I know that there’s no set speed for finishing art, but after what I consider a frankly absurd amount of time…is my finish line finally within reach?
I started writing Catgirl System when I was still in grad school. That was 2022. Maybe even 2021. I’m writing this as much as five years later.
Significant portions of the story were written in late 2022 and early 2023, on my lunch breaks at a thrift store. Or, rather, lots of shitty first drafts were written at that thrift store. It came out to about 120 chapters’ worth of material I wasn’t happy with. If that had been released, untouched or with light editing, Catgirl System would’ve been three books long with a totally floppy ending.
Then I moved. For three years I bounced between writing and releasing the rest of the story, and…uh…random other stuff…just endless other stuff. Having fun and goofing off. Working remote. A few family emergencies. Ultimately, I had a good time—and the urgency to complete Catgirl System almost totally fell off. I had a few kicks in the pants, notably a big exciting game project that I knew would be very absorbing (which I’ll post about when the time comes…).
I would occasionally schedule daily and weekly writing goals, and then editing goals. They were serviceable, but again, they were floppy. Sometimes I felt I truly couldn’t spare the time, either because work was overwhelming or because I’d scheduled other things so incredibly poorly for myself.
But at the heart of all this was…my vast dissatisfaction with the ending.
I Think I Just Suck at Endings
At the very, very beginning of writing Catgirl System, I had no plan for the endgame. Not beyond “there will be a dungeon.” Just throw our hero Taipha into the woods, let her meet characters both planned and unplanned, and bingo bango bongo, that’s a story. I think this fits my personality and the way I like to explore stories both as a reader and a writer.
But once I’d written some early stuff, I had a more solid direction and I knew more about which parts I enjoyed writing. So as I went into Book 1 revisions in early-2023-ish, I knew I needed to translate that into real worldbuilding. That worldbuilding should be consistent and, in turn, lead to some sort of fulfilling finale.
I’ve realized that the ending of an action-adventure is probably my least favorite part to read. I love discovery, and when I think of a typical ending in this genre, it’s not discovery, it’s the fall of the final, inevitable domino. The hero fights the villain, the villain has a big speech, the hero also has a big speech. Everything explodes. That had better be an extremely potent and unique speech, or else I might as well have turned this off ten minutes ago.
Not only that, but I think the typical action-adventure villain is also deeply uninteresting to me. Either that, or I just haven’t seen the right ones yet, or the story that really makes it click.
What this leads to is an author (me!) who both dislikes and sucks at writing endings and villains for action-adventure stories. That’s part of what became a mounting anxiety over completing Catgirl System.
If you look at The Demon Lord is Apathetic, you’ll find something similar. Without spoiling things (I hope), the ending is only weakly connected to what came before it. It’s less of an action-adventure climax and more like a science-fiction concept…which is what I love most, but it was poorly executed, especially in the context of what’s 95% an action-adventure-comedy.
If you look at The Maid Got My System, it’s even worse! I love the epilogue to bits because (again trying not to spoil things) it’s a science-fiction concept that takes things in an extreme turn. It could set up a wild sequel (that I have no interest in writing). But before that is what feels to me now like a big hall of nothing.
It’s less suspenseful LitRPG (even though that’s the backbone of the story) and more science-fiction mystery. It’s also really slow. We didn’t come here to read Rendezvous with Rama, and it’s not nearly as good as Rama. So why did I do this? Um…because I’m not good at piecing together action-adventure climaxes, that’s why. Those were the last two novel-length stories I completed before Catgirl System. The not-very-promising lead-in.
Getting Good (Or Maybe Just Getting Over It)
My thrift store drafts gave me a general roadmap for a Catgirl finale. I really didn’t like it. It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t very interesting, and the tension was low. But hey, at least it was something. When I’m anxious about how a story will go, I want to go in with a plan. That plan inevitably changes, sometimes quite a lot, but for my process, it’s still very good to have.
I should note that all this time, another force, probably one more potent than I realize even now, was working in the background. That force…was me reading a lot of other LitRPGs.
The whiplash of this comparison is going to slap you in the face, but it was sort of like when I read War and Peace. That book is so famous that it gathers its own gravitational field. When I read it years ago, though, I thought, “These are just words on a page. I could do this.” Of course, I didn’t mean I could do specifically this—write War and Peace or another book on that scale—but I meant I could string words and ideas together which would be pretty good. I’ve heard people compare Tolstoy unfavorably to Dostoyevsky, saying that Dostoyevsky wrote with more emotion and soul. That might be true, and that might be related to why I thought this, but even so…they’re both real talented and famous.
Back to the topic at hand. From 2023 to now, I basically read a big sample platter of LitRPGs, with some assorted cultivation and general SFF sprinkled in. Many of them were really good; I found new favorites. Many were wildly imaginative in ways I couldn’t be myself. But I wasn’t devoid of ideas, and I had my own style and flavor. In the background of my mind, I thought, “I understand how these stories were written and why these story decisions were made.” I thought, “These are just words on a page.”
It helped me relax and lowered the stakes. The problems I had coming up with good-enough action scene ideas are turning out to be surmountable with enough time, planning, and rewrites. This helped motivate me to return to daily writing this past spring, without feeling a dread almost like pain whenever I returned to the task.
…Also, I thought, “I need a villain.”
Not like those other villains I put in earlier Catgirl System books! A villain more closely tied to the dungeon in Book 4! Look, I know it’s not going to be as impactful as building up a villain from jump…but we at least could use a living, breathing point of intrigue. We need some setup and payoff.
In the end, I’m still trying to play to my strengths as a writer and the things I most enjoy. I like throwing Taipha into spontaneous zany battles. When it comes to the fights, I’d rather start by diving right in and iron out details, making things more consistent or impactful, in post. Taipha’s relationship with finale villains won’t be nearly as important as the arguments she’s had with friends and earlier villains throughout the series.
Most of all, I can finally say YAY, YAY, I hit 90k for Book 4 rewrites + edits! I need to wrap up the dungeon and then edit the denouement I wrote months and months ago. Then I’ve gotta finalize System messages throughout the story and make sure that and Taipha’s Inventory are consistent.
Thank you for your infinite patience, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
Here’s some random articles from across this blog: me wondering if I have time for all my hobbies (note: I’m sure half of my hobbies have changed or even faded since I wrote this…OOPS), the 5 most futuristic covers of all space-time, and a review of Fluke (1995) (about a dog).