Writing, Proofreading and Posting

[teleen_fiction]

This post is going to be very boring, but for no reason that I can fathom my brain is making me write it before it will let me continue writing Chapter 67, which I have been doing, slowly but surely.

For those of you who are interested (i.e. none of you) the process that a chapter of The Perfect Storm goes through before you all see it is fairly elaborate. 

First, I write it.  Then I look it over, usually more than once.  Then I send it to be beta'd by my beta goddess whom I worship, wait for it to come back, correct what was wrong and let it sit for a while.  I come back to it sometime before it's due to be posted.  I was pretty far ahead on chapters for a while, but lately, not so much.  

Tonight I proofed the three chapters that will go up on Wednesday.  Sometime before Wednesday, I'll do a 'save as [file name] Teaspoon' and go through each of them putting in paragraph breaks and HTML for the italics, etc. so that they'll be ready for Teaspoon and the Angst Archive.  While I'm doing this, I nearly always find more typos or corrections that I want to make, which I'll have to correct in both the original file and the Teaspoon file.  Again, sometime before Wednesday, I'll go through each Teaspoon chapter again and add in any HTML or paragraph breaks that I've missed. 

Then I'll upload them to LJ, usually still before Wednesday, though last week I did it right before I cross-posted, an experience that I can definitely live without because I'll always mess up a link (or two) when I don't do it in stages.  If I'm doing it ahead of time, I'll set the links to 'my eyes only'.  This is why those of you who have "The Perfect Storm" tag set to notify you don't get a notification every time.  Sorry about that, BTW, as I plan to tag this "The Perfect Storm", since I'm writing about what I have to go through to get it up for y'all each week, heh.  

Sometimes while I'm uploading chapters to LJ, I'll find more typos and have to go back and correct them...  in three different places. 

Wednesday arrives and it's time to upload everywhere.  I'll usually do Teaspoon and the Angst Archive a few hours earlier, both for validation and again, when I split this up into stages it's easier on my poor brain. 

Then it's time to cross-post.  I open each chapter and unlock it, then copy the links.  I have a pre-made template because I'm just a dork like that and I have cross-posting down to a flippin' science.  I can cross-post to a dozen different LJ communities in about forty minutes from the time I unlock the chapters to the time I post to trauma_rec_fic.

By the time that it's visible in every place that I post, every chapter has been read a minimum of half a dozen times and there are five different files that have to be corrected for every one typo that is found.  Which is why I firmly believe that there are gremlins who are attempting to drive me insane every time y'all find one.

It's also why I'm so very grateful when they're found.  No seriously, I am.  Those gremlins need every eye out there to keep them from overrunning us all!  

Yes, I am very strange IRL - why do you ask?

I will continue to reward those who find multiple typos with drabbles, so keep your eyes peeled, :)! 

Thanks, ;).

Comments

[von_gelmini.livejournal.com]

I love reading about people's process. Yours sounds very thorough. No wonder it's so good. :) But it does sound exhausting and confusing to keep track of so many files and formats.

Since it takes a different format, I doubt I'll ever save my stuff to teaspoon. It all ready takes me forever just to x-post. I don't know how y'all do it so fast.

I haven't gotten into the habit of being beta'd. Occasionally I think that my work could benefit from it, but I am so obsessive about posting immediately after finishing, and about not missing more than a couple of days between posts, that the thought of having to wait for a beta reading just makes me antsy. That and I'm so used to having been other people's editor for so long, I kinda get a blind spot about it.

One odd thing I've been told that I do in my process is to read my finished story aloud. Not just aloud in my head, but actually listening to the spoken words, reading sort-of dramatically. It helps me find a lot of mistakes.

I really do need to commit to being beta'd, though. *shudders* Maybe next time.

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

I just found out in another comment that the 'different format' can be done very easily - I've been doing it the hard way all of this time... *brb headdesking 4ever* On the upside, I learned me some HTML...

I've thought of reading it aloud, but have never done it. I may have to start - thanks for the thought, :).

A beta is a personal choice, :).