Tim Sevenhuysen.com My obstinate antic to make the world slightly less feeble.

When “Done” Isn’t “Done”

Hide and Seek is done. Well, very nearly, anyways.

Last night I wrote, and today I posted, the final chapter in my longest Special People story arc yet. It was Chapter 55, and the total length of the story is about 50,000 words.

I have a brief epilogue to write, containing one final scene, and then that'll be that. The story will be finished and I can move on.

Except not quite.

My long-term goal with Special People is to package up the story arcs into (self-)publishable, printable books and sell them through my Store, alongside my other writing. Why hasn't that happened yet? After all, I'd already completed three story arcs before I even started Hide and Seek.

Well, put simply, it's because those stories aren't ready to publish. It isn't enough for me to wrap up the serialization of the story and get every chapter up on the website; I also have to deal with editing and, in some cases, rewriting, and there's nothing that shuts down my creative urges like rewriting... Yuck.

Of the stories I've written for Special People so far, I'd say Hide and Seek is maybe in the most publishable shape, though Who Killed Walter Carton? came out pretty decently, too. (Trends suggest that I'm getting better over time!) But before I can release Hide and Seek as a novel, I know for sure that there's one specific chapter I have to significantly rewrite, because I forgot to factor in the use of a character's special ability, and I'm pretty certain there are a variety of problems with the continuity and flow of the story, simply due to the fact that my writing time was spread out over such a long time period. I guarantee I've forgotten some of the details of the early story, and made some blunders in the later chapters because of it.

Then, on top of all that, I have to consider whether it would even make sense to publish Hide and Seek before putting out the arcs that came before it. This is a tricky one, because Hide and Seek actually takes place 10 years before Hands-On and King of the Dark, and doesn't require knowledge of those stories, but I feel like those earlier arcs may do a better job of introducing the reader to the Special People "universe" and its primary character(s).

If I decide that I want to publish the stories in the order I wrote them, that means I have to revisit my plans to rewrite Hands-On and King of the Dark. There's a great road plan laid out for me to do so, but it's going to take time to do it, and like I said, that doesn't exactly get my creative juices flowing.

Thankfully, I'm going to have a month to work through whichever set of edits or rewrites I decide to pursue, while the comic, Change, gets posted. I'll keep everyone updated on my plans as and when I make any decisions.