Hey there! Matthew here for your summary of my writing for the festive previous month.
That is wordy… on purpose.
Honestly, I don’t care for Halloween. We’ve entered the festive months now, so I feel an obligation to hang out. Get-together. Eat turkey and cake with a bunch of folks. Anyway…
The novel is completed.
Yep!
Just as Human Real First Draft is finished. I ran it through a Grammarly spellcheck, printed it, and bought a three ring binder for it. Its stored in my desk drawer.
Before being stored in my desk:
You don’t understand how challenging writing a novel is until you attempt one. Holding it was just insane. I didn’t think it would be that many pages, or feel that substantial. There were ideas I cut to make it more manageable. I didn’t want to keep spending months working on it.
A very rough draft, it is.
Its taking a break now. During the coming two, maybe three months, I’ll give copies to alpha readers. I expect lists of plot holes to be exposed, plot structure issues dangling like steel beams, character development errors of “Why the crap did she do this?, resulting characters to cut, etc. I’m excited!
Revision.. its gonna be a whole new ballgame. We’ll cross that bridge when it comes.
Well, that was fun! I love what I wrote -the sarcastic, jokey characters serious about their jobs. Whether protagonists or antagonizing the protagonists. If you are a fan of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Halo, Marvel’s Avengers, or the Book of Revelation, you should find interest.
Yeah, this was a hard project. I did not know what I was getting into. Got burnt out several times. Had to reorder chapters for the plot to make more sense. Cut a few ideas to make it more manageable. All that said, the story I wanted to tell largely is told. It was a valuable learning experience.
If I should write another novel, I’m doing it differently. Similar with updates. I remember my laughable attempts filming video updates earlier this year. Try them again? Buy a better camera and mic, and learn editing? Don’t know. I’ll figure out what comes next. For the time being, writing updates on personal projects are taking a pause. On the flipside, you may see my portfolio added to.
Thanks for following me all this time if you did. May you have a posthumous Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas or Hanukkah, and a great New Year. Clean your teeth after all the goodies you consume.
Matthew Birdzell 