The Grind

We write, all day, everyday. If we're not writing fiction we're working on history, or this blog, or the wargames we design.

We've gotten up, written for a couple of hours and then buried close relatives. 

It's what we do.

It may not be a real job, but man its a grind.

We could never work this hard at the job before. The implosion of our professorial career doubled the available time we had to write. We've taken advantage.

This year has been the hardest we've ever worked as a writer. Hard in that we've cranked out something like 300,000 words and hard in that its been tough to write those 300,000 words and tough to edit. ANZACs is done of course, so is the Final Storm, so is The Austrian Painter. Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom is almost done.

Right now we're going through the last, absolute most final draft of World War 1990: ANZACs and it absolutely sucks. We've read this thing a hundred times. We've written, re-written, edited, re-edited, proofread, re-proofread and are now re-re-proofreading. All for a novel that did not turn out the way we wanted and frankly we have doubts about. And still a few typos will sneak through.

And when this is done we're going to turn around and it all over again for World War 1990: The Final Storm.

That's the gig.

This is pretty accurate