Welcome everybody to this month's edition of the Archefire Newsletter! As is tradition, I have waited until the very last moment to begin writing this thing, so I'm going to spare you a long Odyssey and keep it brief this month.
Speaking of which, did you hear that Christopher Nolan fellow stole the name of his new movie from my yearly retrospectives? The Odyssey of Odysseus? Pshh, Odyssey of JoshSE flows off the tongue so much better. What? Don't look at me like that. It does!
Man, I'm running out of bits for these intros...
So let's get right to the good stuff!
Sibling Suns 3
Unlike the Dark Era of the Sibling Suns world, the Revision Guide Era was mercifully brief. It may have... ballooned a bit, I admit. Last month I said the revision guide "will range somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 words."
Quickly checking my Obsidian note reveals...
...a short book posing as a revision guide.
Well, I have said that the reason I gave myself extra time to complete book three is because I wanted to get the finale right. Here's proof that I'm not taking that job lightly.
I've talked about how one of the big tasks is to prioritize the revisions -- mainly because some of them will just vanish, poof, like dust in the downpour of bigger changes. So most of this month has been spent working on those big changes.
I call them my "A Major" revisions. Not because I listen to Bach's Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major while executing them (though that wouldn't be a bad idea), but because they're Major revisions -- spanning multiple chapters, as opposed to Minor revisions which are contained in just one -- and they're A-tier priority, meaning I must get them done before sending the book to my editor.
B-tier revisions are nice to have, and C-tiers will likely wait until the 3.0 draft. I spent two entire train rides robotically scrolling through the revision guide on my phone, typing A, B, B, A, C, A, B... ad nauseam. I wouldn't recommend it, dear reader, but it is a vital part of my revision process.
Working on those A Major revisions first is especially helpful because they require me to analyze the completed draft and clarify what each character arc and big scene must accomplish. Now that I've done that and can see the trilogy as a whole, I understand much more clearly what story I've been trying to tell.
That may sound weird. The author himself doesn't know what this story is about!? Well, I did...sort of, but so much of the artistic process is facilitated by the unconscious. Now I've brought it up into my conscious awareness. It also didn't help that I effectively pantsed the series as a whole rather than meticulously planning it out.
Now that the ending is written, it makes sense of everything that came before it.
I'll give you a small-scale example. When drafting the 1.0, I intentionally skipped two pivotal, climactic scenes. I left notes and a high-level outline for myself, but I knew their final form depended upon me understanding the character arcs more clearly. Drafting them too early could have produced a bunch of prose that no longer fit the story.
Now that I'm not rushing toward the end of a first draft, it's been an absolute joy concentrating on making each chapter work as a self-contained piece while also strengthening the surrounding story. It's almost like writing short stories or flash fiction. Now I get to just enjoy writing the big crazy scenes with confidence in the overall purpose.
My process changes with each book, mostly because I still have a great deal to learn as a storyteller, and somewhat because I'm a little bit crazy. But I think this is a really effective way of handling those daunting scenes, so this may become a staple of my method.
The writers among you are probably cringing at the idea of skipping past the scene that everything you wrote so far was building up to. It's the best part of the book! The scene you imagined before conceptualizing anything else! The one you've been waiting years for readers to experience!
But for me? I'm happy to leave myself a few notes and move on. More than anything, this just confirms why I enjoy the revision process so much more than the first draft. First drafts are stressful!
Second drafts... ahh, now that's where the stories begin to shine.
A Personal Reflection
I wrote something a bit unusual this month, something much more personal and religious than my typical essays. I sent it to just a few people, but a bunch of you discovered it -- I still don't fully understand how. In any case, it has been delightful to hear that the essay resonated, and I'm very grateful for each of you who reached out to tell me.
To be honest, I mostly wrote that essay for myself, as a kind of public commitment to be more genuinely authentic, speak up, and generally combat some of my various neuroticisms. Once I publish something, I try to hold to it. Doing otherwise feels too much like lying.
Anyway, I sent this to my faith group since it was a direct reflection on something we talked about in one of our sessions. That night, I turned up to the group to find the Pastor had printed color copies for us all to discuss.
That was... a bit embarrassing, but I quickly got over it. After all, that is one of the themes of the essay. And we ended up having a great discussion about it. Sorry to all my church friends for accidentally making that whole session about me!
I'll include a snippet of the essay here, with a link to read the whole thing below it. Believe it or not, there's even a bit of Sibling Suns info in there!
The Body of Christ and the Fear of Being Seen
I have a strange habit of discovering profound spiritual truths while doing the least profound things imaginable.
This time, I was playing Dark Souls 3, repeatedly murdering the same two silver knights on the steps of Anor Londo. Those of you who understand why someone would do this are already praying for me. To those who don’t, there's a rare item called a Proof of a Concord Kept, and I need thirty of them. The drop rate is abysmal. I've climbed those stairs so many times that I dreamed about them last night.
So there I was, performing the FromSoftware equivalent of rolling the same boulder uphill for eternity, when I started crying about the body of Christ.
Typical Friday night stuff.
Schnau's Brows
This month we have a special guest for the Nazgul section: our crazy Schnau's crazy brows!
Little needs to be said. Look at these glorious bad boys, marvel at their glamor.
Tolkien's Nazgul once said, "No man may hinder me." This Nazgul's brows say, "No groomer may snip me!" These brows are their own fell beast.
They are the final boss of facial hair, and that's saying something coming from a Schnauzer with such a fabulous beard.
That's all I've got this month! I'm heading back into the revision mines (I yearn for the mines) and will have more to share about the beta reader process soon. Perhaps foolishly – or bravely, say I! – I've moved up my revision deadline by about a month. Still lots of work to do, but this book is starting to sparkle!
As always, thanks for reading.
– Josh