Master List of Progress Reports

The following is a master list of updates and other information regarding all the stories on this site. The most recent updates are listed at the top. The notes include both summaries of information posted on the Update page and notes I post directly to the progress reports pages for each of the stories to let you know when I last worked on a story (I use my working file save dates for this information).

If the most recent date isn't very recent, then I haven't worked on a story recently, probably because I'm ill or dealing with other life stuff (check the News page to see if there's a more recent post to let you know what's going on with me). You will not receive any further information by e-mailing me about when the next update will take place.

On the other hand, a lack of reports could also be because I'm doing research, like reading or watching documentaries or writing notes in one of my many notebooks, none of which I keep track of or report because it's far too much trouble. Basically, whenever you see a report that says I worked on the notes for a story, it's not that I wrote the notes right then, it's just the date when I entered the notes I've been collecting into the computer, so all those hours of research spread out over weeks and sometimes months are condensed into the few hours it takes me to transcribe my notes into the computer.

Definitions

The summaries listed below usually contain certain words or phrases to describe the type of work I performed on a story. The following is a list of what those words and phrases mean to me.

Story text is what you read when you read the story. Having worked on "story text" is what most people probably think of when someone says they worked on a story.

Revisions involve reading over and editing previously written story text to get it to a more final form. Revisions could include expanding a scene, completely rewriting it, or even cutting it entirely, or simply changing a word or correcting typos. Having worked on "revisions" is what most people probably think of when someone says they edited a story.

The outline is an overview of how the story will play out, usually broken down by scene and written in present tense. It could consist of something as simple as "Character A and Character B have sex," or be a highly detailed description of dialogue or action that is almost story text. Having worked on the "outline" means I've written the glossed over version, which I will use as a guide when I work on the story text.

The timeline is similar to the outline, but includes events that may never be shown or even mentioned in the story and puts everything in chronological order, regardless of when events are shown in the story (a flashback would be listed when the event actually happened, not when it's shown in the story). Having worked on the "timeline" means I've worked on a synopsis of one or more events pertinent to the story, which I will use as a guide when I work on the story text.

My notes include ideas for scenes, snippets of dialogue, narration, plot points, character bios, etc. Having worked on "notes" means I copied notes from my notebooks into my note file or added a note directly to the file regarding one or more of the above. I tend to let these pile up in my notebooks and then work on getting them into the computer all at once.

Research is basically looking up facts. Research is a special case in that it's only documented when I add notes to my note files or create a new file for a specific topic of research (for example, my notes about the Egyptian Books of the Dead and the NYPD for The Vampire Hunter Series are in separate files). There are plenty of times when I perform hours of research and never actually write anything down because I'm trying to learn enough about a subject so I can begin asking the right questions and taking the right notes. Having worked on "research" means I looked something up online, read a book, or watched a documentary or movie, and actually took notes.