Book Update

I know that I mentioned this months and months ago, but the tome that I'm writing that's dedicated to parsing through two of the wackiest years of my life + video games is still a going concern. The original time table that I sort of laid out for myself is, of course, blown to hell, but that's just the way it is when you're doing creative work on your own schedule.

But that's the problem; since I didn't have a set deadline, I let it slip away from me for...reasons. But we're back at it now, so here is a quick update with how things have gone and where it's all going in convenient back-of-the-box bullet points:

• Now that my obligations in the Fall are all but a very strange memory, it's been really hard to get my writing mojo back. I'm guessing everybody that writes will tell you this, but putting words together on (virtual) paper is a muscle that must be exercised or it will atrophy (a phrase that I'm sure I heard in a workshop someplace). The work that I've been doing on the current chapters is total garbage, and I'm not saying that because everyone's their own worst critic. I know that it's going to take some bootstrap-pulling to get back to a level I'm comfortable with, but I see now that a lot of what's been coming out in the weeks since the New Year are going to be slavishly rebuilt, and then probably thrown the fuck out altogether. I keep telling myself it's better this way, and it is, but I'm at the point now that when I look at work I did a year ago, it seems that I had a supply of liquid genius flowing through my body that I've been slowly urinating out and now I'm just a dude with too much gin in his system. I need to get those levels back in check.
• That was really gross.
• Before I took the break in the Fall, I compiled what I had in a single document (unformatted), and I feel like I'm at roughly 60% what I want from a content perspective. At the time when things stopped, I had hit a point in the narrative where things take a drastic turn, but I knew for a fact that the tone of the chapters was going to change and they would probably wind up being shorter, so the 60% number feels accurate for now. That said, there is a lot of stuff to fix and change in what's already there (as you can imagine), but I'm thinking that there is now more to add than I originally thought to make certain things make sense, and a few sections that are going to be edited out and rejiggered into the second section of the book. Sure, this should all come through during the editing process, but it's still worth pointing out.
• The working title is A Clever Adversary. I'm sure this won't last
• I've been debating whether or not to place a sample working chapter online. I know other writers have done this to sort of drum up interest, but since this blog isn't exactly an airport, I'm guessing that's not a good enough reason to place something like that here. I'm going to continue thinking this over.

So that's that.

See you tomorrow.