I'm warning you now. I am babbling.
As I was previously saying, I'm having a lot of fun editing. I talk about my Prince season a lot, which is about 6 months longer. It never fails. From About November up until May. Something told me to edit the books this season so I've been working on that... It's fun. It's almost as if I see myself as a separate entity from my past self when I look back on the things I wrote. I see all kinds of versions of myself.
I see the version of me 6+2 clocked about having a cycle of "feeling motivated then falling off and ranting about being under appreciated" and in retrospect, I get what she was saying but I never felt under appreciated.. Ever. I did have motivational sprouts and my plane surely would be shot back down every time I realized the community was dying. I loved reading and writing about P and it felt like people were almost forgetting about him rather than simply moving on and that was a hard pill for me to swallow for like 2 entire years then when I moved to 90s Nostalgia works, I was a traitor. So I was overcompensating, chasing that same 2016 high while doing 90s stuff AND revamping Monica & Skipper. It wasn't genuine and that's why it fell so flat.
I also see my original writer's self. I vividly remember starting DMSR way before it was first posted. In fact, I was still in high school back then. I was so sad. Life was at a low point and then Prince's passing didn't help but his spirit kinda did, if that makes sense. My favorite thing about his romance-focused work was that there was ALWAYS space to be like, "I wonder who he's talking about?" I'm sure his hoe ass did that on purpose but I wanted to make the perfect person inspired by him. I wanted Lyric to be someone any girl in the 80s wanted to be when they grew up. She was pretty. She was smart. She had a college degree. She could dance, sing, play instruments. She was the perfect candidate for that Little Miss Lyric image that she couldn't dodge for years and after I accomplished that by fully establishing Nelly in a fictional world it was like... You've hit the top so now you gotta' hit the bottom because this business breaks people.
And as horrible at that sounds... I had the time of my life breaking her. DMSR was the first written project that I fully completed so by the end, I'd learned to separate myself from who Nelly is. I didn't want to be like that fictional woman because I was already becoming a woman in my own right and Nelly suddenly had naturally developed her own flaws— Which is scary but super cool because anybody who writes knows you don't intend to make these people you basically have poor qualities but it sometimes it kinda just happens. This is something I visibly see too. I won't go into details because Shona's reading and I just saw her comment on the covers thing so I don't want to spoil it but you can see Nelly's flaws in all of the upcoming books, especially after she is married. My favorite thing in life is watching Keia drag her.
As I was saying though, I see myself detaching my own feelings from this dimension I've conjured and it's pretty cool to me. You know, as I edit, there is are some things that Nelly shouldn't or wouldn't have known in the real world and I'm actually pulling those small details away. It's been long enough for most people not to notice the distance so it should be fine. Nonetheless, I love it and I love the process of reliving all of these feelings I had as I wrote out these scenes. It's even triggering nostalgia for things I'm currently working in my own realm (Yes, I'm still playing with Desire in my spare time. Mind your business.) and I'm just so enamored by this process.
Then we have Monica and Skipper! Oh my Gosh!
Okay, everybody knows I hated them after a while and I can explain. When I started writing Skipper's Heartbeat, I was in the midst of learning how to separate myself from my art at times, okay? So I successfully created a character nothing like me and that was cool. I'm nothing like Mo. The problem was that I created that plot's base around two things. One, a line in DMSR where P told Nelly that he learned to waltz from a wealthy Jamaican girl whose little sister he gave piano lessons. Then, as a freshman in high school, I had a crush on a boy older than me who played the same instrument better than me and ended up being assigned as his shadow. He's icky. We'll never address him again. However, when I grew out of the crush, I had to go write for Skipper & Mo and be reminded of him. Ew! That's why the sequel took such a shift. I was grown by then and in college, I think, so I had my artistic visions in check and I was writing something that I like...
Until that got interrupted by a lack of motivation and, again, being clocked by someone who wasn't even actively posting any works to accurately understand that specific struggle. So.. We focused our attention on one of P's light-eyed musical children.
Now, I'm in a much more stable place in life. I'm shocked that people are still discovering these books but it's kinda cool because a lot of the people discovering them 6, 7 years later are like 14, 15 years old so they're super expressive and it's funny. I'm editing I'm Yours and actually finishing it. It's going pretty well so far. If you were reading it before I stopped and somehow are reading this and wanna come back to I'm Yours, you're more than welcome.
This kinda turned into a rant but I'm saying this to say that I'm having a lot of editing right now. It feels authentic and it's truly a joy, has been for about 3 months now.
So, I'm really just cleaning up the DMSR series. Fixing spelling, grammar, and dialogue. I always imagined P as not really verbally being an ass but being one with his actions instead? If that makes sense— Still having his smart ass mouth, granted, but I think a lot of my early attempts at capturing such aren't really witty... A lot are just flat out mean. Y'know, P is the guy who'd be like "then let's talk about what you aren't doing" when you say you can't talk about what you're doing. Shit like that, which is funny because that's so me now. Fixing up minor scenes that haven't aged the best. Lyric's Taco is iconic but like I said on instagram, aged poorly and is pretty racially insensitive. The meat and potatoes are the same, basically. Small, small details are being shifted but it's meaningful to me as an author.
It was pretty much like this for Skipper's Heartbeat. I tweaked the age difference because it was kinda' bothering me. The foundations of the plot remain the same. It's the same thing with Skipper's Heartbeat. The only difference for that is the fact that new chapters are getting posted for I'm Yours which won't be a lot but it will be a proper ending. So... Yeah. That's it and all, really.
