Last night I waged a little internal battle with myself. The self-doubt grabbed hold around my brain and squeezed. I found myself thinking, "this stupid thing isn't working". And of course, if it doesn't work perfectly right away, it's not worth doing at all. So I laid there in bed, fretting about how poorly things where going.
I woke up this morning with the clear understanding that 'this is the process'. It works, its been proven time and again. The writing I've done up to this point is unpolished, and the pacing and structure is messy. By the end this first bit of writing will be unrecognizable to what it is now.
So instead of continuing work on Chapter 3, I assuaged some of my creeping doubt by going back and working on some edits.
I restructured a troublesome conversation in the second chapter, as well as simplified some architectural descriptions. I think this helped.
I did come to a conclusion though. Up until this morning, the idea had been that the story would take part in something like four parts, each consisting of three or four chapters. The first part, which I'm about 70% finished writing, was conceived of as "Feast's solitary journey to the mainland". In outline form, this made sense. Part 1-Introduce Feast and his situation, Part 2-introduce the other characters, etc.. But, having written quite a bit now, spending so much time without a 'sidekick' might not work. With that in mind, I'm thinking of reorganizing some events so that one of the secondary characters gets introduced earlier. Any thoughts?
I will begin posting the rough edit of chapter 2 (as it currently stands) this afternoon.
Progress
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This evening I got comments back from Amanda and my brother regarding the second chapter. Good stuff, solutions to a lot of little problems I had. I'm going to do some editing, then start posting chapter two on Monday.
The seed
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This story actually has a pretty interesting starting point. Back in the summer of 2007 a group of friends and myself decided to create a tabletop RPG. I was new to the whole world of role playing games. Only a few months earlier I'd been asked to participate in a few indie RPG sessions. They were good fun and a great creative outlet. So when I was asked to be involved in starting a large scale ongoing campaign I jumped.
A group of around five friends and myself got together around a bonfire with a couple bottles of wine and some notepads. We chatted about our goals for creating this world. We discussed settings, and themes, and aesthetics. I won't claim to be the person who first brought it up, but I do remember being a loud voice in the conversation. The idea was, sword and sorcery, conan-like world where grit and blood abound, with the twist that the world has a finite lifespan. We came up with several ideas, and settled tentatively on a periodic global flood that devastated the planet. I think we all got really excited when we discovered that the floods were caused by the complicated tidal patterns of a whole mess of moons, thirty or forty of them. Again, I can't claim it was only my idea, but I'll put my flag in it regardless.
So we had this world, and a few kernels of plot, but nothing more. We ended the initial world building session with the assignment to create a character with a brief back story. I went home excited, knowing exactly who I was. The next day I wrote the following:
The Would-Be Vessel
I am Speaker Feast of the Second Mylthaenii Waning. I am one of the few who still believes in the preservation of the old gods naming convention. My birth was witness to the second waning cycle of the minor sub-mother Mylthaenii, an event very few are fortunate enough to experience. Mylthaenii’s many faces foretell a great tapestry of history that will blanket our world for better or worse. I am told that at the moment of my birth the sub-mother wept in the sky and a thousand lands were drowned in her tears. I am Mylthaenii’s sorrow. I am the Astronomer’s Feast. I am the speaker of my people. And I am alone.
My birth stirred up great turmoil amongst the Astronomer’s of (insert name of monastic island enclave here). Children born with the mixed eyes of Great Father Je’Cheris and the idiot-sleep are beyond rare, and a sign of powerful change and destiny. Many saw these traits and marked me as the vessel re-born, an omen my people wait their whole lives to see. But sub-mother Mylthaenii marks her children as destroyers, and dealers of deeds much darker.
The political infighting, compounded by my increasingly infrequent bouts of idiot-sleep saw my expulsion from the good graces of the Great Father and Sisters. They say the signs were wrong. They say I am not, after all, the vessel re-born. They say it is another. But I know who I am. I can feel the overwhelming weight of perfect geometry weighing down on my soul. I can see a thousand lifetimes spread out behind me like a great caravan across the sea of stars. I am the Astronomer’s Feast. I am Mylthaenii’s Sorrow. I am Hesetiah’s one true child. My people burned for their disbelief. Now I have only my duties, and my destiny, and the child.
