“Grinding”, if you aren’t familiar with the term, refers to doing something repetitive, tedious and laborious over an extended period of time with the intent of achieving something more, something greater. In gaming, that’s often gaining enough XP to reach the next level of a skill or acquiring enough gold to purchase a facility to mine more gold. In real life, it’s called ‘Business As Usual’.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the acronym BAU. Not only does it sound like a dog that can’t get to the end of a proper bark, it makes light of just how monstrous the everyday grind actually is. It hides the hell of getting lost in the same crap, day in, day out, to the point where you don’t even remember what you did the day before, let alone what day it is now.
On top of that, the level and intensity can change dramatically, so where one week might be a mild drudge, the next can be a full-blown exercise in cognitive overload, where you spend your waking hours shambling about like a drunken zombie, clumsily fulfilling all of your duties, only to crash into bed in a daze, wondering just where your life went. Or if you ever had one to begin with.
These past six months have been especially difficult. Fulfilling all of my duties leaves me with very little time to take care of the other things, the less important things. Things like my health, my spirit and my family. I have a cracked tooth that needs filling. My bike needs a service. In fact, I nearly ran it dry on oil. The garden has weeds. The shed has rats. People need my time and help and there are just so many things to do, that there’s no time for anything else, especially writing.
Even so, by scraping together a few minutes here and there, sometimes ten, sometimes a full half hour, I’ve cobbled up a manuscript, passed it through a second draft and printed it out, ready for the almighty red-pen to have at it.
I’ll be posting here with further updates as things progress. For starters, here’s the working cover for the audiobook:
“Do While True” is slated to be released ‘soon’. What that means exactly, I cannot say with certainty. I had set myself a deadline of May. That was utterly unrealistic in hindsight. Without deadline, nothing gets done, so I might as well try again now that things have settled some.
For a proper deadline for print, audio and eBook, ‘Do While True’ will be released worldwide on Saturday, 12th of September. There, I said it. Lock it in, save the date, and I’ll work even harder to get this out to you all on time.
