ExTheHex Volume #8: The Hex Maniac Story (Attempt #2)
Added 2024-09-29 16:53:23 +0000 UTCIt’s time for the second unfinished Hex Maniac story. This one’s a fatty.
Back at the end of 2023, I shared my first attempt at a Hex Maniac story. I have self imposed wanting to do something really grand with her. While I’m not sure how long or how much I want to stick with that limitation (I think the first story with a Hex Maniac in it should still be something very special), it’s led to now two very long unfinished WIPs.
I mentioned at the time previously that I didn’t want to quite throw a second attempt away yet, as it’d had a lot of effort put into it. It’s the single biggest unfinished WIP I’ve ever made, totalling over 11K word and nowhere close to done. Yet, so much has changed with the way I’ve written over the course of writing a story every week in 2023, I don’t feel like going back and polishing a nearly 2 year old untouched WIP would be much more productive than starting fresh again. Hex will get something big and nice one day, but it’s not quite today.
How did this one end up going unfinished?
This WIP began in October 2022, fresh off the back of Church of the Unholy Ichor and right as Hex was spoilered to be coming to Pokemon masters. I got really hyped for it, and wanted to see if I could finally will up the big hex project I’ve always wanted to do.
I bring up Church of the Unholy Ichor in particular because I tried writing this particular story emulating how Ichor was written. For Ichor, I asked folks to send in submissions from curiouscat (rip) for kinks and mashed it into one giant story for a week of a massive writing creative exercise. Essentially, each chapter was a kink that I’d written that day, then the next day I’d move on to the next, and come back and glue it all together. That was the plan for this piece, asking for both kinks and Pokemon characters (aged as adults, as always) for that same exercise.
Sadly, I never had enough glue around to patch it all together. That exercise was great for getting something on the table to work with, but left some nasty holes. The editing process for Ichor was hideous, and it was lined up to be even worse for this second Hex Maniac story attempt. For Ichor, the first half of the story only needed a little bit of polishing, but the last three chapters or so needed piles of editing to meet my standards and also to just generally gel into a nice story. Don’t get me wrong; I love Ichor and I think it’s the best thing I wrote in 2022. I just think writing this way is something I should do very sparingly. Attempting it back to back was not smart.
In retrospect, asking to do that all again with Hex was asking too much. I think I was overly excited that I’d found a nice technique for getting out the crazy long stories I used to make in 2019 with my current load in life. In the process of writing, Pokemon SV leaks started hitting the internet, and I went into full gaming mode for the rest of the year. At the very least, I think the dissatisfaction of this story getting caught on the door led to doing my 2023 50 story challenge, which I think led to some of the best stories I’ve written yet. Words left to rot leave soil for new words to grow.
