Google Drive Folder HERE
2. Finn Departs
12. The Meetings
Short Version: I'm going to start posting chapters on this blog from a story I'm working on. I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me.
Long Version:
Even though I'm calling this "the long version", I'm going to do my best to keep this relatively brief. There's a longer version of this same post over here in which I try to sort through all the mixed feelings I've had about writing over my life. But the relatively short version is that I've always had a love-hate relationship with writing fiction which goes back to my childhood.
As a child, I always liked making up stories in my head, and I sometimes tried to write these stories down I enjoyed imaging stories, and I enjoyed the feeling of having a story that I was in complete control of.
At the same time, however, I didn't enjoy the actual act of writing itself--I didn't enjoy the struggle to take the images that I had in my head put them into words that other people could understand. I liked imagining the story, but I hated writing it.
Then there was also the constant anxiety about wondering whether you're any good at it. I got some praise in elementary school teachers for my stories which encouraged me. But I got some criticism from my high school writing teachers which discouraged me.
I have at various points in my life embarked on long writing projects--HERE, HERE and HERE. But I have also gone long stretches in my life without writing any fiction at all.
However, beginning in my mid-to-late 30s, I began to have this yearning to immerse myself more in fantasy. I bounced around my head this fantasy story that I might create about a castle in a forest full of magical creatures and talking animals. After years of thinking about it, I started writing the story in 2018. Even though I'm quite busy these days, I told myself I would only write for 15 minutes a day. (No matter how busy you get, I could always find 15 minutes somewhere in my day, right?) And then I could have fun just seeing how the story unfolded.
I started a new blog for the story: http://thecastleinthemagicforest.blogspot.com/ The story was intended to be only for my own amusement, but I am aware that nowadays almost nobody reads blogs, and so starting up a blog on the Internet and not promoting it anywhere is essentially the same as just writing for yourself.
I wrote myself into a dead-end plotwise, and then got frustrated and gave up on it. But then the desire to try it out again returned, and I started again in July of 2020.
The intention was never to write a structured novel, but rather to just write an unending story. I had in mind the comic book series I read in my youth, where there were always different plots being introduced, but never any resolution of the story.
Or, for you non-comic book fans, maybe daytime soap operas is more familiar comparison.
You have 1 main plot going on, and 2 sub-plots simmering in the background. As the main plot gets resolved, one of the sub-plots starts to increase in prominence. And then as the sub-plot becomes the main plot, a new sub-plot is introduced, and the story keeps going and going.
I wanted a situation and characters that I could just entertain myself with indefinitely without it ever coming to an end.
Unfortunately, the longer the story became, the more convoluted it got. I began to lose track of some of the characters and plot threads. There were some gaps in the plot which I had fixes for in my head, but which I didn't get around to putting down on paper.
Also, unfortunately the 15 minutes I devoted to the story (which I eventually reduced to 10) tended to be the last 10 minute before I went to bed. Resulting in a lot of this story being written when I was sleep deprived.
Eventually I realized that this thing was never going to be comprehensible to anybody except me.
That depressed me. It's one thing to have a story that nobody will ever read, but at it's another thing to have a story that nobody else could read. I wanted to write a story that someone else could pick up and read, if they wanted to.
Eventually I began to toy with the idea of a second draft. It would still be one unending story, with a very long and convoluted plot, but I would go back and try to smooth out all the plot holes and inconsistencies. I would also try to write readable prose.
I've now decided to go ahead and start writing that second draft. And because the whole point of this second draft is that it's supposed to be readable by other people, I'm going to start posting those chapters here on this blog. (The readership of this blog is small, but there's at least a chance of someone seeing it if I post it on my main blog. Absolutely no one is visiting the other blog --I've got the stats to prove it.)
I would be eager for any and all feedback that you have--on anything from sentence level prose to broader story elements. Because who knows, there might someday be a 3rd draft or a 4th draft.
