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Writing log: OTR +3,917 words | TBN +1,016 words

Happy Holiblaze you sons of bitches. I once said in this blog that books made with marijuana involved in the creative process always end up being bullshit books. I have come to either the realization or the understanding – I’m not sure which one it is, but there is a difference in this context – that it is actually up to you entirely and the marijuana may actually play a very minimal role in the production of a bullshit book.

If you’re gonna make a book, you’re gonna make a book. When that book is done, it will reflect the amount of effort you put into it, simple as that. If you made the book right all the way through, it will show. If you put only enough effort into the book for it to become a bullshit book cough Flowers cough Under the Hood cough I don’t even know I just feel like they’re my weaker works cough I even made Under the Hood sober cough then it will become a bullshit book. If the book gets done and the final product is satisfactory and you were intoxicated the entire time you were putting it together, then so be it. To each his own; if that completes your cypher, fuck it, amen, and that’s word to Godemis!

So does that mean I’m just sitting around getting high all day every day and not really putting up the ridiculous numbers I’m flaunting in these posts? If they’re even ridiculous? I don’t even know because nobody will answer my end of the post question? Maybe. Maybe I didn’t actually write any of my books, maybe the books in the pictures are just a cardboard prop and all the posts are just unknown foreign fiction poorly translated into English with names and locations changed. Maybe I’m getting high and writing all day and the numbers are real, or maybe I’m just writing all day and then smoking at night because finding weed requires time and effort and I must conserve. Or maybe I haven’t smoked since I put out Flowers – my 9th book, by the way, 9 of 11, soon to be 12, ‘man can I count or what? – because weed is legal now but not publicly available for sale yet and I’m trying to live a fantasy for a few goddamn minutes at the end of my day. It’s none of your fucking business what’s going on in my life, okay? I’m making these posts to connect with my audience and you need to back the fuck up, bucko. Listen, want to know what’s going on with me that’s your business? This here: I’ve become self-conscious about my flagrant apostrophe usage as of late. Like, using don’ow instead of dunno or go’n’a instead of gonna. In dialogue, too, like, I often go for the hillbilly thing ‘nd if’n’ I start goin’n’a’bunch’a words’re easy t’stack t’gethr and th’dialogue’ll keep’er movin’ ’til whatever the fuck, you get my point, it’s ridiculous and I feel like I need to chill with it. So I am. I sometimes feel like when I’m writing if I do something one way once I need to do it the exact same way for the rest of eternity or else I’ll break some rule, but there are no rules to writing except to sit down and fill the blank space with symbols. Do whatever the fuck you want, whatever gets the project done, whatever gets the next line written. Do your shit and shut the fuck up about your excuses for fuck’s sake!

I feel like I occasionally get confrontational in these posts. You should know that it’s your fault entirely and it wouldn’t happen so much if you didn’t push me and make me walk across the room and beat you upside the fuckin’ head like this. Look what you make me do!

But yeah, ‘man. 4/20. Weed day. I don’t know what the fuck weed is. I used to think I knew exactly what it was, I had all these crazy borderline delusional theories about how the world worked and shit, I was still getting high off my own supply if you toke what I’m blowin’. Started to believe the bookmaking ideas applied to the real world. Coincidences kept lining up which seemed to suggest I was onto something, that I had figured out these hidden secrets of perception through which the universe communicated secret messages to me and that my every breath was leading to some big climactic showdown or some bullhockey like that. ‘Man, that’s just storybook shit, that doesn’t happen. Like, it can happen, but it doesn’t happen. Just gotta stay grounded, it isn’t that hard. You can’t keep it moving if both feet aren’t on the ground, ‘man, that’s all there is to it.

So you may have noticed I didn’t hit my word goal today. Like, I made a whole-ass post about setting a challenge for myself to do 6,000 words a day and here I am legit 2 days in coming up short already. Well, get off my dick and give the Shopfy stalker a turn, first of all – 2 pm today – and second of all, I’m just posting this now because I want it to land on 4/20 – fuck off, I know it’s a few minutes late – because the post is dated. Because I feel like I set rules for myself in writing despite writing being the artform of anarchy. I’m going to hit the 6 thou, hit the bed, then get up tomorrow and do however much I can. Tomorrow’s Wednesday, weekend Wednesday bitches. Wow, I’m still here.

