A change in projects is a new chapter in one’s writing life. A new chapter can even be a return to something left off or set aside. And so my page has turned once again.
After a year of working on a new novel, it’s time to return to the one I let rest: The Brick.
I’m in an editing phase where I’m both making structural edits and, for parts that don’t need major rewriting, working on cleaning up details and adding better descriptions, all while looking up any questions I had set aside for “later research.” There’ll be even more intentional line-by-line rewriting in a future draft, but first I need all those questions answered and major structural changes to be completed.
I’ve also been having fun filming for YouTube, but not so much fun editing videos. It seems that after a couple of crashes where I was forced to reinstall Windows, my computer no longer wants to cooperate when trying to edit videos. The software is the same and the amount of memory available is actually more than pre-crashing, yet there’s all sorts of issues arising that weren’t there before. So what I’m filming is raw and unable to be edited for the moment. Perhaps in the future I’ll get some of these stabs at vlogging edited and up on the internet.
In lieu of YouTubing, I gazed questioningly upon my dormant Instagram account that I had created through my Facebook author page and decided it was time to wake it up. Nope, my few existent Insta posts weren’t done on an app, but from a web browser, using Facebook’s business suite thingy. I’ve had a smartphone for only around a month.
Yes, I finally joined the masses. I started with a used hunk of junk that had belonged to my sister-in-law. It was pretty broken, like I couldn’t hear anyone unless I had them on speakerphone. I got this smartphone for a trip to San Francisco, using it to get San Fran public transportation apps and for a secondary map app (which came in handy when the compass for the map app on my wife’s phone went on the fritz).
And now I have downloaded my first social media app: Instagram.
M original intention was to advertise my “Hello, Author” interviews on Instagram through crossposting on Facebook.
Turns out Facebook is finicky as fuck about crossposting. Posting to Instagram using FB’s business suite on web browser wasn’t going to work in a headache-free kind of way.
So I got the Instagram app.
And what I’ve discovered is that there’s a huge book-loving and Insta-writing community. I like it. Plus there’s every opportunity to use it as a creative outlet.
Randal Eldon Greene 