After Chapter 6 was such an overlode of information all at once - I decided it was about time I posted one of those infamous 'Behind the Scenes' journal entries.

I feel bad saying this, but this chapter was one of the easiest for me to write. It helped that I was in a writing mood, and generally feeling to - antsy? - to load up the game. Writing in WordPerfect (which I am still using, even after chapter 4) can be left alone, dropped, picked up, and dropped again throughout the day. Plus, it's less risky when the parents are home. They peek into my room and see that I'm busy typing away at something rather than wasting my time on a stupid game that will turn my brain to mush - or something like that.

Most of the chapters I've started writing 3 different times, not being sure how to start, or coming up with something entirely different. This one was no different. In my original outline, Jan would have delivered a child (I wasn't counting on twins) and run off, much like she did in this chapter - except it would have happened at the end of Chapter 5. However, when I had written Chapter 5 to a certain point, I decided that I would go over the slide count if I tried to cram everything in. I still wanted to torture you with that cliffhanger at the end of a chapter. When Jan threw me twins, and once the initial panic wore off, I started looking for ways I could fill in some of the time.

Here is where I started having troubles. Not in the writing itself, but afterwards.

June told me about Lucy Peppers loosing a chapter due to a reference to terrorism. She told me that I would be lucky not to get reported to Maxis about unsuitable content. I panicked, but didn't quite know what to do.

Here is where "The Clique" came in.

I posted about my worries in the "What's happening in your legacy right now?" thread. I got a simple reply from Professor Butters about possibly changing it so that the unsuitable content wasn't there. No, that's the meat of the plot. I can't really do that without re-writing the whole thing.

So she read it, and sent me a PM with suggestions. Orikes did the same thing. I was wowed. I made the changes they suggested. No bedroom was implied, so those of you who read it later might not have understood entirely what happened. And I took out the references in the conversation with Komei at the end, too. It probably doesn't flow as well as it had, but I'd rather keep it on the exchange with slightly lesser-quality writing than loose it altogether.

For me, this was proof that there are no cliques on boolprop. There are groups of friends who know each other and whatnot, and who read each others legacies quite a bit. But they are all willing to help you out, and answer any questions you may have, regardless of how good your story is, or how long it's been around. I knew this already, but now I have a testimony of my own to prove it to be true.

 

 
That's all for now. After I reply to the remainder of the comments on boolprop, I get to play Joseph's house. With Jan officially out of the picture for a while, I don't know if Joseph or I will make it out alive...

Happy Simming! (Yeah, right!)

~Jane~