The project started on September 10. I don’t know what came over me. I wasn’t planning on writing a book. While I’ve wanted to write about this subject (artificial intelligence) for years, this particular story came out of nowhere. I’ve spent 35 days on the novel so far. (Saturdays don’t count. I never work Saturdays.) As of this writing, the book is 120,000 words long. That means I’ve been averaging 3,400 words a day.
This is a phenomenal pace for me. My Mass Effect series is about the same length, and that thing took me months. Same goes for Witch Watch. If I could write at this pace every day, I’d be able to give you 12 long-form articles a week. (Again, ignoring the fact that that I don’t write or post on Saturday.)
One of the strange things about writing this fast is that I never got to the “I’m so sick of this project I can’t stand to look at it anymore” phase. Which means I never went through the “this is garbage and I’ve just wasted months of my life” period. I haven’t entered the period of fatigue and self-doubt. I’m still enthusiastic about the project. Because I’m still in the honeymoon phase, I have this feeling like I’ve just completed the best writing of my life. It feels pretty good. I’m sure the crippling self-doubt will set in later, but for now I’m going to enjoy the unwarranted optimism.
What is it?
It’s a cyberpunk / noir / mystery thing. No, it’s not inspired by Blade Runner 2049, although I did see it in theaters and I really enjoyed it.
When is it coming out?
I have no idea. Editing is like debugging. It’s no fun, it takes longer than you expect, and no matter how much time you spend on it you’ll probably miss a bunch of stuff anyway.
I bring this up because the blog is running a little low on content. I’m used to having stuff queued up a few weeks in advance, but this coming week is the last of my prepared content. On Tuesday we’re going to have the Batman v. Superman post that accidentally went up for a couple of hours last week. I have the Borderlands stuff written, although the upcoming posts could really do with another editing passAnd if I work really hard, maybe I can remember to put the page break into one of them so it doesn’t all wind up on the front page.. I’m not playing any games so I don’t have anything to write about, even if I wasn’t pouring all my energy into the book.
I’m hoping I can finish the story before the blog runs dry, but this is a heads up that things might be a little thin around here. If some of the posts next week seem like they were dashed off at the last minute, it’s probably because exactly that.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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