Writing Update

A lot of people have been asking about the progress so far on my beer trip. Currently I’m back in Des Moines, the trip is over, and I started writing the book about my journey early last week.

The book is going to be split into chapters based on the cities I was in. Some chapters such as the one on Little Rock, Arkansas will be short (I only spent one afternoon in town at one brewery). Some, such as the Saint Louis chapter, will be much longer. While in Saint Louis I made it to six breweries and did interviews at each one.

Within each chapter I will be talking about what I did in the cities, the history of the breweries I visited, I will include parts of the interviews I conducted, some of the beer related history of the city, general stories from my travels, and a few other goodies.

After getting started I was already having some serious issues working on the first chapter on the topic of homebrewing. I got myself into a cycle of writing a few pages and then starting to edit. By edit I mean deleting absolutely everything I had written and starting from scratch again. It’s a nasty cycle to be in, even worse than writer’s block. Too many ideas, too many different ways to start, it’s not pretty.

Yesterday afternoon I had an epiphany; I didn’t have to start from chapter one. Instead I began writing about my trip to Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City and Free State Brewing in Lawrence, KS and so far it has been incredibly productive. In fact, things are rolling along so nicely that I’m going to get back to it right now!

One last thing, don’t forget to check out the facebook page for All Hopped Up. I’ve been putting up pictures from each stop of the beer trip.