We’re sharing stuff. Lots of stuff. My last book was partly about this (and that last book is out in paperback this summer – preorder now! And if you don’t like reading, you can get it as an audiobook too!). Not completely but more than one review talked about the “age of oversharing” or something like that (and a lot of people have, just link here, here and here). As an aside, you know that we are on the cusp of the Oversharing Backlash, I’m going to call it this from now on, because every action has a reaction, right? Whatever. It’s called social media because you’re supposed to be social. If your idea of being social is trolling people non-stop you have big problems. When I was growing up, those people were said to be “acting out” and usually getting their asses kicked in the school yard. Usually they came from bad homes and/or situations and were dealing with their issues by, um, acting out. Now, these people can troll folk all over the internet without ever getting out of their ratty pyjamas.
I’m not here to write about trolling. I’m here to say I’ve gone way beyond 100k words in the first draft of the new book. I’m not a counter but that’s maybe me talking about the past me because I’m noticing now, and I’ve been keeping track. Of my word count. A few years ago I would never have done this. But we evolve, you know? And evolution doesn’t mean a straight line.
It’s not the same word as progress. It never was. It just means change. It means something is different from before. And a first draft is just that, a first draft. It might suck (and it usually does) but then you build on it until it stops sucking. It’s your first attempt at telling the story that’s inside of you. One hopes that you get some good stuff out, but a first draft is not a guarantee of quality, it is just you throwing up all that crap inside of you and sorry for that image.
All of this to say, there are places one could see what I’m doing. If one chose to do so. Like if you have a list of the 100 things you want to do and you get them done, amazingly, and then you wonder what’s next…
On my Facebook author page, you can track my progress by pages. This doesn’t mean much. It just means I’ve typed and this is how much I typed on a given day.
Over on ello, I am pasting some passages from the first draft. Apparently ello is still a thing and not just acting up.
And every once in a while, I turn on Periscope while I’m writing because. Just because. (I have no clue why, in other words).
I have no timetable for the future here. Well, that’s not true. But there’s a lot that has to happen before this book is finished. Some of it is out of my control. I’m just going to work on this thing until I think it’s finished. Or at least ready to unleash on the world.
