first draft runtime

So, I'm in a state of a perpetual first draft. I started doing this because like, for my job, there are these long stretches of downtime and I don't really have a laptop anymore so I'd just bring a notebook for a first draft and scrawl away. Lately, though I haven't been bringing the notebook--I'll bring a book to read, and once or twice I even wrote some on my rewrite of the WM3 project, and so my current first draft, which I do really have fun with, has been taking a while to write.

I'm putting pages on it. I'm at about 14k right now, and I'm slowly fumbling my way through finding a plot. This was, like most of my first drafts, born out of a concept. And, also like most of my recent projects, there is a heavy musical, mostly heavy metal, influence, because I am currently incapable of writing anything without mentioning the bands I like, I guess. But this concept is just now sort of building up to a plot, and I still don't really know what's going on. I started this first draft July 13th, so I guess it hasn't been a super long time, I just feel like I've been working on this draft for forever.

But I'm enjoying it. I'm having a lot of fun with it. I don't know if I'm going to start another first draft after this one is done. Of course, that's what I thought with the draft before this one--I gave it a weekend and then I started feeling weird that I didn't have a first draft to work on, so I started this one. But what I would be doing is the fourth book in the Metallica project, and I'm currently rewriting book one, so I probably won't do that. So we'll see, I guess?

Some other things I've been into:

• I've gotten... weirdly into Guns'n'Roses? Like I don't even know, Steven Adler's just been on my Instagram enough and he's the light of my life so I have a tape of "Appetite For Destruction" on the way. 
• I made a mistake tape-wise, by the way. Bought way too much. It started when I was listening to Spotify and a W.A.S.P. song I really like came on one of my daily mixes, I realized, hey, I don't listen to w.a.s.p. enough, I started listening to some W.A.S.P., I realized that the only W.A.S.P. tapes I own are the "Fuck Like a Beast" single and "Inside the Electric Circus", so that started a spiral. 
• I'm getting new glasses! Had my appointment yesterday, my prescription's a little off, my glasses were looking real beat up, so I went and had an exam and picked out some new ones and so those should be here in 7-10 business days. Also, can I say: thank the fucking lord for vision insurance. 
• I'm reading The Grapes of Wrath right now and holy hell every time I read something by John Steinbeck, I dunno, maybe it's just the English major in me coming out but goddam that man understands humanity in its most desperate times more than any other author that has ever walked the goddam planet. 

So that's that. First drafts, Guns'n'Roses, here you go.