Jeffries is coming along slowly as ever, and it’s getting frustrating seeing as I know where I want the story to go, but not how to get there. I’m struggling to fill in gaps where I’d like there to be more without screwing up the storyline too badly, and even when I do get something to fit, it doesn’t seem quite as good as the rest of what surrounds it. Naturally it’s cause I poured over everything already there, but still. Makes me feel inferior to my own writing, somehow. I’m close to reaching the point where I can start extending the end of the novel rather than filling out the middle, and I think once I get there the going should be easier. Or at least, easier to avoid comparing the new content to the previous. I’m at about 45,000 words now, so only another 35,000 to go. Yay.
Besides Jeffries, I’ve done some beta reading for friends, explored some new concepts I’ve been thinking about for a while, and took a step into a completely new frontier by purchasing a bunch of parts to build a robot. Ok, well it’s not like I just dove in the deep end. For the last six months or so I’ve been working through beginner circuitry projects from an Arduino kit. Combine this with my slight obsession with 3D printing useless junk, and hey presto, now I have the undeniable desire to build a robot. What sort of robot? Well first I’m just gonna get a box with a couple of wheels to move around, kinda useless, but eventually I’d like to build and compete with a battle robot similar to the ones you might find here:
There’s a local in September that I’d like to join, so if the robot is functioning by then I’ll call if a win.
I like to branch out and take on projects other than writing to find some inspiration for new stories every once in a while like I did when I built a neural network from scratch. I’m hoping this project will turn into a longer lasting hobby than that one did though. Once all the parts get here and I cobble something together I’ll be sure to post some pictures!
Thank you for reading,
Benjamin Hawley
Dangerous Day Job 