morning ritual

This picture was taken months ago. But except for
longer hair, I've still got that weird look on my face,
and I'm still wearing ridiculous old-man sweaters.

It's 10:20 and I'm at The Anchor waiting for Isaac to show up. He overslept, but I'm not mad. I came here early to get some work done, and let's be honest: alone or with someone else, The Anchor's a great place to be. I'm drinking some coffee (full-on robusta!) and pairing it with orange juice, and I'm anticipating some cottage cheese and crackers once Isaac comes through that door with his frizzled red beard and probable cardigan. 

I don't want to divulge too much information on my weekend (as a re:cap will be up here tomorrow), but I'll give away this much: I've got some kick-ass writing done, close to thirty pages written (but not yet revised) Friday and Saturday. I've spent this morning hammering out some of the finer details with the transcript (basically a chaotic mess of scribbled notes and drawings collected in a little notebook, which I use to construct a play-by-play of the scenes to enable me to feel them out and guide them appropriately; basically, it's called The Snowflake Method and it's a plotting style that's just taken off, and one which I actually used before it became common knowledge; yes, I'm a genius). The first book is going to be around 280 pages long, which is pretty long for a serial novel; and honestly I've considered breaking the stories up even more, into 120-140 page novellas. But we shall see. Regardless, I've finally gotten the last three chapters of Act II stenciled out, just ready to be splayed onto the page. After my time here and before hitting up Rock Bottom at lunch for a brother-sister date, I'm going to try and get the next chapter done; and the evening will probably be spent working on the last two chapters (both of which I've already gotten mostly-written). And then I'll probably celebrate the completion of Act II with some coffee and a cigar.

I've got so many writing ideas in my head, it can become a cobweb-strewn nightmare in there sometimes. At work we were talking about what it'd be like to be in other peoples' heads, and both Cat and Amos agreed: they could only be in my head for a small window of time, fearful of what they might find. I can't blame them, I find scary stuff in there all the time. That's the price you pay for being stuck in your own head most of the time. Sometimes the pressure of unfinished writing projects (or anticipated projects) can seem too much to bear, and my hope is to start knocking most of these out the water. Once I get Book One finished of this zombie serial, I'm hoping to finally finish revising the last few chapters of "Dwellers of the Night: Book 3." I removed the project from my storefront and discontinued its sales, except perhaps for Amazon (I can't remember), and I've gotten lots of complaints from readers looking for it, since it got pretty popular. I need to get it back up so people don't forget about it. 

Isaac's here, and so is Josh, so I'm going to go.

Have a good day. kthanxbai