Sigh.

This was supposed to go out two days ago but, you know, twins.

Two days ago was my mine and my wife’s 3 years wedding anniversary.

To date, it’s the longest marriage of my life.

Those in the know will find that hilarious while others will find it strange I’m timing my marital commitment. Either way, I get a kick out of it and get an amazing wife.

Let’s talk about my writing projects!

GREY

Since submitting GREY almost two weeks ago I haven’t done a whole lot else with it. However, since we’re all under quarantine and my tutoring job is on break I feel this is an ideal time to create the Agent Master List and start sending it out more.

Slowly, I’m making my way through the entire story after the massive Chapter 1 rewrite. With the boys I can only work at about a page at a time, but a 5th draft is needed.

Hey, that’s the name of the site.

Anyways, it’s a quick run through to make sure I like the sentence structure, grammar, and to include some bits to clean up the story. Lately, I’ve had some awesome Shower Revelations, because of course all good ideas come in the shower, and NO notebook at the ready when I get out. The boys have occupied that space in my mind where I used to have a memory.

Basically, now more than ever before, I need to live the life motto of Field Notes.

“I’m not writing it down to remember it later. I’m writing it down to remember it now.”

I’ve delegated one Field Notes to be the “WHATEVER” notebook I can jam in my pocket and carry from room to room so anything that comes to mind can go in it while main notebooks stay in the office.

Field Notes Vignette Edition
No. YOU have a notebook problem.

NESS

I’m taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo this year (granted, if they still bloody have it after the world finishes its tantrum.) For anyone who may not know, NaNoWriMo is:

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.

So, write every day. Don’t care about what you wrote. Become a novelist. BAM.

Camp NaNoWriMO is their event in the spring and summer where you’re allowed to write more than just a novel. You can write screenplay, a comic, and so on so forth.

As of this writing, I’m working with my homeschool family on their novel while doing one of my own. The crew at the NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s Program have done an excellent job of matching the skills needed to produce a novel to state learning standards. If you, or someone you know, is an educator and wants a months long activity to cover as much writing and reading standards as possible I highly suggest you check them out here.

Steam Crow Project: NESS
A Steam Crow Monster Rangers notebook used for Project: NESS. (Link)

NESS is going to be a MG (middle-grade) contemporary fantasy.

First draft is due April 30.

Pre-writing needs to be finished by the end of this month.

*drinks all the espresso

HOPE

Something I started a couple of years ago that I wasn’t ready for.

That happens, I suppose. You start writing a book, knowing what you want it to be, then as you’re about 100 pages into it you realize that it’s nothing like you wanted it to be and think the story is too important to continue.

Using the skills from R.L. Stine’s MasterClass, I’m reworking the plot’s outline to give me a better feel for the emotions and stakes. Before, I used to use a bullet point type of outline, kind of like this:

  • This happens.
  • Then, this happens.
  • Then, and get this, this happens.

Now, if that works for you, great, but what I came to realize was that it makes the storytelling too methodical for me. I felt like I was trying to reach checkpoints instead of telling my story naturally. GREY was written with a more Stine-centric outline, where you write a sort of mini-story that tells the feelings and emotions of the grander story in a couple of paragraphs per chapter.

That’ll be due towards the end of Quarter 2.

Oh man, Quarter 1 is almost over! Time is slipping away.

Be safe. Take care of each other. We can beat this.

Thanks for reading,

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Twitter: @robacosta

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Contact: robertmichaelacosta@gmail