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***
# Øutput 4

Here we go.

It's 05:45 as I write this. It's another one of these wonderful little slices of time we refer to as days. Another one? Yes, and there's more to come. 

I hope.

It was the hottest day of the year yesterday. 

It seemed that the city of Manchester took that as a challenge as it fought back with one of the biggest storms I've ever been trapped inside of in my life. 

I found myself sat in a café working on the novel as the world outside turned to a cacophony of rain, thunder, and people complaining about their wet socks.

I didn't mind. I was busy. I'm trying to get the first draft of this novel done by the end of this week and right now I'm in the process of changing the final act. It's a lot of reading, rewriting, and shifting. It feels like I'm turning a barge with a pedalo. 

So anyway, as I'm working so hard on this book right now, I thought it might be about time I reasserted my *why* and reminded myself of what I'm aiming to do before the year is out.

On the top level I have my ***compass points***. The places I'm aiming to get to but I'm open to a little serendipity along the way. These points are a little airy-fairy whoozy-boozy non-concrete get-a-real-job!

**Tell stories that are loved all over the world**
**Become financially free**
**Make the family proud and happy**
**Launch a giant metal pig into space** *(I'll explain some day)*.

That's my **WHY**.

Now here's the **WHAT** for the rest of the year.

1.) Publish ***PROJECT DAN***.
2.) Publish Hipster 3 (first draft done).
3.) Do A 7-Day Story Challenge (scheduled).
4.) Crowdfund campaign for H&C.
5.) Do an online writing craft course (I've not done any in a while).
6.) Run a 10k race.
7.) Move into our own place (Oh wait ... DONE!)

So we got four months left?

... I better get back to work.

***

# What I'm reading

***Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit***  by *Steven Pressfield*.

***On finding his voice.***
“What helped, oddly enough, were my own letters. This was back in the days when people wrote letters. I’d write long ones to my friends. When I’d read them over, fixing typos, I’d stop sometimes and say, “Wow, that sounds like me.”

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***PROJECT365***
**A new story idea every single day.**
Check out the previous ideas [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vnnixRyaRrbCGFH-0anbTXzOM6y2Go1jReWWrguUJTk/edit)

IDEA 106: When a young boy meets a rainbow-skinned time traveler and his sentient time machine called Yeastease he believes he's in luck. Finally, adventure!

And the time traveler agrees. He's willing to take him to distant lands, to go as far back as the dinosaurs, and further into the future than he could ever imagine, but he has to agree that he will never see his family again. 

He agrees.

So then the time traveler takes the child away and they go off for their adventures, but ... something isn't right. The time traveler isn't who he says he is and he doesn't care for adventure whatsoever.
***
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