Y’know, whenever you watch a movie where there’s an author character, the first thing everyone says to him/her is ‘How’s the new book coming?’—and invariably the writer responds with a sigh and a complaint about writer’s block.
That never happens in real life, of course—not the writer’s block part, but the people asking how the writing process is going, because they don’t. Ever. And you can’t blame ‘em, ’cause every writer I know, including myself, manages to work whatever they’re writing—be it a book, play, script or grocery list—into the first 20 seconds of every conversation. People don’t ask how your writing is going because they’re sick to death of hearing about it.
And since you didn’t ask, why yes; I’d love to tell you how it’s going.
I’m kickin’ ass and typing names. In January, I interviewed Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn, who’s written and sold many more books than me—most of them hit Star Wars novels—and Trey Stokes, the auteur behind the Pink Five movies. Looking ahead to chats in the near future, I also set up interviews with major ‘gets’ for the book—James Cawley, leader of Star Trek: New Voyages, and Henry Jenkins of MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium. It’s extremely exciting to get such leaders in their respective fields as a part of this book. But wait—there’s more! Chris Gore, founder of FilmThreat.com, movie expert on G4′s Attack of the Show and general bon vivant, sent in his foreword for the book, and it’s better than anything I could have hoped for (meaning it’s great).
While the start of the month saw very little progress, the end of January was all pedal to the metal—or stubby digits to the keyboard if you prefer—as more than 8,000 words poured out of my fleet fingers. With the ol’ word count sitting comfortably around 80K, I’ve passed my contractual minimum by 5,000; that means in theory I could stop mid-sentence now and just type “…and they all lived happily after,” send it in, and Continuum Books would have to accept it. They’d hate me and the book, but I’d be done—and there’s some kind of strange comfort that comes from that idea. It makes me feel like I’m taking the high road by, you know, finishing the book and all.
Lest it sound like I’m not taking the book seriously, I certainly am, and the folks at Continuum are taking it even more seriously—heck, they’re even taking orders for it; just check out . Now, sure, there’s a few errors (Son of Rambow isn’t a documentary, and the book isn’t due in April, otherwise I’d be a deadman right now), but the catalog copy actually does a great job of capturing the book’s tone and topics. Until I hold a finished paperback in my hand and sell a few gallons of blood in order to afford the hardcover edition, reading this PDF is about as real as it gets—and how unreal is that?
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