Writing Journal – 4 Mea Culpa

Yes. Mea Culpa. I am to blame.

I keep saying I’m going to blog the progress of writing my current work in progress, Peak Performance. And then I fail to blog. There is no good excuse. I’d like to say it’s because I am so busy writing on the book that I haven’t wanted to take the time. But that would be true only if pervasive procrastination could be considered writing on the book. Even then I could write a blog about the procrastination. Or share what I am doing while I’m procrastinating if it is interesting. That last one I’m going to try to do, share the interesting procrastination efforts.

Here’s where I am with some of what involves me sitting down and writing. I’ve been using a laptop, but it is having issues. I can be working along and all of sudden some part of the computer suffers from some massive memory glitch. I get static and the computer shuts down. I let the diagnostics run, restart it, recover my documents, and carry on. Also, for some reason, certain Windows updates fail. So something is wrong there. And in the last couple of weeks I got boot errors as it started. All very scary. (I need to get my 24,000 photos backed up but my two 2Tb external hard drives are pretty much full. So there’s that.) Anyway, all of those issues exist and I wanted a bigger screen anyway, so I bought a new computer.

My new computer is a Windows 10 system which is new to me. So several hours of not writing in the past week have been because I’ve been learning the ins and outs of the new system and moving software and data over. The machine came with 25 gb of DropBox storage and I found it easier to use than my Google Drive so I used DropBox to move files and I’m using it as my primary cloud storage for now.

A couple of days ago, I started playing with Microsoft’s OneNote. I like the way it organizes things so for the last two and a half days, I’ve been setting it up to keep track of all the notes and research I use while write a book. I’m even using OneNote to store an outline. I’ve never been known to use an outline. But the things about the last two books that bug me the most, might have been avoided with enough forethought expressed in at least a rudimentary outline.

A little further back in time, I was working all gung ho and actually fooled myself that I might finish the current work in progress by March. I just forgot that Thanksgiving and Christmas fell in there. A visit to relative’s new place in the wilderness above Tombstone, Arizona, at Thanksgiving and seeing the kids in Texas over Christmas took up a lot of time. (On my list to buy some day is a better tablet. One more conducive to working on the road. I don’t like carrying the laptop for one reason or another.)

Delay on the new book was also caused by taking the time to redesign  the way the final books are created and, to a certain degree, how they are designed. I went back and made changes to the first two books accordingly. Plus, I got rid of some more typos (pttui a curse on typos). A beauty of the digital age is the ability to make changes on the books as desired.

But now, I’m working on the new book. All of that stuff is done. There will be a few things in the coming weeks. I’m going to New Orleans for a few days. On the second of March, I’ll be speaking at breakfast on the last day of a Texas College English Association conference at Texas A&M – Kingsville. I’m looking forward to that. In honor of the honor of being asked to speak, I just sent one of the characters in my new book to college there.

So, we’re all caught up. I’m in the daily grind of writing the way I do. I’m skipping some stuff to go back to and writing the stuff that’s firmer in my mind. I’m worrying that the writing sucks and that the story is boring. I have a knot in the middle of my neck. My arthritis woke me up last night. I need to get up and move more. I need to walk the dog. I was going to spend time with my lovely bride this afternoon but she’s watching “The Way We Were” and I’m not going to do that again.

I sent a couple of letters out asking for some assistance from professionals in areas involved in this story. And as I wrote this blog, I thought of somebody else I could reach out to and maybe get a faster answer on some stuff. So, I’m going to conclude this blog entry and go find an email for a forensic consultant.

Thanks for being interested in what I do. Stick with me. I’ll share the pain of learning how to write with all you writers out there. And maybe you readers will enjoy the journey of the evolution of my writing.

One of my favorite fictional characters is Travis McGee as created by John D. MacDonald. I’d read all of the McGee novels before I came across the short story that was probably MacDonald’s first published exploration of the character that became McGee. I enjoyed seeing the evolution of McGee over time. Maybe you’ll enjoy the same about my Samuel Locke.

There’s a new character making an appearance in Peak Performance around whom I intend to create another series.

I’ve been wanting to write what most people call a Young Adult novel inspired some events I found emotional challenging. That story is finally starting to gel in my brain.

There’s also that screenplay I wrote that I intend to put in book form.

Dustivus Media, the publishing company I created to put out the Samuel Lock books may publish a couple of books by other writers. I’m waiting to receive the final manuscript of one currently titled Designing Diva and second, currently title Dancing on the Bar, may be ready this year as well.

Take care my friends. Read on. Write on.