This will be the first in a new series of posts. Just like my Cub Report tags, whenever I write a post about the progress of my novel, I’ll use novel news as the tag category. Yes, this means I’m still moving on the novels.
I took my turn-based novel off the sidebar, and began working on finishing steps to get it ready for release as an e-book a while ago.
It’s been a while, and I haven’t talked about the project because it’s been stuck in my head.
All the pieces were there, I liked the story, I love the characters, everything was in place and just waiting on me to give it that push.
And I was stalled dead in the water.
My first issue was, I have come to like the main characters. I’ve heard it said by other writers that the main characters can come alive in your mind, they become real people, and you no longer write about them so much as get down on the page what they really do. They take over with a very real life of their own.
Jessie did that. She is as real as anyone else, at least to me. I feel I know her heart very well, and what she has already endured actually brought me to tears towards the end of the last section I had written and published here.
But Terin had also come to life.
I no longer wanted to write the book I was writing, because I wanted both of them to have their OWN series. They both demanded from me their own time as the entire focus of the story. I didn’t want to keep switching back and forth. I wanted it all, and right now.
Well, I know who’s in charge here. I put my foot down. I have a story to tell, and they’re just going to have to deal with it.
Funny, the story kind of stalled there. Kind of like Terin and Jessie were both pouting… or holding out, each expecting me to cave. Grr.
But I knew I could work through it if I just thought about it. A perfect solution would come to me.
But then, I realized something worse was happening.
I was no longer happy with anything I had written.
Oh, when I read it over, it seemed fine. Lots of editing to make, obviously, tons of things to clean up and cut down and polish. But that wasn’t it. Something was fundamentally wrong with my story.
I finally had a brief, shining moment of revelation tonight.
The problem is, it’s not MY story!
No, not that it was a collaboration. nothing like that. My friends Manny and James did a great job on directing the behavior of their characters, that wasn’t the issue.
The problem was that I wasn’t writing a story wholly in my voice and style, I was trying to give my friends a game experience, a story setting and word style that would make them comfortable.
I was bending my own inclinations in writing and trying to intentionally write ‘heroic fantasy’.
Seriously, is that what I actually write here? Is that what my strengths are? Hell no!
I have done a quick re-read of some sections, and now I see the parts I like best, that flow best for me, are those that I wrote with my own voice breaking out of the mold briefly for what I thought I could get away with, before returning to more ‘traditional’ story elements.
Well, shit.
Blogger, take thine own advice. I’ve got a voice, and it’s the voice I’m comfortable with. That’s the voice I need to use in writing the books!
So… already, the story is falling into place in my head. It’s a whole new beginning. Jessie and Terin are the same, the basic foundation of the story is the same, but how it’s going to be told, and what happens along the way…
Maybe Terin and Jessie knew what they were telling me after all.
I have some ideas. I have some seriously exciting ideas that are sparking all kinds of boomfizzle in my brain, I just coined that word. It seems awesome from the inside but may be pathetic when out for the world to see.
I’m eager to find out how this goes, and I hope you’ll all come along for the ride.
