Bitchin'


The other Chase Winter

I'm just kinda bitchin' again. This time it's a bit later than last. This is again a brain to finger to screen type beat, only this time my brain is totally dead. 

What did I do today? Well, I woke up at my regular time and went to buy groceries so I could make a big ole beef roast. I cooked it for five hours in the oven. Around three in the afternoon, my stomach grumbled like a volcano so I decided to make some rice while I waited. The rice turned out well. During all of this, I've been reading and editing my book. I have pen marks on my ears and sticky notes glued to every other page in the book. I'm glad I bought a new red pen for this; my other one wouldn't have made it past chapter one. 

It's an odd thing to look back at the beginning of a project. I don't know how most people write, but I try to stay in a chronological order for the most part. I write the beginning, then I work through it to the end. If I get stuck on a scene, I write a different scene and move on. Then I get back to it. If I worry about being SO FUCKING STRICT about writing in order, then I can't write. Because what's art with order? Impossible. 

Even now as I recount what I was going to say, I can't type properly. 

A fun thing I did today was I got a subscription for Speechify. It's a program that you can upload PDFs to and listen to them. Guess what I'm doing? I'm listening to my book. I'll be honest, I didn't know what to expect. To hear my work recounted back to me is pretty cool, and weird as well. I'm picking up on subtleties that I didn't notice when I was writing it. Unintentional design consistencies. As I was wrapping it up, I was in a writing trance for about a month, and I haven't read it since. I'm very excited to see how it feels now. I guess we'll see. 

I now remember what I was going to say. The odd thing about looking back at the project's beginnings is the development I had along the way in my skills. I began the book in the middle of June (broken record Chase, stop saying this every fucking time you write on here) and ended it in October. Those first twenty to thirty thousand words are not as polished as the other ones. It's not bad by any means, and quite frankly it sounds good, but I noticed I use too many participles back to back, leading to a flat tone at times where it should not be flat. 

When I'm done this round of editing, I'm going to be asking a few people to read it for $20. If you want to be one of those people, reach out. 

All the best, 

C. A. Winter

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