This has been your daily dose of whatever the fuck this is. If fear does not hold you back, comment your daily word goal! Maybe if I demand it rather than request it I’ll get some characters for this The Bookmaker’s Note Volume 1 shit I’m throwin’ together top of ’22. Happy Holiblaze, y’bunch’a dirty fuckin’ hippies.

If you’re there, hypothetical reader, thank you for being there, and know I burned one down for you today. From this day on, we move forever forward~

Writing log: OTR +6,490 words

Fuckin’ did it. When I woke up this morning, I decided that I owed myself an extra 3,000 words for being the shithead yesterday and not writing. It took all day – it will be past midnight when I post this, and this is not an apology for that – but I fuckin’ got that shit done. Feels fucking good, ‘man.

So I’m giving myself a challenge this week. I was browsing on facebook (I know, I feel ashamed) and I saw this dude in one of the two writer groups I joined posting pictures of himself in a treehouse talkin’ about how he was on a writer’s retreat and he wrote 11,000 words that day and set a new record for himself. I was tempted to comment Good job dude, my record is 22,000. Literally twice as much as you, and I wasn’t even in a treehouse. Beat that, you son of a bitch but I thought it might come off as rude so I merely closed the page and got the fuck off facebook like any self-respecting human should. But it got me thinking: I don’t write enough. Like, 3,000 words a day is fine, but it’s light. When I wrote The 2020 Event |The Main Event| I was bangin’ out 6,000 on a daily basis easy, sometimes I even got above 10,000, and I was fucking looney back then. I’m in a much better place mentally today, I can write more. So I’m fidna.

Here’s the challenge. It’s not really a challenge, more like a trial run, but here’s what I’m doing this week. Monday and Tuesday, 6,000 each. Wednesday, however much I manage to get done. Thurs, Fri, Sat, 6,000 each. Sunday, however much. The 6,000 days will give me a minimum of 30,000 words for the week (roughly 100 pages) and whatever I do on the off days will pile on top. That will be progress. I don’t think I’m going to stop writing during the editing process for OTR, either. Why bother stopping when I can keep the momentum going and get ahead on the next project? No, quantity does not imply quality, but quality can be achieved through quantity. I’m biting a youtuber called Joel Haver on that one but it’s true ‘man, quality by means of quantity. Got’a practice to get good. That reminds me of tomorrow’s TBN, I already know what I’m going to write about. But that’s tomorrow.

Another thing I saw on facebook that got me fired up was this writer who posted a one-star review she got from someone who read her book and was offended at the massive amounts of proofreading errors in said book, and a bunch of other writers were in the comments saying yeah well you fucking deserve it. It’s just like, calm the fuck down. It’s just writing. I’ve read books, both indie and industry, littered with proofreading errors and it really doesn’t bother me a lot. Like, it doesn’t make the book unreadable. I don’t love it, I won’t lie, but I’m able to get the fuck over the fact that another author didn’t pay as close attention to their work as I wish I was able to pay to my own and still absorb the meaning that author put into their words which they cared enough about to write them down and publish them for the world to judge.

That’s not to say I’m out here letting proofreading errors fly left and right, either. Yeah, I let the wondrous and wonderous thing go for The Monksville Chronicles. You know what else I let go for that book? The “this is not real” disclaimer on the publishing page? It uses both its and it’s in the same line and only one of them is correct. But I let it fly, among other stuff I’m sure. For The Monksville Chronicles I let it all fly because The Monksville Chronicles is an old fucking book, I made it when I was less experienced and it should reflect that fact. The disclaimer in OTR has been corrected, and that’s not the only change to my publishing page formula I’m making with OTR either. Writers are artists, we are meant to grow and evolve and obsessively going over our past pieces of work is not how we evolve. It’s not how I evolve, anyway. What’s already written is written, dawg. What’s that next line go’n’a be, what’s your next book go’n’a be about? If you can’t write the next thing, you’re dead. That’s just what it is, baby, word to Charles Bukowski.

