The Latest News

01/01/08 -

• I am still living in Seoul, Korea. Since graduating from the University of Iowa, I've spent most of my time outside the United States. I've been living here in South Korea. I've gone all over this country, including into the DMZ. I've traveled through Europe. And through it all, there has been one constant.
  
  I've kept writing.
  
  Nonetheless, writing and editing are still going slowly. In the last week, for example, I've alternated between working 10 hour days and 12 hour days. And that's fine. Unfortunately, I have bills to pay and a savings account to fill just like everyone else. Extra work is good for my bank account, even if less so for my writing or sanity.
  
  Here's the way it is though. I'll be staying here for at least all of 2008. I'm continuing to work on my writing. Since the last time I changed this page, I've rewritten 35 chapters of my first book. I've added over 80,000 words of new content and trimmed a lot of superfluous content; I cut things I really liked, but which had no place in the story. Overall, the story is about 1000X better than the first draft, which now makes me sick to even look at. But it's still not quite ready. And I'm not sure exactly when it will be.
  
  The problem is that my job, while great for filling that pesky bank account, putting food on the table, and filling my apartment with new toys (including my cool new laptop), is kind of a hinderance in writing. While still in college, I was always able to find blocks of time during the day to write - everyday. With a full time job, that is no longer the case. And it turns out that writing these huge, sweeping, epic novels is best done when one can work on them every day instead of every weekend.
  
  So I haven't been consistently working on the books. I've also filled some of my time writing movie scripts. The thinking is thus: I don't have time to work on the novels and do them justice. But a movie is a MUCH smaller story. It doesn't take as much energy to write. I can work on them even with just small blocks of time on weekends. So I spend a lot of time rereading my novels and actually writing movie scripts these days. It's still writing and it still keeps the writing instincts sharp, but it's a little more managable given the limited time I have to work on my own things lately.
  
  Book 2 is written, but in a rough first draft form. I'd be embarrassed to show it to anyone. It's going to need a lot of work. There are lots of notes, lots of prewriting, and about 7 chapters of book 3 written. And for the last 4 weeks, I've stopped writing movies and have been slowly chipping away on edits for book 1.
  
  As tortoise would say, slow and steady wins the race.