That’s right. I’ve started posting it online and slathering additional secret chapters on Patreon. Now that the advertising is out of the way, I can move on to…reflection!
How I Wrote Stuff
What started out as “eh whatever, this might make for a cute story, I’ll dash it off in like a few months I guess” is becoming a full-fledged series, and something I realized I really should put more time and attention into. I hope that some of the enjoyment I felt working on it rubs off on readers, and that it comes off as the warm adventure with disarmingly heartfelt moments that I intended it to be.
I also hope that I’ve learned from the mistakes of my previous LitRPG story The Maid Got My System. That one’s a story about a cunning prince shackled to a chaotic maid. But when I wrote it, I was kind of out of my element—namely, I did not know how to write cunning princes or the problems of succession and assassins they would logically get into.
There are no cunning princes in Catgirl System. There’s barely any cunning in Catgirl System. There are spontaneous mid-battle schemes enacted by a heroine with eggplant for brains. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but my point is that she is more of a hunter-stalker-berserker who falls over sometimes.
People told me they liked the characters in Maid. Catgirl doubles down on character, salvaging only a precious sliver of the survival horror and esoteric sci-fi that Maid eventually headed into. Got to have a little of that.
Lastly, my writing process this time around has been more organized. Not because I wrote everything down in a beautiful and immaculate outline—I used even fewer outlines than I did for Maid—but because I went in with a broad and general idea of how this adventure was going to go. Maid had a base concept and two overarching mysteries that steered my writing, and I knew a few elements I wanted in the setting going in, but every other character, location, worldbuilding piece, and so forth was invented as I went.
Catgirl, however, has more overarching elements, most of which I knew I’d use from the outset. For one thing, it started out with a few definitive guideposts: the MC Taipha would find X location, meet Y people, spend the first book learning about Z and the second book doing A B and C.
In between, she’d encounter fun stuff—and that’s the second thing. Giving Taipha fun stuff to do is something I knew I wouldn’t have many problems with because I built in prompts for myself to come up with stuff for her to find. If I ever got bored of the idea of making her fight wildlife, she could instead find Treasure, or a stranger, or an enemy of a different caliber. Her System could even “generate” new things for her to strive for, especially in the early chapters when she may not have much of an internal drive to do so.
Third, I knew most of the characters I would want to have in the story. And since there’s hardly anything that could be classified as a big chessmaster scheme in the story, there is much less logic for me to puzzle out and iron out. (Which is good, because I may also have eggplant brain.) I knew the basic storylines I wanted these characters to go through and I kept them in mind as I wrote. Of course I had to tweak their storylines in post, but the broad strokes made total sense because I’d essentially known them from the start.
Also, I still haven’t written the ending. But that’s okay, it’s like 3 chapters, and I’ll switch back from editing to writing…um…within the year.
Writing/Editing Progress: Chugging Along
Alright, well, first of all, I may have overcommitted lately.
I just got home from seeing family (which was great) and am about to host more for a while (which I’m happy to do), but on top of that, my freelancing work has been busier than usual (a workload that I gladly and voluntarily took on). I think that in doing all of this, I kinda-sorta forgot that not only am I still writing and editing Catgirl System, I also told myself, “Alright, March 11 is the day you gotta start posting it and light that fire under yourself again!!”
But that stuff’s easy! Formatting the story for all the online venues I’ll want to upload it on is simple and straightforward. For sure! /sarcasm
…Well, while this latest step of the LitRPG-Formatting Journey has taken a matter of hours, it’s only been like 2 of them. So that’s not the main issue. The kicker is trying to remind myself to edit at least one chapter a day (which sometimes takes an hour, sometimes takes way less) even if the day feels like it’s practically over.
What this results in is me getting my most substantial work in on the weekends. That’s alright, especially because it’s hobby-work, but…if I try to Up My Productivity too much on that end, I might just fall over.
In my last writing update, I noted that I had just finished editing Chapter 63. Now I’m 95% done with Chapter 71, meaning that for the past two weeks, I had a pace of half a chapter per day. This is acceptable, but it doesn’t feel amazing, and I am still yearning to do more.
Eh, that’s okay, I’m sure I’ll get it done on time. I think I’m just whining abotu the security net. In any case, I fully intend to keep Catgirl System going on schedule, come hell or high water. Unless it’s, like, too high. Or unless hell is really that bad. Then maybe not. But probably so!!
Thank you for reading, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
I’ve written a whole bunch of posts about my writing process and progress, and you can read the whole series here. Alternatively, learn about 4Kids theme songs or follow along as I read Harry Potter for the first time.