The highlands writhe with whisper’s of the coming flood. A flood the likes of which this world has not seen since the days of the men who fell. Soon a thousand children across a thousand lands will be hailed as the one. The chosen one. The one who dries the world. The vassal come to pull the ill and meager mumbling ones from the rising tide. But these false idols are born of fear and superstition. They will bring only false hope and complacency.
In a time when C’Kana marks imminent turmoil, I say Amen.
I go back and read this now and cringe a little. Seems pretty melodramatic to me.
Our gaming group never met again. The project died and we all forgot about it. My interest in role playing died as well. But from that project the seed of this novel was created. For that, I owe thanks for my fellow role players.
Almost three years later, when I decided to commit to writing a novel, I immediately thought of Feast, the would-be vessel.
A group of around five friends and myself got together around a bonfire with a couple bottles of wine and some notepads. We chatted about our goals for creating this world. We discussed settings, and themes, and aesthetics. I won't claim to be the person who first brought it up, but I do remember being a loud voice in the conversation. The idea was, sword and sorcery, conan-like world where grit and blood abound, with the twist that the world has a finite lifespan. We came up with several ideas, and settled tentatively on a periodic global flood that devastated the planet. I think we all got really excited when we discovered that the floods were caused by the complicated tidal patterns of a whole mess of moons, thirty or forty of them. Again, I can't claim it was only my idea, but I'll put my flag in it regardless.
So we had this world, and a few kernels of plot, but nothing more. We ended the initial world building session with the assignment to create a character with a brief back story. I went home excited, knowing exactly who I was. The next day I wrote the following:
The Would-Be Vessel
I am Speaker Feast of the Second Mylthaenii Waning. I am one of the few who still believes in the preservation of the old gods naming convention. My birth was witness to the second waning cycle of the minor sub-mother Mylthaenii, an event very few are fortunate enough to experience. Mylthaenii’s many faces foretell a great tapestry of history that will blanket our world for better or worse. I am told that at the moment of my birth the sub-mother wept in the sky and a thousand lands were drowned in her tears. I am Mylthaenii’s sorrow. I am the Astronomer’s Feast. I am the speaker of my people. And I am alone.
My birth stirred up great turmoil amongst the Astronomer’s of (insert name of monastic island enclave here). Children born with the mixed eyes of Great Father Je’Cheris and the idiot-sleep are beyond rare, and a sign of powerful change and destiny. Many saw these traits and marked me as the vessel re-born, an omen my people wait their whole lives to see. But sub-mother Mylthaenii marks her children as destroyers, and dealers of deeds much darker.
The political infighting, compounded by my increasingly infrequent bouts of idiot-sleep saw my expulsion from the good graces of the Great Father and Sisters. They say the signs were wrong. They say I am not, after all, the vessel re-born. They say it is another. But I know who I am. I can feel the overwhelming weight of perfect geometry weighing down on my soul. I can see a thousand lifetimes spread out behind me like a great caravan across the sea of stars. I am the Astronomer’s Feast. I am Mylthaenii’s Sorrow. I am Hesetiah’s one true child. My people burned for their disbelief. Now I have only my duties, and my destiny, and the child.
The highlands writhe with whisper’s of the coming flood. A flood the likes of which this world has not seen since the days of the men who fell. Soon a thousand children across a thousand lands will be hailed as the one. The chosen one. The one who dries the world. The vassal come to pull the ill and meager mumbling ones from the rising tide. But these false idols are born of fear and superstition. They will bring only false hope and complacency.
In a time when C’Kana marks imminent turmoil, I say Amen.
I go back and read this now and cringe a little. Seems pretty melodramatic to me.
Our gaming group never met again. The project died and we all forgot about it. My interest in role playing died as well. But from that project the seed of this novel was created. For that, I owe thanks for my fellow role players.
Almost three years later, when I decided to commit to writing a novel, I immediately thought of Feast, the would-be vessel.
What variable changed the equation?
