I finished The Boyfriends Tie the Knot on Thursday and actually took the weekend off. (Happy belated Pride, Pride-goers! Kid and I and one of her de facto aunties took off for the beach for our annual Pride weekend beach trip in lieu of going to the parade this year. Maybe next year. Maybe.) TBTTK is the seventh and final official story in the Scientific Method series, and you’ll all see it on August 6.

It’s left me in a strange creative lull, like when you paddle out beyond the waves forming and hit this stillness on the water. The Scientific Method has been my creative universe for the better part of the last year. I wrote a novel I call Manhattan Ghost Story, and another for Goodreads called Going Home during the last twelve months, but nearly everything else has been Scientific Method-based.

And now? That world is going–not silent. Not ever silent. But I’m driving out of range of that particular creative frequency, and tuning into others, and it’s good, but it’s also a little bit freaky.

The first rule of author blogs is don’t talk about writing. Blah. As if writers don’t read and readers don’t write. As if people who don’t write fiction don’t care about the creative process. My brother doesn’t write fiction. He bakes and he builds. And both of those processes are hyper-creative. Both include revision and revamping and evaluation. Whatevs. If you don’t care, totally cool. If you do anything creative, this might be interesting to you.

Having now determined that I’m fucking around here because it’s fun, and that even if I knew how to have a more “authory” blog, I’m not sure what to talk about (hey, if you read this and have questions/topics/podcast or blog ideas, do share), let’s move on to what I’m about to fuck around with.

Ending on a preposition. For shame.

I backed a Kickstarter project called “Fiction Unboxed,” which is a deal brought about by the fellas from the Self Publishing Podcast. These guys write fiction, and this project is them writing a novel in a month. Live. Like, you see the story meetings where they brainstorm the ideas, and you see the beats, and you see the rough draft, and you see (by far my favorite part) the edits. God. I love watching people’s brains work. And the editing/revision process is endlessly fascinating to me.

So I don’t have a collaborator with whom to have story meetings and I’m not posting rough draft because the idea makes my skin crawl, but one thing that Johnny B Truant says on the Self Publishing Podcast early on in Fiction Unboxed is that he learns a lot about his writing process by actually writing about it daily.

And I’m thinking, well shit. I could do that. Maybe no one else would care, but I geek out on this shit. I geek out on creative process stories, even if it’s about songwriting or painting or programming. (Creative process geeks may enjoy the book Spending by Mary Gordon, which is about a painter. Another good geeky process novel is My Name is Asher Lev, also about painting.) I love writers who write about creation.

I’m a writer. And I’m about to start a rough draft. A first draft. The second first draft I’ve written since beginning to publish in February. (Going Home, the first first draft, will be out from Goodreads as part of the 2014 Loves Landscapes Anthology. I’ll keep you posted. I can’t wait to write the sequel, if folks like the first one. Or maybe even if they don’t care. The sequel wants to be written, kind of a lot.)

I’m about to write a romance novel. I’m scared, a bit, because I’ve been mired in Will and Hugh and Truman for a year now. The first drafts for all but the Scientific Method Miniseries were written a year ago and fully re-written since January. I knew where all those stories were going when I sat down to write them. I used to rewrite every single word in my second drafts. It was an excellent way to approach second drafts/revisions, but I don’t do it anymore. As my first drafts are cleaner, it’s easier to roll with it.

Right now? Starting from zero.

I don’t know where this is gonna go, but I’m planning to blog first draft process for a bit here, and see where it gets me. Again: because I motherfucking love this shit. So. There’s that to look forward to, fellow geeks.

I’ll give geek warnings for this so people who don’t bleeding care can avoid these posts. But seriously, I’m a little exciting.

Oh, also: ROLLER COASTERS is out this week! Hoooooooray! I don’t know why I love this story so much, but I really, really do. I hope you guys dig it, too.