Full Steam Ahead!

Finally.  Finally!

I am  writing new scenes for my story Girl's School.  And by new, I mean scenes that happen after everything else that's already written.

Let's go back a few years.  I forget exactly when I started this story.  What I do remember is that I got the idea for a story in which Ranma wound up attending school at St. Hebereke's School for Girls, and wrote the first several chapters, and then promptly forgot about them.  A year or so later as I was looking through old story files I rediscovered what I'd written.  I liked it, and wrote the next several chapters.

Then -- I know when this happened because it was the first year I "won" NaNoWriMo, and that was November 2007 -- I decided to "jump ahead" in my story and write something that, at the time, I considered a sort of "side story".  A story about magical girls.  I wrote over 50,000 words about a magical girl adventure involving the characters in my fanfiction story.  Despite this, I had only begun to explore all of the plots I had going at that point.  I'd envisioned three different adventures for my magical girl team, and had only managed to write one of them and begin the second.

In November 2008 I went back and tried to write from where my story had left off originally.  I wanted to connect it to my magical girl plots.  But I had a lot of stuff going on.  I managed to write chapters 16 through 24, which were all eventually reworked and published at Fanfiction.net.  At the time I thought I was really close to connecting this part of the story to my magical girl stories.  Some of what I'd written in these chapters tied directly into the magical girl stuff, which, since I'd already written it, I thought would be fun to do.

In November 2009 I jumped ahead again and wrote the third of my magical girl adventures.  This was a very ambitious plot and by the time I'd managed 50,000 words I was only about halfway through the tale.

In November 2010 I made yet another attempt to close the gap between chapter 24 and the magical girl stories.  I wrote a bunch of chapters that still didn't close the gap, and worse -- when I had some people read them, they didn't seem to work that well.  So instead of publishing the next chapter, I held off for more than two years.

In November 2011 I  tried to finish off what I'd begun in 2010, but for the first time in several years I failed to accomplish my goal.  I wrote a bit -- I actually finished off the second magical girl adventure, and then turned back to finish what happens between my chapters in 2010 and the first part of the magical girl stuff.  But I burned out and did not come anywhere near 50,000 words written that year.  I failed NaNoWriMo for the first time in five years.  Things remained unfinished, and I still needed to go back and rewrite the stuff from 2010.

In November 2012 I avoided my massive fanfiction story entirely.  Instead I worked on Grandpa Anarchy stories.  This tactic was a roaring success, and I expanded my collection of Grandpa Anarchy stories from 8 in October 2012 to 96 by October 2013.  This was a HUGE success!

But my fan fiction story Girl's School had languished for nearly three years.  Fans were wondering if I was still alive.  And my grand goal of uniting all the various parts I'd written was still unfinished.  So for 2013 that was my goal.

So far I've finished chapters 30 & 31, fixed up scenes at the end of chapter 39, added a scene in chapter 41, and am now working on chapter 45, which is the continuation of the third magical girl adventure... I have a continuous story up to chapter 45 now.   Woo!  From here on out I'm no longer trying to link older stuff together, I'm just continuing the story from where it last left off!

I spent a lot of Sunday and Monday just reading, so I fell behind a bit in my writing goals.  Now it's time to catch back up!  (And when I say a lot of reading -- I mean a LOT of reading.  My entire story spans several hundred thousand words now!)