Shinerdrinker: Blog

I did something this weekend I can't believe I haven't done before.

I was writing this weekend. (Yes, I know, I'm as surprised as you are, and no, that wasn't the something I haven't done before!) While writing, I had a question about something a character had done before, and this is when you know this is the first time I've ever written anything this long or involved, I could not remember which chapter I had described what was done. Well, I found the answer to my question after about two hours of rereading past chapters to find the answer. Not a bad thing to do if you asked me, but it was a terrible use of my time allotted for writing.

I got to a stopping place, turned off the computer, and turned on the boob tube. I used about half of it just looking for the answer to my question. After a few minutes in a bad Skin-e-max movie, I had the revelation. An epiphany, if you will.

Why don't I have the chapter's list and a quick blurb about the happenings in that chapter? My epiphany was, why not use some of the other programs that came with the free one I downloaded.

Side rant real quick.

I've been having problems with the OpenOffice I've been using for many chapters. I honestly didn't know if it was my problem or something one of my editors was doing to the filing in transit between us. I thought it wasn't either of us, but I could no longer deal with it. So I did something TeNderLoin had suggested many moons ago. switch to LibreOffice.

It was much of a problem before, and it was just a minor inconvenience. But the last couple of chapters, whenever one of the editors would leave a side comment, a tried and true feature of the program. One I've utilized many a time myself. But now, whenever I came across one of these side comments, the program would crash, and I'd have to reopen the file. I'd get halfway through chapter correction, and my editor wants to emphasize something I liked in writing, and... it crashes again. But in the last chapter, I wasn't even able to get to the page where the comment was before the program hit again.

It was beyond frustrating.

In between chapters and I had not gotten into the next one. So I asked my editors again for their input since it would also affect them. And they both encouraged me to make a move. So I did it. It was a perfect time to do it.

So I did it this weekend. When installing the new program, I noticed the other parts of the suite. While watching fake fornication on Skin-e-max, I remembered one of those extra programs in the new LibreOffice suite, the spreadsheets! (I know, right!) As I was saying, this would lead me to my epiphany.

So I started it on Friday night, and now I have a lovely spreadsheet featuring the chapters, their names, and a little synopsis of what happens in said chapter. I'm also trying to decide if I need to put a character list into the spreadsheet. I do have a separate character list with minor descriptions of them. If I introduce them in a chapter, that is in the new synopsis. I felt so bright for thinking of it, then stupid for not doing it earlier.

I don't feel that stupid about the spreadsheet, but I do when I think about all the time I've spent trying to find out a minor character or action performed in an earlier chapter that I could not remember immediately off hand. So all weekend was spent rereading Mayhem in a Pill and setting up a spreadsheet about said story. I should have had it from the beginning, but I was too busy congratulating myself for keeping up with a minor character tracking sheet and outline of the entire story. Ugh, so much wasted time. I mean, it isn't like I'm wasting all my time writing out long-winded blog entries when I should probably be working on the next chapter. Naw. Nothing like that at all.

Tee hee.

--Shinerdrinker

Okay, so Chapter 67 of Mayhem in a Pill has been sent to the editors. They are waiting with bated breath for my words of power to lift their wings into the sky.

Or so I've been told.

I expect the editors to take the weekend to turn my mush-mouth writings into something comprehensible. I mean could you imagine having to read pages of droning drivel like these blogs and putting them into some coherent noise.

Truly monumental work on their part.

But it does take a little time. So I can imagine a posting of the new chapter probably early next week. Just wanted to let my score of fans know so they can make plans accordingly.

Tootles 'til next time.

--Shinerdrinker

Hey, I got a new reader of my first story here, "Mayhem in a Pill." I don't know for sure if this person is a new reader of the story or someone who has read all of it so far and just wanted to help.

He has gone through the whole 66 chapters of the story and pointed out several minor corrections needed chapter by chapter. I am forever grateful to this person for the help. I've gotten the edits since the weekend. They have pointed out many little hiccups here and there. I knew there were a bunch, but luckily, he found many of them and emailed them to me. So all I've had to do is pull up the HTML file and make the change. Then send it back to Lazeez to correct them. So this morning, I fixed a bunch of the chapters.

What else... oh yeah, Mayhem has surpassed ONE MILLION DOWNLOADS!!!

I got sidetracked with the correcting, and one thing it has shown me is I have improved as a writer as the chapter count grows. It happened a couple of days ago, but I realized a bunch of them were me checking the numbers, so if I hold aside all the times, I've looked in the last week or so, I'm feeling safe in saying the count is now over a million. The final chapter is also over the 10,000 limits I try to set as a base for posting the next chapter. I'm still a couple of pages away from the next chapter posting, but I am working on them.

I want to go back over the beginning chapters and make corrections and repairs. Oh, don't get it twisted. I want to do it, and it's just going to be time-consuming. I'll probably do that after the whole thing is finished. That will be a good reason to put it up on Bookapy. Yeah, that's the ticket! Buy "Mayhem in Pill" on Bookapy because it's the one with significantly fewer stupid typing errors!

So I'm still working on chapter 67, and it will come soon but not quite yet. Maybe I'll get some time today or tomorrow to work on it, and then I can get it over to my editors.

Please forgive my poor spelling; I didn't feel like hitting the delete key. It's waaay the fuck over there, and I don't have the strength.

But I do have the strength to point something out to my scores of fans on the interwebs. Two things.

First, chapter 66 of Mayhem in a Pill slowly reaches 10,000 views. Luckily, each of the chapters of this story tends to do this before the one-month time limit I placed upon myself comes up due. Generally speaking, try to give each chapter at least 10,000 views before posting another chapter. It's not a hard and fast rule, but more of a guideline I use to tell myself, 'Hey, your not lazy, your just doing it for the score of fans out there.'

So I'm almost ready to send the chapter to my amazing editors. We know my editors are waiting patiently by their computers. They deny themselves food, beverage, and sexual gratification to help mold the verbal diarrhea I spew from my typing into something the world might recognize as language. And if we're lucky, there might be a continuation of the stories I'm trying to tell. It always is nice when you come back to something you wrote that, once you send to Laz for posting, you completely forget about actually makes a bit of sense. Tee hee.

Alright, so that's first. What was the other...

Oh shit, that's right. Do you know what else is also coming up... ONE MILLION FUCKING VIEWS for Mayhem in a Pill!!!!

Holy fuck, can y'all believe that! Amazingly enough, the 10,000 views of chapter 66 and the million plateau will coincide. Not precisely, mind you. Shit, that would be nuts! But pretty damn close. If I did the math correctly, the 10,000 downloads should come first, but I'm hoping it will be a generous lover and take all of us over the top at the same setting. (See what I did there.)

So, I guess that was a bit of news, and some of it damn important. The chapter isn't ready to send on the process, but it's almost there. I won't guarantee this week, but I'd say there is a pretty damn good chance of it.

Okay, that's it. Stick a fork in me. This update is finished. I'll quote a favorite movie of mine from my high school days.

"Remember to eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark."

As the title says, I take solace because I wasn't the only one to miss this mistake in Chapter 57 of Mayhem in a Pill. But then again, I was the one to find it.

I went back to the chapter to double-check my notes for the correct answer to a question I had for the next chapter in Mayhem. It was something that I knew who I wanted, but apparently, I was distracted, and so was everyone else. Sure, he was a great artist, but so was he.

Anywho, I've sent in the correction, and it should get updated later this morning, and then once again, all will be right with the world again. No need to worry. No need to worry about anything else at all... whatsoever.

--Shinerdrinker