A&K Day 12 Recap

Yesterday was... madness, really. Not happy to write just another chapter, I used not one, not two, but three different tricks to make my life more difficult. The first trick is secret (you had to be there), the second was taking a very wild and nutty prompt, and the last was setting myself a very unreasonable time constraint. And yet I survived.

But what did I learn? Well, I think if I'm going to write something nutty with one gimmick, I should probably not do two more at the same time. Struggling as I was to write a coherent story, the prompt (which was insanely incompatible with Arkady and Kain in general) pushed me right over into absurdity, which I think was a bit of a mistake for the story at this point. I'm fairly certain this chapter will be replaced with something a bit more "normal" in the final version, probably appearing as a "special deleted scene" later on. It's not that it's not fun, but it's a little too far into the realm of "the art is the experience of making the art", as opposed to something that would make any sense to someone reading the book at a later time. To the impartial observer, this chapter will seem like I lost my mind, and at this point in the story, I don't want to risk that.

So yes. Today's chapter will be much more reasonable. Strategic prompts, not broad ones, and we'll stick a bit closer to reality and sanity and stuff like that. Today we begin the second act of Arkady and Kain, and things start to fall into place a little more snugly.