Good morning John, it’s Thursday!

So, as I mentioned very briefly in my last video, I finished a draft of my book. But what does that mean?

It means that there are a hundred and forty-something thousand words in a document, and there’s a beginning, and a middle, and an end.

Are they the words that are gonna be in the final book? Some of them, almost definitely.

I went to see Tommy Orange, who wrote There There last night.  He gave like a Q&A at the University of Montana, and at one point in the talk, he referred to himself as a kind of duality.  There are times when he's a writer and there's times when he's a revisionist and that's a completely different job.  The one last thing that he said that really resonated with me about writing, and I can't remember exactly how he said it, but basically, you have to be a reader of your own work, and you have to experience it that way.  You have to, just like with music or with any other art, you have to try and experience the thing you made and in that process, enjoy your own work, and I have started revising and I really enjoy this story.  It's a mess, but I think it's gonna be good.  

So I'm gonna answer some questions about writing and about the book specifically that I got on Twitter.

@notagain127: "Any question other than "WHEN IS IT OUT?" is irrelevant."  

H: I don't know.  It's much sooner now that I've finished a draft, though.  Lots of things still need to get done.  I have a lot of people read my work before I publish it, so I don't know.  What I do know is that it's happening, at least.

Brittany wants to know @LoveBRD85: "Am I going to cry?"  Well, I cried in the Chipotle as I was finishing writing the book.

@mother_fickle: "What is the title of your new book?  Are you allowed to say yet?"  No.  I'm not.  As soon as I know for sure, I'll tell you, because what I don't want to do is be like, what about this?  And you'd be like, I hate it.  I want to be like, this is it and then you won't tell me if you hate it because that's mean.

@Michell87898581: "How many pages?"  The first book is 300 and 30-something pages long, this book will probably be over 400.  I hope it's okay.  It's a more involved story.  A lot more happens.  You get a lot more points of view, if you know what I mean.

Jennifer (@jjpdg) wants to know if it's gonna be a trilogy, it's not.  This is it.  

LifeGeek wants to know @LifeGeek99 "When is your deadline?"  My deadline was October 2nd and I missed it and then I imposed on myself an artificial deadline of Pizzamas because Pizzamas.

Nat asks, @Captainnat3: "Are there any McElroy references in the book?"  I mean, probably, but maybe I'll go back and add one just for you.  I will say there's a lot of Keanu references.

@RachaelLFox "Is Despacito in this book?"  See, now this is the problem.  Now I wanna add Despacito into the book.

Kate asks @kittykate2332 "Have any current events or development in the social media internet discourse world changed the structure or focus of the sequel or given you a different perspective compared to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing?"  Great question.  Yeah, totally.  The first book was very much about what the internet is like right now or was like a couple years ago, and this book is attempting to think about what the social internet might be like pretty far in the future.  The book doesn't take place far in the future, but the world is much more different in this book than it is from our world in the first book.  If that makes any sense at all.   Hopefully it will make sense when you read the book.

@veronicaleigh01 "What color will the cover be?"  I think it's gonna be orange.

@raspberryotter "Any new characters joining the main gang?"  Yes?  Yes.

@IsabelleHosek "What's been the hardest thing with this book?" As I have alluded to, the book is written from multiple perspectives, so like, a bunch of the previous characters are now point of view characters.  They are writing the book themselves.  This, it turns out, is hard.  Voice is difficult and to have like, to store like, four, five different peoples' voices in my head?  I have had to learn a lot.  Which is great, I mean, that's part of why I like making any art is thinking really hard about it, learning how it works, watching other people do it really well, knowing you're never gonna do it that well but then trying anyway.

And Mampfmonster asks @DasMampfmonster "How do you feel?" and I feel really good, like, there were times that I didn't.  It was stressful a lot.  There was a lot of nights put in, but I feel like I got better at stuff while I worked on it and so far, I'm enjoying reading it as a revisionist and I hope that it will hit your bookshelves sometime within the next 12 months.  We'll just say that.

John, I'll see you on Friday.