This is all still only a hobby, but it's now a hobby that has 2 sides to it. The first draft is to just create a long story to amuse myself. The second draft is to challenge myself to write the most readable story I can, while still keeping the structure I've inherited from the first draft.
At this point in my life, I have no illusions about getting professionally published. I know my limitations, and I know my writing is not particularly good. (The evidence is hard to ignore. I've been writing this blog for almost 20 years now, and have not only failed to attract any following, but I've been steadily losing readers as time goes on.)
[Although I guess it doesn't matter anyway, because given the current state of the publishing industry, even if I was talented, I would still have a difficult time getting published (see HERE and HERE). And even if I somehow did get published, I could certainly never earn enough money from novels to make writing my vocation (see HERE and HERE). So I guess it doesn't really matter anyway--whether someone is talented or not, writing fiction is a purely a hobby these days.]
But I would like to create the most readable story that I can--just for my own internal satisfaction. And because this thing will never get published, there's nothing to stop me from endlessly tinkering with it as I go. (Published authors often lament that they can't go back and change things once their book has gone to print.) So give me any advice you have, and I'll try to take it all onboard.
The chapters for my first draft are indexed here--although be warned, after a certain point it probably stops making sense to anyone who is not me, but that's what I'm hoping to clean up with the second draft.
The chapters to the second draft I'll start posting on this blog soon. And I'll index them on the top of this post.
Addendums:
For more of my explanations about this project, see my original post on the other blog from 2018: What This Is and Why I'm Doing It.
I had hopes when I began this project that I would be able to write something relatively readable by just putting in 15 minutes a day, but was quickly frustrated when my prose wasn't turning out as readable at all. So then I wrote a follow-up post 5 days later: Oh Wow! This is Turning out Worse than I thought . And then, in February of this past year, I attempted to write another long explanation of why I'm doing this, but I never finished it. I eventually just posted it unfinished: What This Is and Why I'm Doing It (Unfinished)
So, obviously I'm spending a lot of time trying to explain myself. Part of this is my own self-consciousness. (I'm worried that other people will find it pathetic that I'm spending so much time writing a story that I know other people won't read.) And part of it, as with a lot of the stuff on my blogs, is my own attempt to self-psychoanalyze and explain myself to myself.
From July, I've attempted to make a list of chapter summaries for my first draft and write down any issues that come up so I can hopefully remember to change them later. I've also tried to create a character index, because upon re-reading the first draft, I've found that I've often accidentally used the same name for several characters. So this is my attempt to keep all my character names straight.
Update: Saturday, December 18, 2021
As I indicated on Monday, I had a slip in my writing. I had been doing pretty good up until October--at least 15 minutes a day every day for over a year. But then I had a week back in October when I was really busy teaching and marking, and I allowed myself to go for a few days without writing, and then it was really hard to get back into it. (The lesson is never let yourself take breaks, because it is so hard to get back into it again.)
Part of the problem is that since August I had been trying to do 2 drafts simultaneously--I tried to keep plowing ahead with the first draft for 10 minutes every day, but also work on the second draft for another 10 minutes every day. And that doubled my time commitment. Which made me get burned out faster. Which made me stop.
But I want to try again.
I've been inspired by these Steve Donoghue Writing Videos.
After watching this video, I've decided to do a bit of renaming on my drafts. I'd been calling the draft I've been posting on this blog a second draft, but I've decided that's not really an accurate description. It's more of a first draft on the backstory. All the story in it I'm working through for the first time.
Plus, my so-called "first draft" isn't really a serious draft. It's more just playing around (what Steve Donoghue refers to in his video as being a Pantsers). So I've decided to re-name the so-called first draft as the "zero draft". And the so-called second draft is now the "first draft".
I'm going to try to get back into writing from next week. If I have limited time, I'll try to prioritize working on the first draft instead of the zero draft--this is because of Steve's advice on his video to try to make the writing time a serious exercise in communication, and not just to write an incoherent story that no-one else could ever read.
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