I made some progress this week in regard to the various writerly/authorly things I’m working on.

The big one is that I finished my re-read of the first book of Gods, Monsters, and a Fuzzytail. This is where I simply read through the text again, making light notes on the overall changes and small things I’d like to adjust in the rewrite.

Yes, I’m referring to that text I already released in its entirety on Substack. There will be further edits before I publish it for real.

One of the bigger changes I’m making, although none of them are that big, my notes are mostly nitpicky, is sharpening up Eli’s arc. I’ve also actually begun rewriting the opening scene from scratch.

As for the rest of the novel, the degree to which I completely rewrite versus simply touch up what’s already there will vary. Though, to be honest, most of the changes I anticipate come down to fine-tuning.

The God with Two Faces

The next thing I completed this week is the second essay that will be released on Substack and YouTube, currently titled The God with Two Faces.

It’s a literary-philosophical essay drawing from Demian by Hermann Hesse.

Now I’m going to begin planning another pair of essays that pull from a different text. I was thinking Siddhartha, also by Hesse, but I don’t want to make it seem like that’s all I’ll be doing. So maybe something else.

The Old Man and the Sea, maybe?

Not sure as of the time of writing this.

The Main Things I’m Working On

While I’m going on about the progress I’m making, I thought I’d clarify the main things I’m working on.

First, it’s my novels.

I’m aiming to self-publish some long-form stuff next year, in 2027. Which is why, at the moment, I’m working on polishing Book 1 of GMAAFT. After that, I’ll be moving on to completing the draft of Book 2. To be clear, that means after the polish, not after the publish.

What happens next, I’m not sure.

I’m torn between doing the typical route of publishing each book as it’s completed, or locking all the way in for the remainder of this year and just focusing on drafting the full story.

Option A may result in a publishing cadence of one book per year, whereas the other could see me put out two books.

As it stands, I estimate the full series will be around six novels long, told in two major arcs. Who knows how it’ll turn out, though. ASOIAF was supposed to be a trilogy, I once heard.

YouTube

The next big one is YouTube.

There, I’ll be releasing, or at least I plan to release, bi-weekly literary-philosophical video essays where I explore the ideas in the novels I read through the lens of how they relate to the real world.

What are they saying?

What lessons are they trying to teach?

My current goal is to have six videos ready. I’ve completed the first drafts of two essays so far, so there are only four more to go.

After that comes the recording and video editing, which are things I’m going to have to learn on the fly

With all that being said, though, I won’t be sharing the link to the YouTube channel/videos until a while after they’ve released, to give the algorithm time to organically work out who my audience is.

That’s the Main Shape of It

That’s about it for the major “new” things I’m working on, insofar as my writing is concerned.

There are other things I’m working on, but that’s for my other life.