Two Months, Four Days and 38,329 Words Later

I’m still writing.

Somehow I have managed to keep to my morning ritual. Sadly, if this were a gym membership, I would have crapped out on it long ago. Writing is a lot less physically taxing, but it is mentally taxing. I’ve been managing to meet the challenge thus far. I’ve kept this daily appointment for an hour of writing on an obsolete computer since June 7th.

After using LibreOffice to determine a word count, I decided to continue writing the rest of the book in that program.

Why LibreOffice over Microsoft Office?

It’s available for Mac, Linux and PC; there is an older version available for my obsolete Mac OS Catalina, and, best of all, it’s FREE!

Some days are more productive than others, but I have been steadily chipping away at the story, and I am mostly done with my first draft. I am working my way through the climax as I type this post.

So what am I writing?

It’s a horror novel called Teenage Beast, based on drawings I made back in the mid-80s which I rediscovered and finished with ink roughly 40 years later.

The elevator pitch goes something like this:

It’s a coming-of-age horror story about teenagers, punk rock, a rust-belt town, ancient evil and one Friday night in 1978 that will change everything.

Hopefully, you will find that enticing enough to stick around.

My initial aim was to write something simply for the sake of writing it. Could I handle a lengthy work of fiction? The characters and the story have taken on a life of their own, so I may see about publishing it when it’s done, one way or another.

Writing is my morning ritual, but I save my evenings for drawing. Teenage Beast is also the subject of my cartoony ramblings.

The writing feeds into the drawings, and the drawings feed back into the writing.

As with everything I do, IT CAME FROM THE SKETCHBOOK!