Five chapters written this past week.  And three of those were written on Thursday.  Also, a chapter that I wrote over ten years ago now has a home in the manuscript.

The draft has now reached the 100,000 words mark.  As things stand now it’s looking like it will all fit within 150,000 words, which is the goal.

At the rate this is going the entire first draft will be done by Thanksgiving.

It’s been a lot of effort, but it really is quite something to see this all come together.  I’m soon going to have “written a full length book” notched on my belt. Maybe if this gets published that will give me street cred enough to sell my children’s book too 🙂 ...

Want to know a secret?  I haven’t showered in thirteen days!  I’ve been that determined to work on this project.  If I haven’t been sleeping or job or eating or taking care of and playing with Tammy, I’ve been writing.

I look terrible.  I’ve dry-shaved every few days.  That and brushing my teeth have for the most part been my only hygiene.

But what has come out of that has been amazing.

Twelve chapters written this past week!  But it must be emphasized that these were smaller chapters than most of what have been composed so far.  Still, I’m very happy with the progress made.

I’m still writing this book out of sequence.  But as of yesterday my life from birth up to winter of 2002 has been chronicled as thoroughly as is feasible for a project like this.  And I’ve also got 2016 on through the present day written ...

A little over two years ago I wrote the first chapter of what was going to be the book I had always intended to write.  It’s not one that the reader is supposed to find early on in the tome.  It’s actually a chapter that comes in quite late into the book.

For various reasons I needed to write that one first.  It more or less establishes the tone of the work still to come.

As of a few days ago that first chapter written now has its place in the manuscript as a whole.  I didn’t have to change a thing to it.  It just slid right into place without any mess at all.

It joins five chapters that I’ve been able to finish the first drafts of since a week ago today.

 Well, this turned into something interesting.  My home is in the upstate of South Carolina.  Three days ago the entire western Carolinas region got slammed hard by Hurricane Helene.  I lost power on Friday morning about 7:30 and 77 hours later it still hasn’t been restored.  Based on what I saw on the way to the library in downtown Spartanburg this morning, it may be days if not weeks before power is turned back on 100%.

This was a catastrophe on the same level as Hurricane Katrina.  Our kids will be telling their grandchildren about this one.

So I wasn’t able to work most of the weekend, because power is out.  Until yesterday when I started writing in a notebook with a pen, jotting some thoughts down that will go into further chapters.  It will honestly be able to be said that I worked on this book through a hurricane....

Almost a month ago I posted about the status of my book, something that had been on the back burner of my life for ten years now.  Work on it has taken various forms, there had been progress made only for that to be tossed aside… well, it’s been a mess, not to put TOO fine a point on it.

Things are very, very different now and have been for much of this past year.  A few months ago I had a breakthrough moment and was able to crank out the first few chapters of the story of my life.  That has led to more, and more.

Maybe it will help to keep me on track to post a status of this memoir’s progress, say each week on Sunday.  Perhaps that will encourage me to stay committed.

Here it is as of September 22nd, 22024: so far, not counting the ...