As I continue to take my guitar and my protest song around town (and the state) I have been deep in what I’m calling my “First Drafts Summer.”

I don’t know about your writing process, but I very often get mired in the ‘notes’ stage where I keep gathering more and more information and ideas, then stashing them in too many different spots: a Scrivener file, in various folders on one of my three computers, in the ‘Google Keep’ app of more than one email address,  in the ‘EverNote’ app on my phone, on scraps of paper scattered around my home… you get the idea. So many notes in so many places (all for the same project) that just organizing those is a process all by itself. A classic example: I have discovered I have 120,000 words of ‘notes’ for a novel that, when completed would probably only be about 80,000 words.

To that end, I spent a good part of the spring organizing notes & info on several projects and have spent most of this summer launching re-writes and “official” first drafts. So far I have managed to finish one new half-hour spec pilot that has needed a page one rewrite for at least 2 years, I have started drafting a long-delayed short film script and, finally and at long last, an official ‘1st draft’ of that novel with the 120k-worth of notes.

Stay at the keyboard, everyone.

…well, probably not this kind.