WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 21 -- Thursday

[linaewen]

Very sorry to miss yesterday -- I had to go out early, and then totally forgot I hadn't posted anything for Wednesday!  So anyway, what kind of a writing day has it been today -- or yesterday/the day before, if today hasn't gotten going yet?

•     I thought about my fic once or twice
•     I wrote
•     I did some planning and/or research
•     I edited
•     I've sent my fic off to my beta
•     I posted today!
•     I'm taking a break
•     I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

Discussion:  Sometimes errors occur as we write that we miss until much later, and then it's a huge burden to try to go back and repair the damage.  Does this happen to you?  How do you deal with it, and how do you prevent it?

Comments

[linaewen]

I was gone all day yesterday, then was too tired to write. Maybe today...

I have been able to deal with this error problem with one of my long multi-chapter fics, as I started posting it at Ao3 and made a point to re-edit each chapter before putting it up. I've caught a few things as I go, so that's helpful. I do reread my longer fics often and usually catch things before they get too bad, but not always. Then it's a matter of trying to figure out how to fix it without having to rewrite everything. So far, nothing has been impossible to fix, even when I totally forgot to write about a plot point early on that was needed later in the story. This actually happened at least twice, with two key plot points; both times (after much thinking) I was able to figure out a way to write a "catch up" chapter that included the events I needed to mention, and I was able to advance the plot.

[samuraiter]

I could go on and on about the Missing Word Bug. I do a draft, I go over it, I think it's damn near perfect, and, invariably, there's a random word missing that turns a sentence into nonsense. Even when I use a beta, this happens. It's obnoxious.