A bit of a change this week…beginning with a new name for these weekly updates. “Chopping Away” sounds like a good thing to name regular progress updates, so there it is.
But why not another Godspeed, Crazy Mike Journal entry?
I don’t want to hurry the story.
A rough draft is done, and I quite like it. But as involved as the story is, I’d hate to rush it for an early October release. I’d love to have an expert proofread it for procedural accuracy, and that can take time.
So, does this mean no October Not About Lumberjacks story?
Absolutely not.
What’s this Milkboy Thing?
Milkboy is another based-on-truth Not About Lumberjacks story. Others include:
- Pride of the Red Card
- Bobo (almost autobiographical)
- Memorial Park (Very loosely based on truth)
- 7 Stories (the last story in the first Christmas episode)
- Christmas Miscellany 4 (the last story among the others)
“Milkboy” is about creating a fake online persona before that was really a thing. (Prior to the World Wide Web or even services like America Online became common, a friend and I used a Bulletin Board System (BBS) to create Milkboy, a fake person who had a a lot in common with our dear friend, Tim.)
In every way, Tim could have ended his friendship with me and our friend Mark for getting his hopes up about a cool person he met online, but decades later we’re all still best buds. This is a story about all that…
“Milkboy” should be out on Tim’s actual birthday, October 2.
Day by Day?
So why no day-by-day account of this week?
Mostly because my new job deserved my attention, and what little time I had to write was spent writing the first draft of “Milkboy.” A daily account would have been a cut-and-paste thing where each day’s entry would be, “Worked on ‘Milkboy’ during lunch break.” Perhaps one of two entries would have read, “Worked on ‘Milkboy’ during lunch break…and a little in the evening.”
Friday: “Didn’t work on writing ‘Milkboy’ during lunch break…I started looking for music for the episode. Went to bed early, and worked on the story in the middle of the night when I woke up for a couple hours.”
Saturday: “Worked on ‘Milkboy’ a bit during the morning. Went to bed early, and worked on it some more in the middle of the night when I woke up for a couple hours.”
To try padding those updates out would be tedious for all involved, so just know I knocked out a 5,500-word story during a very busy week at the new job.
What’s Next?
With a rough draft of “Milkboy” complete, it’s time for some editing and planning. I hope to record the story on the 24th or 25th, and then put it all together for an October 2 release date.
This should be a more interesting week, so here’s hoping next week’s update is a bit more lively than this one!
Until then…be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
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