As I wrote at my other blog, I’ve been marking time in my writing. I’m waiting on tweaks on one cover and making a decision on another. I’m not sure where to go next with book-length works, and even have been uncertain about writing more articles for Decoded Science. So I’ve been marking time.
Monday was the meeting of our BNC Writers. As usual it was just Bessie and me. I shared another chapter in The Gutter Chronicles, and we went over her proposal and two chapters of her missions book. She had the words pretty much down. Now it’s just down to formatting before she could send it to a beta reader. We agreed to meet at the library Wednesday evening after I got off work and before we needed to be at church and do what we could on formatting. We did; I taught her some of the fine points of Word; between us we completed the formatting; and she sent it on to the beta reader.
All of this gave me a case of Sidelines Syndrome. I wanted to be writing. Yet I didn’t know what I should be writing. I went home after church Wednesday determined to work on writing. In my folder was chapter 12 of The Gutter Chronicles. That felt good, going through those five pages, reviewing it as author, content editor, line editor, and proofreader, all in two reads. In less than an hour I was done.
On Thursday I typed the changes. Today, Friday, I sent it out to four beta readers in the office. Feedback from one suggests it’s a hit. So on my noon hour I began work on Chapter 13. Chapter 15, the end of the novella, is already written and edited, so only chapters 13 and 14 remain before the book is done. I anticipate at completion it will be about 30,000 words.
It won’t actually be done then. I have much to do on the early chapters, which were written several years ago. I don’t think I’ve written much about The Gutter Chronicles on this blog, so maybe I’d better now. The full title is The Gutter Chronicles: The Continuing Saga of Norman D Gutter, Engineer. It is a spoof on the civil engineering business. It places a newly engineer, Norman D. Gutter, in his first professional job. He is in a company, I.C.E. Engineering, that is busy, profitable, and quite dysfunctional. His first supervisor is a flake, appropriately named Ned O. Justice. The H.R. lady is Minnie Mize, efficient but aloof. The IT Manager is Data, the man at the next desk is Peter Pan…you get the picture.
Norman begins his professional career hounded the executive administrative assistant, the flirtatious Malinda Mays, who is always coming on to him. In accounting he can never seem to meet J.J. Weast. Working projects in the City of Appleville causes him to interact with the city engineer, Chowdahead. Whenever Norman has to deal with a contractor it’s Klaus E. Nuff Construction; when he deals with a surveyor it’s Proximate Survey, whose project manager is Rod Holder. Nuff’s attorney is Ira Cheatum of the law firm Dewey, Cheatum & Howe. Oh, wait, I don’t introduce them in the first volume.
Every so often Norman has a dream, wherein he is transported to some point in the past as Togerther The Great. He’ll help Agamemnon win the Trojan War, Hafentafenhottenpot build the Pyramid of Khafre, and in future volumes the Chinese emperor to plan the Great Wall, Herod the Great to build the moles at Caesarea, and others of the past build their monuments to history.
The name Norman D Gutter? I’ll have to explain that in a future post.
Today I wrote 1,000 words on Chapter 13. I’ve thought about this chapter for a long time, and so when I finally began to write it the words flowed quickly. It should be close to the same for chapter 14, the second dream. With any luck I’ll have this first volume of The Gutter Chronicles done in a week, edited over the two following that, and published in mid-October. The editing will be complicated and intricate, since I started writing this about six or seven years ago, got through the first eleven chapters, and let it sit. I need to make sure the early chapters and later chapters are in agreement.
I’m going to do the cover myself: just a photograph of my computer screen at work with the book title and credit, with some of my work station showing on all sides.
I’m back in the game.