Blog Post No. 416
I’m on the cusp of finishing the third draft of Break/Interrupt. In case you didn’t know, it the fourth novella in The Synthetic Albatross series. There is still a lot to do, but I’m at a point where I think the story itself is good enough to pass it along and get some outside opinions. I hadn’t cut as much as I’d hoped. A slice of the book is devoted to the connectivity of the series. Since the stories all overlap (this one more than the others) I had to fill in some gaps (and possibly set some things up for future books). Continue reading “Trimming the Fat”
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 
I started the new novella, Break/Interrupt, on August first. The day after I finished the first draft of the Invasion Novel. I had hoped to be done within a month and have a tight 30 000 word story to show for it. Now it’s the end of September and I’m at 60 000 words. I’m not sure exactly where things fell off the rails, but I’m finally starting to wrap things up.
I’ve been seriously trying to be a writer since 2013 when 
I feel like over the last few years the posts on this blog have tended to be more about whatever is going on in my life in the moment and less about thoughts and ideas. It’s easy to just knock out a few hundred words about the week when I have an event or reading going on, or if I’m starting or finishing a project. It’s a little more difficult when I’m just at home trying to write every day. I just did an update last week, and since the only thing that has changed is the word count, I want to avoid repeating myself (more than I already do). I had the idea for this topic a while ago and it’s been sitting in my draft folder so I figured I’d give it a shot. 