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This isn't the first time that I've said to myself, "I should write a novel", but it's certainly the first time I've ever been even remotely successful. I can remember a story I wrote back in my first years of college. It was about two old men at a nursing home who had rich fantastical life stories. The plan was that they would go back and forth telling their tales, each chapter growing more and more unbelievable. The idea came from a short story I wrote that was published in the University literary journal, Carbon World. When it came time to expanding it into a novel, I got a few pages in via stream of consciousness then puttered to a halt.
I'm sure that document is still floating around my computer somewhere, abandoned.
There were other times, but they all met the same fate. I can look back now and understand that I was doing several things wrong. First, I was grasping onto a single clever idea, rather than a character's journey. Second, I was aiming too high for my first time out of the gates. And third, I didn't set myself up for success.
What really changed the equation for me was a chat with my friend Karen. She is a novelist with eight books and counting under her belt. She probably doesn't even remember giving me any advice, but she did and this is what she said. She told me that she did the exact same thing, knowing she had the ability, but lacking the conviction to see it through to completion. She carried on like that until one day she read a cozy mystery and said to herself, "I could have written this". It wasn't an epic work of profound literature. It wasn't Ayn Rand or William Faulkner. It was just a simple story that turned pages and put a smile on her face. So she decided to prove it to herself. She set out to write her own cozy mystery, reveling in the tropes and cliches rather than trying to redefine the genre. When she came out the other side she had the first in what would become a successful mystery series four novels strong and growing. From that genre she's branched out into a second series closer to her heart. Each new book helps her grow as a writer and as a brand.
But, at the core of this conversation, the key was starting small. Just prove it to myself. I don't have to open anyone's mind up to new and wondrous ideas. I just have to tell an entertaining story. So with that in mind, I'm trying to prove it.
I'm sure that document is still floating around my computer somewhere, abandoned.
There were other times, but they all met the same fate. I can look back now and understand that I was doing several things wrong. First, I was grasping onto a single clever idea, rather than a character's journey. Second, I was aiming too high for my first time out of the gates. And third, I didn't set myself up for success.
What really changed the equation for me was a chat with my friend Karen. She is a novelist with eight books and counting under her belt. She probably doesn't even remember giving me any advice, but she did and this is what she said. She told me that she did the exact same thing, knowing she had the ability, but lacking the conviction to see it through to completion. She carried on like that until one day she read a cozy mystery and said to herself, "I could have written this". It wasn't an epic work of profound literature. It wasn't Ayn Rand or William Faulkner. It was just a simple story that turned pages and put a smile on her face. So she decided to prove it to herself. She set out to write her own cozy mystery, reveling in the tropes and cliches rather than trying to redefine the genre. When she came out the other side she had the first in what would become a successful mystery series four novels strong and growing. From that genre she's branched out into a second series closer to her heart. Each new book helps her grow as a writer and as a brand.
But, at the core of this conversation, the key was starting small. Just prove it to myself. I don't have to open anyone's mind up to new and wondrous ideas. I just have to tell an entertaining story. So with that in mind, I'm trying to prove it.
How it got to this
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I've decided to write a novel. I've always broken the world down into those who know what the act of writing is about, and those who don't. I hate to call myself a writer, but I will, because I've never really committed myself to completing a project of any real substance. Recently though, as my life settles down a bit, that creeping thing called unease has coiled around me. It's insidious. I've got nothing to complain about; I've got a beautiful woman, a job that pays well, and a nice house to go home to. Maybe we'll call it a quarter-life crisis. I don't really have an explanation, but I've been thirsty for a large scale creative endeavor lately. The dissatisfaction of not engaging in those skills I claim to have has been eating away at me.
So Amanda and I sat down and created a system of helping each other accomplish our goals. I make sure she makes it out the door to pilates twice a week, and she makes sure I'm sitting at my computer working on this novel while she's gone. That's how it started; twice a week. I spent a month of twice-weekly writing sessions outlining this story. I really tried, for the first time, to think of my writing as a project that needed to be built from the foundations up. In other words, I decided to approach it like one of my buildings (I'm an architect). In the past I felt successful as a writer because I could open up a blank document and belch out a couple thousand words on some clever idea without much trouble. I could look back at that snippet of prose and be proud of how well it was written. I'd take great care to choose the right words and inject some attitude into it. But, as I sit here now, I look back at a folder on my hard drive that is full of abandoned snippets and nothing more. So standing back and actually planning how I'd tackle this story was a new experience. After a month of outlining I had a mountain of ideas, characters, locations, scenes, plots, and mythology jotted down unorganized in a Google document.
