn't become a problem: in times of stress, I tend to detach emotionally in order to protect my fragile ego (haha! You need to accomplish something before you can have an ego, you silly goose). No, it's actually to protect me from the pain of feeling. It's all good and well when a pet's died by being stepped on, or your great grandmother's died of lung cancer, or you're being targeted mercilessly by jerks who enjoy harassing you. It's not so awesome when you're trying to write a chapter, only to read over it and think, "Man, this is soulless." That's the position I find myself in right now. As simple and enjoyable as the trip may have been, it's stressed me out a bit. You could probably pick up on the change in tone in the author's note of the newest chapter I've posted. That was me detaching in preparation for the trip. The blog post before that was the last purely lighthearted thing I could post before I succumbed.
Darn my mental defences, right? Expect a slight delay in the chapter's wait time compared to the others. I'm back; now I just need to wait for my emotions to catch up with me.
I'm pretty sure I'll like the chapter anyways.
4218341 You say that now, but I think you'd probably put it down after reading the first two words. I don't rate myself highly, but this was bad even by my standards. Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge can go eat his heart out, because I almost had an adverse physical reaction to reading it over. It can't even be called a chapter - it would be more accurate to label it a "causality chain" or something like that. It was pretty much: Character A does this. Character B does this. Character C does this. This is said to Character B by Character F. No emotion whatsoever.
4217846 Thank you so much. I'm not giving up, but I did have to wait a few extra days before I could stop faking sincere interactions in both reality and fiction. The blog post was to explain what had been causing the delay during the time between me getting back and actually doing stuff.
If you're willing to play editor for something like that, then thank you for your sacrifice. Assuming that you survive, you'll be one of society's true unsung heroes.
Sincerely, though. Thank you.
Also, care to explain the "Skeleton"?
4218634
Well, for the skeleton thing, it's a dark souls meme, so go play through any of the 5 related games (demons souls, darksouls 1-3, bloodborne) by FROM Soft if you have the chance to.
4218634
No, I think I will. You got talent Will, a good writting style and a drive to write. So don't degrade yourself like that. Keep up tye good work
4219441 Thank you.
This chapter had me stumped, so I decided to rewrite it in a different way. Overall, it's gone through four iterations already. Hopefully this one works, or else it's time for version five. Very much in line with the point of the story, so I guess that it's just trying to get some sweet revenge for what I've done to the characters and planned out so far.