The Journey Begins

As many people know, last month was National Novel Writing Month.  I'd heard about for a couple years but never participated mostly because I was a bit daunted by the idea of having to write 50,000 words in one month.  On top of that, I usually didn't have the time to just sit down and write or when I did have some free time, writing was not what I wanted to do.  This year, however, I decided to give it a go.  Years ago, back when I was still in high school, my two best friends at the time and I decided that we should each write a book.  In some ways they were similar because we were really into dragons and fairies and Japan at that time so they had those elements in it and then they also all revolved around three girls we based off of ourselves and our friendship.  I never got far with mine.  I would get a couple chapters in, give it to my friends to critique and then re-write parts of it with their suggestions.  I think the whole concept of the story changed at least three times.  It had been years since I'd even glanced at the manuscripts I had so I honestly didn't remember a whole lot other than the very general idea, which I still liked.  I had just never been able to find a way to go with it and write what I wanted to.

I saw on Facebook that a few friends of mine were going to give it a go and I figured I might as well try as well and see if I couldn't do something.  So I searched my room until I found the massive binder I had bought years and years ago that held every single copy of my book.  There were a lot and I mean a lot.  Probably a good thirty drafts with the same three or so chapters written over and over again.  Despite the fact that I had changed the story around several times the title had always stayed the same:  The Last of the Dragon Riders.  Having loved fantasy books that whisked me away to unknown lands to seek strange creatures, meet vivid characters, and go on epic adventures ever since I was a child, it was pretty natural that my writing would also be based on fantasy.  Still, re-reading the numerous drafts, all I could think was, Where the heck was I going with this?  The plot with most of them was absolutely laughable and ridiculous and pathetic.  I cringed reading it.  And it was where the story was going that had always stumped me in the past.  I tried creating outlines and writing out my thoughts and ideas, but it just didn't flow, didn't sound right.  Looking through it again I could see the problems quite clearly that my younger self hadn't.  I was trying to force the story to follow a path that it didn't want to take.  Trying to bring back to life the friendship that at the time was slowly splintering, creating characters that were based off of people I didn't know very well, trying to create a world that I didn't have fully pictured in my mind, trying to force a love story when I was fairly ignorant of what that all entailed.  It was quite simply a disaster.

An hour or so was spent combing through each draft, seeing if there was anything useable.  By the end, there were only two parts that I deemed useful.  One, ironically, was from one of my first drafts.  Though the passage would have to be completely reworked, there were parts that I really liked.  The second was from the most recent drafts, a prologue that set the stage for the rest of the book and that was quite good in my opinion.  It was what came after that failed miserably to live up to it.  So I took the prologue, reworked some parts of it and let the story come to me, not trying to base it off of events or people in my life, but letting it flow.  Turns out, once I did that and stopped trying to force things, the general outline came to me and was quite good.  As I typed I was a bit surprised by the direction the story was taking.  Previously it had been very light-hearted and happy, to an extent a mirror of what I was more like back then.  This story was much darker and much more serious, showing how much I think I have changed over the years.  And yet it worked better this way, because the other part of this story was that I had wanted it to be Christian, but I had never been able to work that in very well.  As I wrote now, I found that the darker tone gave me a better way to work that aspect into the story in subtle ways.

In the end, I didn't write 50,000 words, not even remotely close which was a bit of a disappointment.  But I did start writing again and this time around the ideas that came to me were cohesive, they made sense.  I'm not stressing myself out about writing it, I work a little bit when I can and I jot down ideas as they come to me.  Its been an adventure, one that I wish I hadn't stopped those years ago, but then I think that maybe that was for the best.  The idea of the story stayed with me and subconsciously, I think I've been going over it for years.  But there were certain events that needed to happen, certain things I needed to learn for it to be able to reach its full potential.  The journey is just beginning, "the road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began."