Welcome back!

The wife was very forggiving this weekend and I was able to have a lot of time to write. I cranked out two chapters on Saturday and two more on Sunday. It came to about 30 pages and 4000 or so words. All of this was new content, created from scratch.

Things are progressing better than I could imagine. The ideas are flowing, the pagecount is increasing and the book is turning into exactly what I envisioned. I should have no problem finishing this book in time.

This week I need to get back on the blogging horse, I didn’t do much last week and my traffic stats are showing it. Need to continue the creation of new content so I can get lots of new traffic.

The last few days have been very productive, despite the fact I’ve come down with a nasty cold. I did no writing yesterday due to illness but I was very active over the weekend, getting several chapters knocked out, much to the annoyance of my lonely wife.

I was feeling well enough today to write and punched out about a thousand words. The good news to report is that I’ve reached the one hundred page park. It’s a meaningless milestone but it feels good to have 100 pages of a book locked and loaded.

When I stopped writing the book last year, it was at about 50 pages. So, since restarting the book, I’ve rewritten a lot of what I wrote before and added another 50 pages of brand new content.

I like how the book is shaping up and all the twists and turns the process takes as I come up with new ideas. I’m should be on track to have the book done by the time my wife and I go to England in March.

Things are going well. I hope they stay that way.

Despite multiple interruptions tonight, including having to go to work at a second job. I managed to get a whole new chapter written. I’m not crazy about it. But it serves a purpose and it will grow to fit perfectly as the book grows.

Things are continuing to progress nicely. I’m nearing 100 pages, which is encouraging. The first 100 pages are always the hardest and everything usually falls into place after that. I intend for this book to be the longest of all the ones I’ve written. Probably around 400 pages or so. I have a lot of story to tell. Brevity is for the red pen.

I also got some major blogging done today. The current political and economic climate is a huge distraction and I find it hard to full away from the Drudgereport. I hope the debate goes on tomorrow.

I wrote an Anlgophile Movie Preview on Anglotopia. I’ve been working on it for a few days. Now Anglophiles can keep up on the latest British movies coming out.

I’m going to stop keeping track of Chapter numbers, because they are irrelevant at this stage. Too much of the book is in flux right now to be stuck in an ironclad structure. Numbers just make is harder down the line to edit the thing.

I finished another chapter tonight. This is the first chapter that was completely new content, written from scratch. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

My new process works great. I’m genuinely excited to get home and write. That hasn’t happened in such a long time. I still have to work hard at making myself actually do it. But I’m getting the book done, slowly but surely.

I hope this keeps up. It needs to.

I was able to sit down and hammer out Chapter 3. Most of it had been written before so I just needed to tweak a few things. No major changes were necessary. It’s looking good. I’m getting on a roll.

I also updated many of my blogs over the last couple days.

There are many new post on my Anglophile Blog - Anglotopia. Check ‘em out.

I also wrote a really long, in depth piece for Austerity Blog about How to Get Survive the New Depression we’re facing.

I also wrote up some entries for Ennui Blog about the best way to build blog backlinks by commenting and why you should avoid using iWeb to build websites.

I also wrote several entries for Dunesblog this week. One article is about the NWI Times’s Handling of the recent flooding in Northwest Indiana and another about Fun Fall Things to do in the Dunelands.

I also set up a Dragon*Con Photo Series on my Photoblog, check it out.

It’s Thursday and I’ve pretty much made it through my to-do list for this week. I’m very pleased. I hope I can keep this production rolling.

I was able to sit down and hammer out Chapter 2 today. I rewrote a lot of what was there and took out that I needed to save for use later. It’s going well so far. I have a good handle on the voice. It was smart to just restart from the beginning.

I also did a shit ton of brainstorming and came up with some golden ideas for new chapters to help beef up the overall story. I’m excited about this book for the first time in a year. I hope I can keep this up.

I love having my new office. It creates a perfect environment to create. It’s large so I can walk around and think. I can go to the bookshelf and pick up a book and look for inspiration. I can play music as loud as I like. I’m also making great use of my whiteboard to outline ideas. This new process works greatly.

Things are going well. I hope they continue to go so well.

After days of fiddling and pondering, I’ve managed to sit down a rewrite the first chapter of my novel. I pretty much gutted it from before, simplifying it and make it quicker to read.

I’m pretty happy with it so far. It’s small progress, but I’m slowly getting back into the groove. Tomorrow, I’ll approach Chapter 2, which won’t need much changing but needs to be heavily tweaked.

It feels good to be doing this again.

In other developments, I’ve finally developed the Projects page and the Blogs page. That way if anyone is interested in what I currently have going on, they can take a look.

I doubt anyone cares but I want to track my progress somewhere and maybe build an audience along the way.

I haven’t worked on my novel in nearly a year, for various reasons I won’t bore anyone with. It’s time to get back on the horse, get this thing written and find an agent.

Nothing will happen unless I actually sit down and do it.

So, I’ve taken the advice from my friend Chad and have decided to just start the book all over, from scratch - though I may use elements of what came before.

I’ve spent the last week re-conceptualizing the book, hammering out new outlines, writing various snippets of text to use later and altering mechanical things like voice and tense.

I’m almost done with this phase and will sit down and start writing significant amounts of text soon.

The goal is to finish the book by the time my wife and I go to England in March. I want to have a finished book for my wife to read on the airplane.

Watch me succeed or fail, if you wish. I hope you at least get entertained or learn a thing or two about writing.

This is my third novel, for those that care. I’ve been through this all before…