Revising.  I love the idea of revising.  So, I let my completed manuscript sit for about a month. I did absolutely nothing with it, I didn’t even think about it.  What did I do during that time?  I wrote a short story in a different genre.  I wrote the short story, let it sit for a week or so and then I revised that.

Why did I not go back to my 115k word novel? Well…for one I had a contest deadline I wanted to meet for the short story.  Plus, I figured revising the short story would be excellent practice for when I started on the novel. I learned a lot during the revisions on the short story, and I also learned that I had to let it go.  No matter how many times I read it after a revision I always found things I could fix or tinker with. Finally, I had to stop. I read it through after I don’t know, nine revisions and said that’s it.  I checked it for obvious errors and just sent it away to the contest.

I think the process of editing the short story was important for how I was going to tackle the 115k word novel. Seeing the short story grow with each revision excited me and I actually started to believe I could write an engaging story and craft interesting sentences.  Those sentences came to life and the characters became real.

So, now I’m revising my novel and it is still daunting. I’ve restructured the opening and believe it is much stronger this time. I know though that once I make it through the whole novel it is going to take a few more passes before I think it is anywhere close to being ready for me to query agents about it.

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While revising the novel I thought I’d write the second book of the series, but I’ve decided to write something entirely different. After I write this book I’ll go back to the series, but for now I think it’s a good idea to try writing something much different than the first book.  It’d be so easy for me to continue to write the series since I know the characters and setting so well, but I don’t want a comfort zone at the moment. In the end I think this will make me a better writer. Once I get the world built and some characters to inhabit the world I’ll post more on it.

Anyway, off to revising the Progeny manuscript.

Alistair

My girlfriend recently asked me what the impetus was for my return to writing and for the current novel.  The question made me analyze my motivations for writing and the genesis of the story.

My return to writing(after a hiatus of a few years) began about a year ago, but perhaps I never stopped writing.  Discovering Tolkien as a nine year old child was enlightenin; like many people, it beckoned me to begin the journey of writing.

I remember my mother buying me a small binder and paper to begin my life as a writer.  I was in the fifth grade, and when I declared to all who would listen I intended to write a book like The Hobbit, or The Lord of the Rings it was met with enthusiasm.  Over the course of the next couple of years, two friends would assist me in the completion of this Hobbit/LOTR ripoff.  At the time, I remember thinking how great the book was, and perhaps for how young we were it was okay.  I still have that black binder filled with the Tolkien ripoff, and I smile at how bad it is.  Every writer has to start somewhere.  I was lucky to get some of my horrible writing out of the way as a child!  Having accomplished my goal, I stopped doing and creative writing during high school.

The writing bug wouldn’t hit me again until I was in my early twenties.  I had no desire to overhaul the novel Iwrote as a youth, so I decided to write a mystery.  I outlined and plotted the entire novel and talked about it so much that I got tired of it and quit.  I still have all the notes on that one, but that story was a stinker from the start.  I keep it to remind myself how bad I was back then and how much I’ve improved over the years.

A year or so later I researched, outlined and began writing an alternate history fantasy set in ancient Egypt during the reign of Hatshepsut.  Mind you, this was around 1992-1994, so the idea was fresh back then.  I had a lot of fun writing that during my tour of duty with the U.S.Navy.  I may revisit the idea of that story someday, but for now I’m willing to let that one rest.

I remained fairly active in my writing throughout the 90′s, composing music and writing lyrics as well as putting down ideas for another fantasy novel.  Around 1999 or 2000 I began to do some worldbuilding and character creation for the new fantasy novel.  I wrote maybe one hundred pages of the story and it felt so derivative that I got discouraged and quit.

That brings us to 2008; a year ago I got the bug, and got amped up to write.  I purchased a great piece of software for my Mac called Scrivener.  This is by far the best writing and organizing software I’ve ever used.  Life got in the way of writing and I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast and lost bug.

I’m really going somewhere with all of this, I promise!  In January 2009, I began to research my family tree.  I began to see interesting names of ancestors from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.  I began to research the regions my ancestors were from and I began to ask myself a lot of “what if” questions.  I knew right then the writer in me was begging to be unleashed.

I decided to dig out the research and writing on the unfinished fantasy novel from 2000 to see if there were any ideas worth salvaging.  There were a few interesting ideas, but nothing worthy of being included as plot points for the new novel.

I spent the month of February worldbuilding:  religions, government, regions, timeline, characters, etc.  I began the current novel  on February 27th 2009, and now I’m currently sitting at over 100k words.  I intend to wrap up the first draft of the first book (I am planning on this being a duology) in the next couple of weeks.  On a great day I can write 4-5000 words and on my lousiest day, 500 words.  The important thing is that I’ve written nearly every day since I began in February.  It may not always be on the current novel, but it’s writing.

The writer in me has always yearned to break free, and ideas have been incubating for years.  This novel is the culmination of many years of false starts, countless ideas, and life experience.  I could not have written this book at any other time in my life.  Just finishing the first book of the series will be a major accomplishment.  If it manages to attract any interest from an agent or publisher that is a bonus.  Maybe I’ll get published my first time out or maybe it won’t happen until I’ve written many novels. 

The result will be the same:  I am a writer.  Always will be.

Alistair