I started to feel like this was really a project, something I could accomplish bit by bit as long as I was patient. I began to dream about new ideas, writing them down first thing in the morning. Then I decided twice a week wasn't enough. I'm an early riser, so I started bringing my laptop into the kitchen with me at 6am, writing as the house slowly wakes instead of reading.
Another two weeks goes by. I've got a meaty document outlining the better part of a novel. But more importantly I had a beat-by-beat timeline of the first few scenes. When I got to that point, I realized I had to actually commit something to paper sooner or later. I saw Amanda out the door one evening, yoga mat thrown over her shoulder, and I sat down to a blank screen.
To my surprise, it flowed. I wrote, "Feast awoke unchained, and this surprised him". All the work I'd put into outlining paid off. I wrote the entire opening scene in one sitting. And it felt really damned good.
So what the hell is the blog about? Well, I'm going to sound off on my writing activity each day. Maybe just a blurb about how successful/unsuccessful the morning session was. Maybe something larger concerning a scene I'm trying to pin down.
As I write this, I'm approximately twenty thousand words into the story. These initial chapters are being reviewed and edited by myself and a group of close friends. Once I'm confident with them, I'll post them here for anyone to read. The thought is that eventually I'll start posting my progress week by week, showing my process as I go back and forth, hopefully always moving forward.
As I begin to build this blog, I'll start with some posts about the story and its inception.
So Amanda and I sat down and created a system of helping each other accomplish our goals. I make sure she makes it out the door to pilates twice a week, and she makes sure I'm sitting at my computer working on this novel while she's gone. That's how it started; twice a week. I spent a month of twice-weekly writing sessions outlining this story. I really tried, for the first time, to think of my writing as a project that needed to be built from the foundations up. In other words, I decided to approach it like one of my buildings (I'm an architect). In the past I felt successful as a writer because I could open up a blank document and belch out a couple thousand words on some clever idea without much trouble. I could look back at that snippet of prose and be proud of how well it was written. I'd take great care to choose the right words and inject some attitude into it. But, as I sit here now, I look back at a folder on my hard drive that is full of abandoned snippets and nothing more. So standing back and actually planning how I'd tackle this story was a new experience. After a month of outlining I had a mountain of ideas, characters, locations, scenes, plots, and mythology jotted down unorganized in a Google document.
I started to feel like this was really a project, something I could accomplish bit by bit as long as I was patient. I began to dream about new ideas, writing them down first thing in the morning. Then I decided twice a week wasn't enough. I'm an early riser, so I started bringing my laptop into the kitchen with me at 6am, writing as the house slowly wakes instead of reading.
Another two weeks goes by. I've got a meaty document outlining the better part of a novel. But more importantly I had a beat-by-beat timeline of the first few scenes. When I got to that point, I realized I had to actually commit something to paper sooner or later. I saw Amanda out the door one evening, yoga mat thrown over her shoulder, and I sat down to a blank screen.
To my surprise, it flowed. I wrote, "Feast awoke unchained, and this surprised him". All the work I'd put into outlining paid off. I wrote the entire opening scene in one sitting. And it felt really damned good.
So what the hell is the blog about? Well, I'm going to sound off on my writing activity each day. Maybe just a blurb about how successful/unsuccessful the morning session was. Maybe something larger concerning a scene I'm trying to pin down.
As I write this, I'm approximately twenty thousand words into the story. These initial chapters are being reviewed and edited by myself and a group of close friends. Once I'm confident with them, I'll post them here for anyone to read. The thought is that eventually I'll start posting my progress week by week, showing my process as I go back and forth, hopefully always moving forward.
As I begin to build this blog, I'll start with some posts about the story and its inception.
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