Works in Progress / Life in Progress

According to that progress bar on the right, I'm about twenty percent finished with my teenage dramady, All American Addict. I truly love the story but got a little bogged down in the first act, which is always the hardest for me. I ran into the same issues on The Island of Ted. I decided to just plow forward and keep re-writing but frankly got a bit burned out. This is the advantage of having more than one book in progress.

So I switched gears and started working on my other project, which is a novella (that's a short book) called Stuck In A Moment. Right now I'm more excited about working on this story so it's flowing much more easily. And when I get burned out or bogged down on this one, I can flip back and work on All American Addict. I've even thought about bringing a third story into the rotation but that might be too much for me to juggle. We'll see.

On a non-writing note, I'm contemplating the idea of doing video blogs and posting them here, linking back to youtube as well. Although I may talk about writing, that wouldn't be the focus of the video blogs. Some of you may know that I will be experiencing a pretty dramatic life change soon (actually several will converge all at once) and I'd like to document everything, video-journal style because it should prove interesting. I'm not 100% settled on this idea since I hate being in front of the camera, but I'm considering it anyway because doing this might, in some small way, be of benefit to those who read this blog.

Honest moment here... what scares me the most about documenting these life changes is the fact that we've (my wife and I) made some plans, and have told those plans to people, and those people are probably hoping for the best, and.... things never quite go as planned. That means we may have to, at times, show the ugly side of making this decision. Hiding such things, for the sake of just pretending, is not an option. If I'm going to document something, it's going to showcase the good, the bad, and the dull moments in-between. For those of you who are not clued in, we're moving to a new country, without those creature comforts we're used to, and adopting a child (who is now a 4 year-old) and attempting to raise him in said country.

However, a martyr I am not... we'll have internet access and indoor plumbing, with white sand beaches a short walk away. But there will be heat, and mosquitoes, and a language and culture barrier, and the fact that I have no idea how to be a father. BUT! If I decide to document these things, it could actually prove beneficial to others. And for that reason, I'm giving serious thought to it. Stay tuned.