Hello, welcome to my Weeknotes from October 7 to September 13
My only tutoring client cancelled this morning, meaning I have the entire day free and clear.
What does that mean?
Well, it means I post a lot on social media.
It also means I get to share some thoughts on music:
Basically, I got to treat my morning like I’m sure a lot of professional authors get to do. At least, the ones more active on social media. They talk about their interests, their likes, their dislikes, and actively engage with people online. Building a community. Since I’m trying to expand my base, I forget that the reason I flocked to a lot of these online personalities was because I felt like I was part of something.
So, share away, man.
But the freedom of the morning? It’s a nice preview of what life could be like if I make enough money selling books.
Some thoughts for today!
I will delve deep into writing Project: HARP, the middle-grade fantasy I started last summer. Originally, I attempted to handwrite it because I’m a fool who thinks he’s Neil Gaiman. The initial 2/3 of the book I managed to finish actually works pretty well as a 0.5 draft, so I’m going to work on that for about 2 hours. Since I’ve been waking up at 4am the last week I’ve made good headway on it, but nothing beats a solid writing session where your hands hurt and everything starts to go blurry.
Then, I need to do a rewrite of Project: GREY’s (the middle-grade science fiction adventure book I completed) chapter 1. It’s already been sent out to one agent, which they politely declined, but after looking at the first chapter again I recognized a lot of issues I missed before. That’ll happen. I haven’t sent it out since that first one, which is eating away at my mind and probably giving me more gray hairs, but I needed a morning like this to calmly look it over. Give yourself enough space from a piece of work to really disconnect from it and look at it analytically.
Finally, and this is one that stretches far back a few years, Project: TREES. This was a middle-grade sci-fi/fantasy book I wrote for NaNoWriMo a few years ago and spent the next few years trying to fix up to query. Again, thanks to time passing, I recognize the problems with how I tried to pitch it and the slow opening chapters. Essentially, I need to combine the first five chapters into two solid chapters.
That…will take some time.
But I believe in the story and the message I want to tell with it.
Always be writing.
Emptying pens, filling up notebooks, and ruining your keyboard are more important than any hangups you have in your head.
No new books this week, but I’m deep into Stephen King’s IT.
It’s definitely, what I’m going to call, Prime King. I’ve only read 2 others books by him (On Writing and Apt Pupil) so to see King in his element, turning the gears all the way up to 11 and taking the restraints off, is a fascinating excursion.
Not all of it is good.
In fact, I’m skipping over pages of exposition about minor characters who, by process of watching the mini-series and movie, I know are not important.
But when he’s on? He is on and the book absorbs me for swathes at a time.
We’ll see how it proceeds.
BABY PROGRESS:
T-minus less than 2 months. Maybe less than that. It’s twins we’re expecting, after all. At some point my wife’s uterus might just decide, “Oh, I’m done with this. Get these demon spawn out of me.” This could happen at 38 weeks or 35 weeks.
We don’t know.
And it’s stressing me out.
100 Days of Blogging Rolls on:
Quotes – Batman R.I.P. – Grant Morrison
Missing A Day Don’t Get Me Down
QUOTES – The Batman’s Grave – Warren Ellis
Allow Creative Chaos To Take Over
This will mark my 22nd blog in 22 days. I’m going to keep at this pace until the New Year. Still planning on how I’m going to blog from the delivery room…
And I’m out.
The Great Work continues, and I’ve learned more from this morning than the entire last week. Give yourself time to be quiet, still, and listen to the world around. Put on music to drown it all out and you’ll find the little gems hidden in your mind.
Thanks for reading,
Follow me:
Twitter: @robacosta
Instagram: @probacosta
Contact: robertmichaelacosta@gmail.com
Fifth Draft 
Leave a Reply