Chapter 10 A/Ns

Whoa! I finally managed to get this chapter done and online. And trust me when I say, I never intended for it to be delayed for so long.

I wasn't waiting for reviews or anything... heaven knows I have way too many of those. Reviews play no role in what I write or when I write.

And it wasn't really writer's block- just a sense of wrongness that permeated a lot of the chapter. I had to re-write a lot of it because it didn't feel right. And some parts of it had to be moved to future chapters/deleted because it just didn't fit in.

I'm really glad I'm finally happy with what I ended up with. It gives you some answers and points to a potential future plots, but more than likely I think it just gives you more questions!

Random notes/clarifications.
Kakashi- I can just imagine all the fangirls (and boys) going...WTF kind of meeting was that? Where was the laughs and the craziness and the odd bonding over porn? Meh... what? You really expected me to do something predictable?

Sai- Why does Sai get more air time than Kakashi? Because he's an interesting character in his weird anti-social way. I don't know, in some ways Harry could have become like Sai, so a part of me likes to see how they'd react to each other. He was hard to write at times and honestly I just made up parts of psychology for him to say- all to add a feeling of books-can't-really-teach-you-stuff sort of thing.

Chakra blockage- I spent ages trying to some up with some plausible way of introducing a difference between chakra and magic. So I decided to have Harry figure out that his magic spells can't detect chakra pathways.

Wound healing biology- A very abbreviated info dump from the Wiki page. It took me a while to sort through all that and come up with something acceptable enough to use as Sakura's explanation to Harry.
Elemental corner derivative- Err, yeah. Made up with math sounding name combined with Naruto logic of dependence of elements.

Odd Innuendos- I really don't know what it was, but the initial drafts of this chapter was filled with so much innuendo...it was ridiculous. I edited most of them before remembering the rejected writing section- so most of them have permanently disappeared. Thankfully/sadly there were still some I managed to find on the final edit.

Rejected writing (writing too silly/wrong to keep in the actual chapter)
The odd/sometimes bad-ish pornographic lines.
1-He had to consciously restrain his fingers from stretching and flexing in the comforting warmth.
2-I’ll help, just to ensure the proper flow. Don't worry, it won't hurt.
3- Harry curled his fingers in the relaxing heat and sighed.

I'm sure the ones that I had before were even worse.

Polar
P.S.-I'm definitely going to be replying to all of your PMs and comments. Sorry about the long delay with that as well.
P.P.S- Omg-osh I just realized it's been a year-ish since I started the story.
P.P.P.S- I might just make another 'story' for AtO on ffnet- so that I can post extra scenes from the AtO universe. Scenes that don't really have much of an impact on the plot.

Chapter 10 Almost Done

You people sure do know how to panic. I've been getting PMs with people asking me not to abandon the story.

I do have other things in life to do. But just because I've been delayed with this chapter doesn't mean I'm abandoning the story. Sheesh! Give me some credit.

I mean- sure I'm super slow, but if I ever think of abandoning the story I'll be sure to tell you guys about it in advance.

That being said, chapter 10 is close to completion. Microsoft word tells me I've written 10, 000 + words.

If all goes well, I'll have it up by the end of next week.

Polar.
P.S. Some of your PMs made me laugh. You guys are so silly sometimes.

August News

I'm still alive... I've just been delayed by real life which decided it needed to kick me and remind me of it's presence. Needless to say my fanfiction writing was one of the first casualties. AtO was stuck with 8035 words for more than a week now. At least I'm finally able to work on it.

Makes me wonder if I should just post the chapter up as it is without making/breaking the 10,000 word limit I'd set for myself. *looks at Ch 10 so far*... Ok, I'm definitely not done with this, still have more scenes that need to be in here. My fingers are way too slow.

I got a wonderful PM the other day- someone wanted to be my beta reader. More specifically though they wanted to see what I had so far for chapter 10. Very thoughtful I thought, so I asked them to give me a beta-reader opinion of chapter 9 as a test of sorts.

I was told about my sloppy capitalization and how it seems to be a bit better. Ok, good you noticed that and what else?

The person didn't seem to have any other comments about chapter 9. Nothing about possible plot holes, nothing about misuse of certain words, nothing about lack of descriptions.

So I guess I wanted to know, am I expecting too much from a possible beta-reader? If I ever take a beta-reader for my work I expect them to look at my work and tell me what's wrong- whether it's plot, grammar, or just my writing. I'd like to see why I shouldn't write a certain way so that I can learn and change myself.

In a way, I'm glad that some of reviewers take the time to explain certain things to me.

What about you guys? What do you look for in a beta-reader? And if you have one, are they helpful and have you stuck with them for the entirety of your story?

And how do you work with them? Do you make them edit it and then post it up as soon as they return the edited version to you? Or do they tell you what they've done and why they've changed something and then you rewrite certain parts based on their help and upload the next chapter?

Polar
P.S. Nothing to recommend this time because I haven't been able to do any reading at all. *sadness*
P.P.S. As for the poll on my profile page- there's no hidden meaning to it. I just want to see who people saw Harry possibly related to. Definitely not going to write a story for the highest voted choice.