The journey of a hundred thousand words begins with a blank page.
Today is Monday, September 2, 2019...Labor Day. I'm writing that down so that I have a record of the day I began to write the prose for my third novel, another story from the Kingdom of Llanfyllin. After I completed the first book, I didn't plan on writing a sequel, but the idea popped into my head one day, and it was so exciting, I had to pursue it. The fruition of those efforts is only a few weeks away, as the wheels of design and production will begin to turn within a few days.
But I have no real idea when I started writing either of my first two novels; I didn't record the date, even on my notes. Dylan's Treasure began in either 1993 or 1994; The Spring of Llanfyllin began in either 2014 or 2015. This website, and my determination to blog twice a week about my life as a writer, gives me the opportunity to send postcards from the wilderness as I embark upon my third odyssey into the realm of imagination.
The inception for the main plot came to me when I was editing TSOL; the second and third plots followed soon after, mainly in response for my idea for the main antagonist. (I can't tell you anything about it because it's all TSOL spoilers if I did.) I jotted down a few notes here and there and put my focus into securing a professional literary agent for the second book. A year of query letters with polite rejections (or no response at all) led me back to self-publishing for the second time, which will be the subject of Wednesday's blog.
Once I made my decision to self-publish, my thoughts turned directly to the third novel. I'll blog about the details of the planning process more specifically at some time in the future; today I want to talk about standing at the beginning of a path that I know will lead me to a concluding destination. I have a plan that looks like a cross between a map and an itinerary. I've done a good deal of research. I've considered who my characters are now, several years after the end of the second book, and what they want.
The idea for a prologue that starts this book in a faster and more exciting way came to me several weeks ago, and that's where my writing will begin today. I have a pretty clear idea of everything that's going to happen, but my experience tells me that if I'm open to the whispers of the Muse, new and exciting things will reveal themselves to me along the way.
The first journey was almost accidental; once I set out past the village of Short Story to make the long walk to Novel, I thought the path was clear, but I got stuck, then lost. The solution was to follow my characters and let them lead me. In the second journey, I was determined to follow my characters in the same way. What I discovered was that many more surprises lay in store when I made that choice.
For me, writing a novel is like being a Deist god who creates a world and then surrenders his omnipotence and omniscience. Sure, I can still create and control, but that too often leads to plot holes, inconsistencies of character, and false motives that make the conflict and resolution ring false and contrived. It's much more fun to follow along from person to place as a reporter, observing and recording the events as revealed by the Muse (more about her in the weeks to come, as well).
So here I stand, about to enter a seaport called Prologue, where a ship will arrive and set into motion a series of events that will take my readers to places throughout the medieval world that we've never been. I'll be informed by the real history of our world but not beholden to it; it will serve when it needs to and changed where the story wills it. It is not, after all, the "real" world at all, but the one my imagination has created.
But it is a real creation of a kind, and as so, I will not control it. I will let my plan guide me from one place to the next, but experience has proved that the unexpected will reveal itself at every turn. New writers (and bad writers) often resist it because it's not what they planned. That's why sitcom couples stay apart for so long—it serves the will of the plot but not the story.
I can only see the horizon in the distance but not what awaits me between this point and that distant destination. Given my pace as a writer, this likely to take years instead of months, but as I wrote in an earlier blog, I'm going to commit to at least one page a day and see where that leads me. I will, of course, be sending all of you postcards in the form of these blogs. I'm so excited to find out what's going to happen. I hope that you will be, too.
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