I finished writing my book a few days ago. I planned to blog about it sooner, but I didn't want to jinx it. I’m not even sure what I could have jinxed. Just the writing, I guess. Writing is strange and terrifying like that; every time you start something new, you wonder if you’ll ever be able to finish, if you still know how to write. I know I’m not published yet, but I’m entirely confident that I could be if I was just a bit luckier. I hate the idea of luck, admitting that it’s real, and yet I know how important it is in terms of any and every form of art. You could be a great artist and be unknown, or be horrible and be famous. Life is odd like that.
Anyway, this book was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write, and yes, I had to write it. It’s personal…in a way, yet still fiction. It’s far different from anything else I’ve ever wrote. It’s shorter, and more mature, and darker but not in a violent or cruel or disgusting sort of way. It’s just dark, the topic and sentiment throughout. It’s odd, how hard it was to write, considering, before the first edit, it’s only 150 pages. I wrote it quickly, but when I immerse myself into something, I become completely possessed and can’t think about anything else.
I live it.
Before editing down the third novel in my fantasy series, it was over 1000 pages. I wrote it in two months. I don’t know how I did it, and during college of all times, and I remember writing almost none of it. I do, however, remember not sleeping, as well as the most important part of writing that book. I finished it, at around 700 pages, and I read it and realized something vastly important was missing. It felt like part of me, myself, was incomplete. Then I wrote an entirely new character, a new, tragic story for her, and wove it into the novel, and then it was complete. That character has become vastly important to the series. Without her, I’m not sure where I would be.
People are always astounded by how much I write. If I sound like I’m bragging, I’m not, because then they ask if I’m published and I say no, no I’m not, and that’s always horrible. I’ll brag someday.
But I do admit the volume of my writing is rather absurd, considering my age. I have five finished and obsessively edited (only be me, however) novels in my fantasy series, as well as a prequel partially finished and book six. These novels range from 400-800 pages in length, so there’s a lot of volume. I also started an entirely new fantasy idea, which sits at about 300 pages right now, and my novel The Eight Sides of Everything is shorter, about 200 pages, and up until now, my most “literary” piece.
I recall the proudest moment of my life. I was reading my nonfiction piece in front of a rather large audience at UConn. I wasn’t proud about reading it, however. It was what my professor, and the head of the English department, and an amazing and acclaimed author said about me to the audience. She said I was the most prolific and dedicated writer she knows. Me, an unpublished and unknown and unimportant student, when she knows and meets so many authors, and she said those amazing and rather insane words. About me. I almost couldn't read. It still astounds me, and it’s part of what keeps me going.
Anyway, the novel I just finished…I’m going to be editing now, obsessively as always, but I’ve already started and this time it’s different. I’m changing less, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Maybe it’s the drastic difference of writing style in this novel, or something. I don’t know, but I’m finding that most of it is…good. It takes a lot for me to say that about my own stuff. I really dislike all my poetry and most of my short stories, and so, apparently, do literary magazines. Ha. I’ve completely erased a 600 page book and started from scratch. I’ve thrown out and erased so much trash. Every single word is incredibly important to me.
But the book. Like most things I write, I started with an idea. This time the idea was simpler than ever. The idea—a man wakes up alone and he cannot remember his past. That’s all. I don’t outline. Hate it. So I started writing it in an apocalyptic setting, as I’ve never experimented with that, and before I knew it, I understood my novel, what I wanted to do with it, what would be the driving force behind it all, the memories, the loss, the pain, the bleakness of the world. I had to be all internal rather than external. Internal struggles, I feel, are more profound and impactful. And dreams—dreams had to be immensely important. And that’s all I’ll say about it.
Now I get to edit, which is something I love. I should, I know, probably be an editor, as I’m getting rather good at it, especially when it’s not my own work, but I’m afraid of that job. I hear it makes you want to write your own stuff less, since you’re reading and editing so much as it is. But I should do something more with my degree. If I only more videogame companies were hiring writers.
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