Time to catch up… 130 posts this month so far… awesome!
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I am happy that my efforts so far has prompted such positive responses! Thank you, each one of you, for your kind words.
I am still learning, and recently, I had a talented layout person help guide me and direct me in figuring out “layers”, “text boxes” and other such mystical terms. Don’t give up, I promise that once you learn a few tricks, the basic headers and images will come to you.
Welcome to the writer support thread!
Taking things at one step at a time is often the key to increasing your confidence. If you find that Chapter Two is a bigger goal than you thought, then, it will be okay to cut that goal up into smaller pieces.
The ultimate reinforcement of yourself is learning how to manage expectations and desires.
Re: Working on two or more projects at one time.
Jacic, Hannah and Stewart_Baker — you all make valid points, and it ultimately does come down to the individual.
With that said, I still feel the most important thing to focus on, especially for a newbie, is completion of the first copy of their narrative.
I think that singular focus is one that is universal, and the one that is the hardest to accomplish in big projects that these games tend to be.
Smaller projects, such as for jams, you may be able to get away with a divided focus when it comes to writing the narrative, but even with such projects, I’d argue honing your focus towards completion of the first draft or copy would benefit most more than not doing so.
It is my understanding that Unicode was made to be Universal for all font sets and is meant to force consistency across apps and platforms.
A constant reevaluation of where I am every day. I start out with an outline and mind-map of where I want to go, but after each work session, I evaluate where I am and where I aim to go, and adjust everything at that point.
One tool I use to help keep myself grounded and from being overwhelmed, is to break my work-flow into “passes”
Passes are work sessions (and you can devote as many work sessions as you need to each pass) devoted to one particular focus.
Example of passes I use:
- check for using the same word multiple times close together
- editing passes where I look for specific grammar issues
- headers pass – this is what I am currently focused on … I focus on placing and refining all my headers (Chapters, Deathsights, Stats, etc)
In writing, you can have a pass to focus on continuity, or character development, or if you received feedback on something, make a pass focused on that.
The reason this works, is because you do not get distracted, nor do you keep piling stuff on yourself to do in the moment. Sure, you’ll go back to address something you find, but you make a new pass for later that addresses that need.
Who knew recursion errors could come in so many flavours? It’s like whack-a-mole. You fix where one problem looks like it might be and it slides somewhere else. I’m not even convinced most of the errors being thrown up are even true errors. The writing time I had put aside went into trying to find why it is bugged. I kinda hate the random tester by this point. Would be lovely if it actually gave you a bit more info on why it’s freaking out.
