An Experiment

Okay, here's a little experiment. I'm tinkering with a new stylesheet for the story, one that I think is more readable than the current one. It also lets me simplify and standardise my HTML to a considerable degree. But it's very different-looking to the current one.

I've created an alternate copy of chapter 9 of the story, using the new stylesheet. You can find it here. Please, if you have a few minutes to spare—take a look, and tell me what you think.

Better? Worse? What could improve?

Working after all

25,000 words. It hasn't been as productive a week as I'd hoped, but not too bad.

You could say that chapter 13 falls into three "phases": first, the battle against the vitrimorphs, and the revelation of Sailor Moon. Second, the discussions that follow. ("Many meetings," as chapter 12's coming-up-next blurb put it.) Third…"The fight carried to the enemy." Well, I'm about at the end of phase 2, or the beginning of phase 3. And since phase 3 is mostly action, it should go fairly quickly.

Of course, I've said that things will go fairly quickly before…!

ANZAC Day, 2007

In commemoration of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died at Gallipoli in the First World War.

They shall grow not old, as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not wither them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Amen.

Holidays *grumble*

I've been on holiday this week. Officially. That's the theory. I was planning to get some serious writing done—really. But…total words written at the end of day five: zero.

Truth is, holiday or not, I've been at work anyway. Just a little thing that I'd agreed to do from home—it was only going to take a little time, maybe an hour or so, so why not? I wasn't intending to go away or anything; just a pleasant few days off at home. But of course, that "little thing" has completely dominated the whole holiday so far, and I've still got more to do tomorrow. With any luck Friday will be free. Maybe.

sigh

Oh, well, it hasn't been a completely wasted holiday. I've read some good books, got some new manga (new volumes of Red River and Boys Over Flowers! Yay!), installed some much-needed extra memory in my computer… I've finally got a headset/microphone so I can use Skype…

Now I just need to get something creative done.

Yes, I'm still writing

23,000 words now. I haven't had so much time to write, the last couple of weeks. Still, things are moving along. Here's another little sample—it's a snippet that I rather like, but which may get cut in the final version (because it veers rather sharply off-course from the subject of the scene).

Miyo grinned. "You obviously never met Haruka and Michiru."

"Who?"

"They aren't in the 'Queen Serenity and her Senshi' anime," explained Dhiti, and Miyo gave a short bark of laughter.

"How can you not know who they were?" asked Suzue, looking faintly disgusted. "Don't you study history at all? And that…that anime…is the most disgraceful, ludicrous piece of trash—"

"Oh, no, it's great!" protested Beth.

"Yeah, it's not bad, in a goofy kind of way," added Dhiti.

"It's pretty funny, actually," put in Miyo.

"I like it," said xxx [Sailor Moon's real name].

Suzue stared at them all, horrified. "Oh, Blessed Lady, please don't tell me I'm going to have to start watching it," she muttered.

Dhiti patted her on the shoulder. "There, there," she said. "It's all right. You can keep on watching nice, safe documentaries about earthworms. We don't mind."

Without thinking, Suzue reached up and took Dhiti's hand in both of hers. "Thank you," she said sincerely.

Ahem. Okay, it's not the most serious writing in the world. Sue me. ^_^

I've received some more fan art—a rather neat piece of Beth and Bendis— which I must get around to posting. (My apologies to the artist.) And that's all for now…

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone. If you celebrate Easter, I suppose! ^_^ As I write, it's the end of Easter Sunday; been a long day, with rather too much food to eat and definitely too much chocolate. Fortunately, I managed to squeeze in a decent amount of exercise this afternoon to make up for it.

Pretty good day, on the whole.

Productive, too. 21,000 words now. The long dialogue section is complete, and if anything ended up stronger than I'd hoped. Also contains plenty of obscure hints about the future of the story, to help keep you guessing!

Just a bit more tidying-up of loose ends to do, now, and then I can move on to the action sequence that forms the latter part of the chapter. The sequence where, as promised, the Senshi finally begin to carry the fight to the enemy! The whole chapter, I think, is going to take place entirely over the course of a single night.

Right now, I'd guess that I'm about 60-70% done. That's just a guess, of course, but I'm pretty satisfied with how I'm doing.

Progress

Now up to 18,000 words. I seem to have slowed down a bit, but not too much. Still going well.

On the other hand, the last 6000 words have been straight dialogue. I really hope this doesn't turn out too dry. The segment has been planned for a very long time; I just never thought it would turn out this long. But there's a reasonable bit of action at the beginning of the chapter (as seen in the teaser I posed a while ago), and another fairly solid action sequence later on. We'll see; I'll be very interested to hear what the pre-readers have to say.

Meanwhile the new series of Doctor Who has just started screening in the UK. At last! Good first episode.