Hello, friends! Things that I’ve been worried about for months will be settled for good or for ill on Monday. I know at least a little of what is about to happen and while it settles some anxiety it causes new anxiety. I’ve considered calling former students to arms (not literal) for months now but haven’t. It will not help. But since I tend to have a dark view on things, I’m doing my best to pull back and try to remain positive. I have done what I could, and I will do what I’ll have to, but for now, things are out of my hands. That’s education in the 21st century.
What I can control, somewhat, is my writing and creativity. So that’s what I’m happy to focus on here. So….
Welcome to the 63rd installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and entertaining myself with my own writing.
And you’re probably sitting there wondering how you can get me to write more.
Well, becoming a Patron on my Patreon, where I write about things in more detail than I do in the newsletter or on my website, including the actual names of my works-in-progress and not just codenames, would certainly help. The lowest tier for Patreon is $1. Check it out: if every social media follower I had did the $1 tier, I could write more and pay my bills better. The same would happen if they bought copies of my books.
You can also buy me a coffee through Ko-Fi.
Echoes on the Pond is out now! Grab a copy, if you haven’t already. If you have bought it already, books make great gifts! And if you’ve read Echoes on the Pond, I’d also really love (and appreciate) it if you’d leave a nice review on Amazon or Goodreads.
You can also get my collection Catalysts or my novellas Alice on the Shelf and Shadowed.
Anyway, let’s do this!
***
Wednesday saw me finishing the most recent revision of Project: MG Space Adventure I. In the end, the sixth draft weighs in at 30,250 words, or 133 pages. It was really a shine and polish more than anything. Adding a word here, removing a word there, making a long paragraph two (or three) smaller paragraphs, and maybe clarifying a few small things. The one thing that I did that was fun was add a name or two that didn’t exist until I wrote the third book.
With the first volume completed (again), Thursday night I started the revising/rewriting for the third draft of Project: MG Space Adventure II. I’ve been pretty tired these last few nights so I’ve only worked about half an hour on the books and have gotten through about 19 pages. This one requires a little more work than the first book so it take a little longer to get through. We’ll see. Right now, Project: MG Space Adventure II weighs in at 30,030 words, or around 137 pages. We’ll see what the end will bring.
It’s been a lot of fun diving back into this world. It’s a world (or universe) of adventure. I’m writing books I would’ve liked as a kid and I enjoy the hell out of them.
***
I began writing Project: MG Space Adventure I for my eleven-year-old daughter G. When she was much younger, she was aware that Daddy wrote books but that they were for grown-ups. She asked me to write a book for her.
Luckily, I had a story.
As I sat down to write the story, even though G was in the forefront of my mind, the book quickly became a story for me. I’m not surprised. It’s a story that takes place on a distant planet with an alien race, strange creatures, an evil empire, a robot, and there’s a lot of adventure. It’s everything I would’ve wanted in a story as a kid. It’s a lot of what I like now.
In many ways, this is a way for me to write a Star Wars story without writing a Star Wars story.
In his masterclass of a book, On Writing, Stephen King writes that first drafts are meant to be written with the door closed. This means that it belongs solely to the writer. This is the draft that I consider myself playing with action figures. Anything goes.
As I wrote Project: MG Space Adventure I, the story raced along and it did something that almost never happens in my first drafts: it was shorter than I would’ve liked. Luckily, it was easy to “find” more story that I must’ve missed during the next excavation (to steal another King metaphor for writing).
That’s what second drafts and beyond are about: writing with the door open. In other words, considering the readers. In this case, there was one reader in particular that I was thinking of: G.
Funny enough, as she’s gotten older, she has become very hard on books. She loves reading but she has high standards. One of her teachers she took through OutSchool loved that about her. She didn’t love everything they read and she had legitimate reasons. She didn’t care if the book was supposed to be great, if it didn’t appeal to her, she despised it. The fact that she still loves the MG Space Adventure stories tells me that I’m doing something right.
And if you think that she loves them because I’m writing them for her, here’s a story from this week:
Right now I’m reading the third book aloud to her and Pamela. Called Project: MG Space Adventure III, I thought it was a nice bookend to Project: MG Space Adventure I. At one point, G says, “You should change the title.”
“Why? It’s a good bookend.”
“I dunno. It’s cheesy.”
She roasted Project: MG Space Adventure III.
As an adult and writer, I don’t need to listen to her advice.
But…
She’s the target audience, right? So guess who’s trying to come up with a new title?
Either way, the books may have started with her in mind, but they quickly became stories for me and by that measure, they became better for her. And for any other reader.
***
Okay, that’s this week’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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