Blog Post No. 419
While Christian has been going over the latest draft of Break/Interrupt, I’ve been working on the ebook (still). I’ve made some good progress, but the deeper I dig, the more mistakes I find in my current attempt. It’s gotten to the point where I have a single major issue remaining and I’m going to (hopefully) fix it by redoing the whole thing with new encoding. That means creating a new file and moving all the code over, then reviewing my code looking for places where I can replace old tags with new one. (Tag being the wrapper for the content i.e. <p class=”first”>content</P> for a paragraph). It’s more complex than that, but really not by much. Continue reading “Sharpening the Knife”
One thing to get out of the way right off the bat. I am not a coder and my meager accomplishment would likely insult the sensibilities of a real coder at a single glance. With that in mind and the overwhelming amount of help I’ve gotten from 
Last week I finished off the third draft of Break/Interrupt and (like passing off a mewling baby) handed it over to Christian for review. There is still a lot of editing left to do, but other than more potential cuts, the story is pretty well set. With the novella out of my hands, I am trying to be productive in other ways without diving into another project that will have to be put on hold when I get the edit back. At the top of the list is coming up with some good ideas for the cover so that 
I’m on the cusp of finishing the third draft of Break/Interrupt. In case you didn’t know, it the fourth novella in 
I’ve been spending the majority of my out-of-work time hiding in the basement. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a really nice place to be, but I’ve come to realize that all the plans I had to get out and ride my bike or take walks are not going to happen before the winter strikes. I did go for some rides down the many awesome paths near the parkway and in the LaSalle area. The problem was that everyone else had the same idea and it was impossible to keep a safe distance from them (since no one else seemed to be concerned). 
October is coming to an end and while I’ve stumbled with the edits on Break/Interrupt, I finally feel like I’ve made some headway. I’m still behind (a state that I unfortunately fallen into way too often) but with some elbow grease, I may be starting the second draft on November first. Maybe it will be my not NaNoWriMo project. 
It’s been a week since my last post, somehow. In a year with not a lot to say, for some reason, last week was even less worthy of a blog post. I kept up my struggle with editing Break/Interrupt (yay) making some progress but not enough. I had a nice video hang out with Arvin over the weekend. I, uh. I’m not really sure what took up the rest of my time. Part of the problem is that my routine has been shaken up and I’m really good at blaming that for my lack of motivation. Another part is that nothing is really happening and it’s a miracle that I’ve been able to come up with topics each week up to this post. And finally, I still haven’t been able to get my feet under myself after that three month marathon of daly writing. 
While I try to get myself back into gear with editing, 
I blew it. After a couple of months of daily writing, chalking up a ton of words (way too many words) I took a break and now I’m struggling. I don’t say it all the time, but I read a simple phrase in a book once that stuck with me. If you slow down, you’ll crash. Its not always true, but in this instance, it was. As soon as I took my foot off the pedal, I crashed. I’m not sure if I could have kept it going much longer, but the reality is that now I have to pick up the pieces and start building momentum all over again. 
The first draft of the new novella is done. I finished on Friday with a big push and took the weekend off. It’s way too big and not just because it’s longer than I wanted it to be, there is a lot of fat to trim. For the first time in close to 70 days, I’m not writing. To be clear, I only spent 56 days on Break/Interrupt (the other days were finishing the Invasion Novel) but that’s 25 days longer than I had hoped and longer than the marathon writing I did last year for 