Week 709

What’s this? I’m blogging about my work on a weekly basis – a simple way to track and archive whatever it is I spend my time on.

I’m proud to report that after a weeklong writing sprint, I had a nearly complete linear version of my new novel De verdwijners on Sunday night. There’s some rough spots and obvious holes left, and I haven’t quite figured out the ending yet (I thought I had, but I was wrong), which I’ll be working on for the next one or two weeks, after which I’ll submit the official first draft to my publisher.

Other than that, I worked on some mockups for Bashers.nl, trying to figure out what the site should look like. (I hope to build it when my book is done, to let the left side of my brain loose for once, instead of the right side. Or is the other way around? Or should I talk about System 1 and System 2, Kahneman style? Or do I actually use both aspects of my mind when immersed in a creative process, and is it just reinvigorating to work on design, HTML and CSS after all that writing?)

On Wednesday I took the train to Amersfoort and met with Bram Ruiter, filmmaker extraordinaire, then went to Two Tribes, where they’re making serious progress on Toki Tori 2. That night I visited Kars Alfrink, who gave me the idea to do weeknotes. We talked business and played Spelunky.

On Thursday, I watched preview versions of the first two (out of five) The Spiral episodes. It’s a Belgian-Dutch-Scandinavian thriller drama that will be broadcast across Europe in September, about an idealistic street artist and an elaborate art heist. The show comes with an ARG style web game, and I was asked by Dutch broadcaster VARA to watch the show, play the game, talk to the creators, and report on everything. On Friday I wrote my first blog post, detailing my motivation to do this.

Also on Friday, I wrote a new proposal for a book that’s been on the shelf for a while, an essay bundle that came out of Bashers.nl years ago.

Finally, it’s full-on summer now, and I love it. I love how everything slows down, I love how I can gather some strength in the morning, then take shelter in the afternoon and put a couple thousand words on the paper. And those hotpants! That always remind me of that one crazy The Simpsons episode!