Me Versus Impending Deadlines

150 150 Kaleb Nation

Yoiks, it’s been over a week since I have posted an update, and loads of stuff has been happening. To start off, I just landed an interview with a very famous author, who happens to own the number 1 spot on the New York Times, and has owned it for nearly a year. I asked half of my questions about the books and the other half about tips for writers. So, look forward to some really cool answers given by my mysterious interview shortly.

In other news, many of you probably know me by now as The TwilightGuy, thanks to Stephenie Meyer and her glorious millions of fans and readers (I think my Official Fan ID Number is #4,546,768– I got in on it late). Well, after three months of painstakingly slow reading, with my TwilightGuy.com commentary on each chapter, I’ve finished the first book in the series, and I’m now moving on to the sequel, New Moon, as evidenced in the following photos:

My professional portrait photographer, who only appears to be a broken lamp-pole converted into a tripod and a self-timing camera, posed a nearby gnome with my newly-purchased book:

Gnome Loves New Moon

The TwilightGuy website has been an enormous success so far, thanks to all the loyal readers and everyone who gave me a chance when I was just starting out. It’s passed 750,000 hits in just 3 short months, with emails in the hundreds and comments in the thousands. And to think the day I bought the site, I thought I was wasting my time.

As for me, I have a new alibi for becoming an increasingly-invisible blogger over here. My new excuse is that I have a deadline for my revisions that is impending. If you don’t know what impending means, think of a steam train rapidly approaching around the bend, while your car is stuck between the crossing guards (people who have read my book snicker here).

Impending

In the above example, the train is impending. My deadline is approaching in a similar fashion, except instead of being brought with steam and locomotion, my deadline is surrounded by the awful, wretched, pounding, abysmal, never-ending beat of the music from the apartment nearby (see, Trolls). Word from someone else on campus is that our resident trolls converted a car stereo into a home sound system. My poor head. Their poor eardrums.

Between beats of their bass box, I have managed to get a lot of revisions done either here or at the cafe. And it is in that I have a confession to make. I, unfortunately, was forced to axe a character.

Oh the woe: this character who was formerly in a scene and now is not. What makes it worse, though, is that I chopped her entire scene clean out. So not only is the character gone, but her car as well- and her sister garbed in purple furs, her sister’s car, and Sewey’s sandwich, and Ben’s sandwich, and Trolan’s sandwich, and the dust bunny Sewey found under the chair and threw at Trolan. All of it is gone, like a bunch of ghosts who will now wander somewhere in the space-time continuum, that were there one second and now suddenly are not. None of you have any clue at all who she is, or rather who she was: but from now until eternity I will be haunted by her ghost when I read the place where she formerly was: Fool! You dare to remove me from the story? Have you no mercy? Feel my wrath!

Luckily, she was an unpleasant character. And, my consolation is that she actually does appear in the second book (if I don’t axe her from that as well), which makes it not like turning her into a ghost, but more like tossing her into jail for a short amount of time: right next to the dozens of other characters I’ve edited from the story over the years. Sometimes, everyone simply does not fit. Chop chop! No character is safe when my editing axe is sharp.

You should be hearing from me again soon, when I get that interview finished. I’m really excited about it.

Author

Kaleb Nation

Kaleb Nation is an author, content creator, and producer of Ask Dr. Drew. With over a decade of experience in viral media production and content marketing – including over 1000 videos and 100,000,000 views – he is a nationally recognized expert on digital culture and social media issues. Kaleb has been featured on CNN, HLN, NPR, ABC, MTV, Mashable, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, and more. Read Kaleb's Story

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