Lmao you’d think I was the woman who made the facebook post. But like, whatever. I don’t know why it bothered me. It’s late, I just got finished writing 6,000 words. I’m just riffing at this point, no filter allowed, I’m on some OG Sidney Blake shit. This blog series was very much inspired by Sidney Blake, if you didn’t know that. He’s the main character of Untitled Bigfoot Project and a fat chunk of his story is told through journal entries. This isn’t literally my journal, of course, but that’s where it came from with the Progress log (which is now the Writing log, officially) and everything. Yeah, ‘man.

But editing. Editing is definitely important. Almost everybody says that you absolutely need an outside editor to look at your stuff, that editing your own work is basically pointless. I don’t know about that one. I think it’s an important skill to have. When somebody else proofreads or even critiques your work, all they’re essentially doing is telling you how to change it to be more like something they would do. I miss stuff when I edit my own work, yeah. I’m not perfect, I think that’s blatantly obvious. But I’m better at self-editing now than I was when I first started. I think someone who can’t adequately edit their own work is at a disadvantage if anything. So what, your old books have errors. Make a new book and try harder on the proofreading, then. Also, maybe don’t go on Facebook and publicly bitch about it. Or anything. Fuck bitching about things in general. Fuckin’ find something to do.

Side note, I long for the day my books start getting reviews. I foresee a new blog series. But that’s the future.

Anyhow, I don’t know why I’m still writing the words on this screen. This shit’s 1,000 words long, I cracked 7,000 today. Bitchin’. But yeah ‘man, today was a good day. OTR chapter 4 is now 7 subchapters long. I’m about to dip, but first I have to ask: How many words do you like to write in a day when you’re working on something?

Oh, also, Shopify stalker struck again at 3 am and 6 pm. Lowkey inspiring in a way.

If you’re there, hypothetical reader, thank you for being there. From this day on, we move forever forward~

Progress log: Ø

Today, I was the shithead. I woke up with the intention of writing at least 3,000 words. I just straight-up did not do it. I won’t even make any excuses, I just didn’t write today. I spent a couple hours throwing together a skeletal working manuscript for OTR, but that was little more than procrastination. I get stuff done when I’m putting off getting stuff done; all the same I did no writing. I’m not really sure what stopped me, either. Even the voices were egging me on to write, but I just didn’t do it. Probably just a me thing. We’ll try again tomorrow.

Pettily obligatory question time: If you’re a writer, how many words do you like to write in a day when you’re working on a project? And if you’re not a writer, why the hell not?

If you’re there, hypothetical reader, thank you for being there. From this day on we move forever forward~

Progress log: wrote ~3200 words towards OTR

I hit my minimum today. I’m good with it. I could have written more, but I also could have been a shithead and written less. Today I am not the shithead, and that is a victory.

One of those not much to say days tbh. The Shopify stalker is still at it. Stared at the running book at 9 last night then again today at 6 pm. At least they didn’t look first thing in the morning, y’know? That’s the weirdest part of this for me, the 6/7 am views. But imagine if I got an order for the running book and then the views just stopped. Like. All this time the fellow was just trying to decide whether or not to make the purchase. Plot twist of the century.

I don’ow, ‘man. The wind continues to blow, y’know what I’m sayin’? Just another day. The sky could be falling. I could be out of my folks’ house. But it isn’t. And I’m not. And that’s okay. Some days are gray and dreary. Either the sun or a storm is coming, and when it’s done the other will follow right behind. Life, ‘man. It ain’t always peaceful like this. The only thing life always is is life, and that’s okay too. Shit, the only reason I’m still typing right now is to feel the keys bounce back against my fingertips, and even that’s okay. We’re just out here doing our thing, ‘man. I mean we, too, you and me. We’re both human and we’re both out here doin’ our thing. The wind blows in whichever direction it pleases and we’re just out here doing our thing.

A’ight, I’m gettin’ out’a here. You know the drill; if you don’t, every day I ask for a hypothetical reader to comment their daily writing goal. It hasn’t happened yet.

Yet.

If you’re there, hypothetical reader, thank you for being there. From this day on, we move forever forward~