Hello and good morning.

Normally, I would be writing something like this in my Morning Pages notebook, but I wanted my hands to be warmed up in a different way before continuing with my NaNoWriMo Story, so here we go. Something on the ol’ blog.

You know, that thing the internet used to revolve around before social media arrived and forced everyone to use it before self-detonating and forcing everyone to go to “newsletters,” which are really just blogs you get e-mailed to you.

I don’t know what’s happening with Twitter. Honestly, it feels like a lot of problems for the people at the tippy top. As for me? A guy at the bottom who has been on the site for over a decade just following and reading people I admire? I can’t say. Call it a “god problem from an ant’s point of view.”

There’s still plenty of people who seem to be sticking around on the Twits machine, so as long as that happens and as long as I can keep getting news updates in whatever Lists I’ve curated, I’m happy.

I wonder if people know the Block/Mute buttons exist, so they can Block and/or Mute the accounts bugging them the most…?

Quick Project Update:

KIRBY – middle-grade contemporary fantasy

I’m taking part in National Novel Writing Month this year. KIRBY is a weird culmination of a few story points I tried working with over the past few years. A little of this failed novel start and a little of that incomplete short story. That sort of thing. I. Am. WAY. Behind on my word count. I know it’s supposed to be “write as much as you can every day find the time do it do it do it or you’ll die” but, man, is it hard to find time to write when you have kids.

And that scares me because I kinda want this to be my job.

Current Word Count is 6717 out of 50000.

We’ll see how it goes.

NESS – middle-grade contemporary fantasy

This one is chugging along in 2nd draft red pen edits. Again, trying to find time for it with kids is proving difficult. I keep thinking if I take the pages with me while I watch the kids then I can get work done outside of my one and a half hour morning sprint.

This doesn’t always work, though, as the moment I wrap up chores that’s when one of the boys uses a sofa cushion as a battering ram.

Page 30 out of 144.

GREY – middle-grade science-fiction

And the completed one. The one I should be pitching to agents every week.

Researching agents is tough, because it requires a lot of reading (duh) and a lot of double and triple-checking you’re spelling every thing right. This sounds silly, but to me, it’s the hardest part of the query.

You want to spell the agent’s last name right, the agency right, to use the right kind of vocabulary listed in their bio right, to make sure your pitch is lined up with those vocabulary interests right, and so on.

I have another agent lined up to query and, if I’m very, very, very lucky…

…I’ll pitch them by Friday.

We’re going to Disneyland in two weeks, for a whole week. It’s inspirational to me, in a sappy kind of way, to see what can be built and given to the world built on the back of stories.

I want to be able to help take my family there on future trips with my writing.

To do that, I have to query.

Don’t be afraid.

Thanks for reading,

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Contact: robertmichaelacosta@gmail.com