Posts exploring the process of writing.
I’ve been working on Hairy Squatter the past couple days. I have a good sense of who the narrator is, as well as the protagonist. I also started drafting the first chapter. I’ve decided to take a different tack from the initial idea. Here’s the old version of the beginning: Mr. and Mrs. Worsely, of … Read more
This week I returned to working on Hairy Squatter. I worked out the narrator and the main comic archetype for the protagonist. The narrator is going to be Moldywart, in first-person. He’s giving his version of events to contest the “official” version, told by the (annoying) omniscient narrator of the original. Moldywart is a Trickster … Read more
I’m happy to announce that I just published Confessions of a Hallway Hustler to Amazon KDP. They say it’ll up to 3 days for the review process before it goes live. This little project grew in scope until it consumed a good chunk of the last few months. A valuable lesson is over-optimistic completion estimation. … Read more
I’m happy to announce that I finished the second draft of Confessions of a Hallway Hustler. I’ve started in on the third draft. My goal is to publish the ebook on Amazon by the end of December. I’m on pace to accomplish this. There are 41 chapters and almost 30,000 words. Here’s a rough version … Read more
I’m closing in on finishing the second draft of Confessions of a Hallway Hustler. My goal is to publish it this month. Here’s a current version of the to-do/punch list: To-dos V1 1. create outline2. dictate story3. transcribe dictations4. expand scenes5. revision — 2nd draft6. revision — 3rd draft (including punch list)7. copyediting8. design cover9. … Read more
I’m plowing my through the second draft of Confessions of a Hallway Hustler. I was hoping to be done with this draft a couple weeks ago. But you know how it goes. Most chapters are taking longer than expected to work my way through. I still haven’t decided on names for the characters, apart from … Read more
In my last post, I shared a revision of the outline for Part 1 of Kingdom of Fief. I realized I needed to make Aliyah’s desire line stronger — what she wants both as an internal motivation and as an immediate, concrete goal. She wants to be a knight-errant. Her immediate goal is to go … Read more
I realized while drafting Part 1 of Kingdom of Fief, a medieval comedy-fantasy I’ve been working on for the past few months, that the protagonist’s desire line isn’t strong enough to propel the story forward. So this week, I revised it. I wanted to make her immediate goal more clear and to cut the timeline … Read more
I just got back the final version of the ebook cover I commissioned for my upcoming Harry Potter parody. It’s called Hairy Squatter and the Scientist’s Groan. Here’s the premise: Hairy Squatter is a bookish twelve-year-old orphan whose great ambition in life is to become a world-renowned cultural critic. While happily working his way through … Read more
Confessions of a Hallway Hustler is a retelling of Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) in the style of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The protagonist Tony Montana is a 12-year-old lovable scoundrel who gets kicked out of his elite boarding school in the imaginary European country of Luxland for breaking one too many rules. In … Read more
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