Observations about the rewriting process (book).

So when it comes to my book writing project, it can be finally said that - after months of rewriting - it looks like that I've managed to get it more or less completed. It looks like that I'm in a situation where I can't do that much to make it better anymore.

Indeed, over the last few days I've noticed that the story finally seems to work pretty well from start to finish. The book is long enough, the pacing is solid and the story doesn't seem to have moments where you think that it's not believable enough.

Not surprisingly, getting the story to work and readable enough hasn't been that easy or effortless. There have been moments when I have really needed patience and resilience because otherwise things wouldn't have worked out at all.

So when it comes to those annoying surprises that I had during the rewriting process, one of them was how difficult it was to fix certain specific problems in the story. No matter what I did, the fixes didn't seem to work (they initially looked good, but not later).

The problem in these cases was that I had a tendency to micromanage things too much. I more or less thought that as long as I would change some of the specific words, the whole thing would miraculously start to work again (it never did).

In reality, in case you face a situation that doesn't seem to work, it's usually a better strategy to find a solution where (for example) your character simply tries to do something else. That way it's much more likely that the scene will feel more natural and plausible.

Another thing that surprised me during the rewriting process was how much I actually needed to rewrite the book. It's not enough to give your chapters a couple of rewrites and think that it's enough - especially when it comes to those later chapters.

In my case, I found it to be especially frustrating that even though I had fixed the earlier chapters in the book, I had not polished the latter ones enough. I just thought they would be solid because the earlier ones worked too (complete lack of logic there).

Thankfully, when it came to these later chapters, you pretty much 'just' needed to have the patience to revisit and re-re-rewrite them again. You needed to have the patience to keep going and rewrite so that the story could actually become good enough.

Still, when it comes to this whole rewriting process, there was clearly one thing that surprised me the most. By far the biggest surprise (a positive one) was how much the rewriting process actually can have an effect on the length of the book.

After all, when I first wrote here about me starting to rewrite the book, I wrote that perhaps at best I could increase the page count by something like 25%. That was pretty much the best case scenario and I thought I was already reaching a bit with that estimation.

Yet, once I was finally done with rewriting the last chapter in the book, it turned out that I had increased the length of the book by almost 60%. That was a big surprise and made all the difference in making the story as well paced and enjoyable as possible.

In that sense, now that I've finished the script and have started sending it to different publishers, I'm pretty sure that I've done my best here with the project. I'm pretty certain that I've tried my best to make sure that the story could be as good as it can only be.

After all, not only did I manage - in all likelihood - to fix those specific problems in the book, I also managed to re-re-re-write the latter chapters. These efforts helped to make the story 'long enough' and also gave the book as a whole a good flow.

In the end, whether the book is eventually at some point going to get published, is another issue. There are certainly no guarantees and I shouldn't be thinking that it's a shoe-in to get it published by one of the major companies out there.

After all, no matter how good the book is and how much value it might have, it's still a bit of a crapshoot to break it in the industry. It's not guaranteed that I'll be published with this story (it was difficult for J.K.Rowling too) no matter how much I'd want it to happen.

At the same time, considering how hard I've worked with the project, I think I would deserve to get lucky here. I think I deserve to get lucky here, because even though the book could always be a tiny bit better, in my opinion it's still good enough to be published.

Review: 'Super Size Me 2 - Holy Chicken'.

So when it comes to things that I've seen lately, during the last couple of weeks me and my friend have watched documentary films. We've tried to watch some of the latest documentaries that we have found to promising and that could be worth our time.

After all, even though I prefer watching movies in general, I can't deny that watching documentaries might actually make you a bit more informed. There's a chance that you might learn something and that the stuff might enlighten you as a person.

So when it comes to the documentary that we watched, it wasn't a difficult decision to choose what to watch. Once we noticed that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock had come up with a sequel to 'Super Size Me', we wanted to see the documentary right away.

After all, the original 'Super Size Me' was about a guy who tried eating junk food for 30 days at McDonalds. It was about testing and monitoring what happens to your health and your body when you eat nothing but fast food 24/7. 

Thankfully, in 'Super Size Me 2 - Holy Chicken' Spurlock does not stuff food in his mouth (except in the poster). Instead, this time as a chicken farmer / restaurant owner he studies the chicken fast food industry in the U.S. and the industry's marketing.

Indeed, the film is basically an expose of the living conditions of chickens and the claims of the fast food marketing department. It shows all kinds of ethical lapses within the industry and how false most - if not all - the claims that the restaurant chains make are.

So when it comes to story of the film, the first part (out of three) is about Spurlock setting up his own chicken farm. This is the part when see how easy it is to find loopholes for raising the chickens and how individual farmers are being destroyed by the corporate greed. 

The second part in the film is about the advertising industry and how fast food chains mislead about their products. We visit marketing firms & taste labs where we see all kinds of examples about how we are lied about stuffs ('free-range', 'all natural', 'bbq grilled' etc.)

The third part of the documentary is when he finally decides to open his brutally honest 'Holy Chicken' restaurant. He does that so that he could educate people about the industry and how completely misleading it is (with some unexpected results).

So when it comes to the quality of the film, like many others, I found the documentary to be mostly pretty well made. There are a lot of things to appreciate and one can't help but to respect the fact that Spurlock takes a hands on approach with the subject matter.

After all, what is better way to get know about the industry than to start raising those so called free-ranged chicken by yourself. This way we get to see what is required to be in the business and how things are done (thankfully he doesn't blame the farmers).

Another good thing about the film has to do with the marketing claims and 'cheats' with the chicken products. You can't help but to laugh at things like the fact that those charcoal stripes in barbequed chickens are actually painted in.

At the same time, even though I did enjoy the film, I also have to say there were some story problems in the documentary. The 'story' in 'Super Size Me 2' didn't feel particularly natural or smooth and the transitions felt a bit too forced and contrived.

After all, there are clearly timeline problems in the film that make you wonder what happened and when. These really hurt the film's flow - like the fact that they didn't use his chickens to provide meat for his restaurant (chicken footage 2016, restaurant 2018).

Still, when I think about the film as a whole, it has to be said that despite these flaws in the story, the positives nevertheless managed to outweigh the negatives. There's clearly enough material to keep you interested and that these points are pretty well made in the film.

In that sense, if you haven't seen the movie yet, you should give it a chance and watch it. You should watch 'Super Size Me 2 - Holy Chicken', because even though the film could have been better, it was still worth watching and was worth my time.