Activity

Heyo, Parimis!

First announcement—I did end up finishing the first draft of my chapter before the weekend, so yay! I won’t be needing to mop the palace floors.

Second, and I guess this is the main one…I’m setting aside my current WIP for a few years.

One reason is I want to do more worldbuilding. If I was just doing one story set in a short time period in a smaller region, I’d be happy with what I have. But since I want a long series that spans the entire world history, I don’t think it’s sufficient. I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks. Our world, its history, and the way its attributes change with time are so complex. Change who won a certain war five hundred years ago, and we’d all be speaking different languages, doing different jobs, eating different foods, and wearing different clothes today. Think about how much the world has changed over time because of the influence history has on everything. Due to what I’m trying to accomplish with the series, I think it’s important that I include that kind of thing. It wouldn’t be very realistic if the culture stayed almost exactly the same in each book as time passed and stories happened.

But the main reason is that I really just can’t pull it off at the moment. I’ve learned tons since I last wrote a book, and now I look at it and cringe. I don’t know what I can do and what I still struggle with yet. When I try to write with everything I’ve learned but not yet tried crammed in my head, I get overwhelmed with trying to make sure I’m doing everything right as I go. This series is a dream of mine that I want to be perfect, but right now I can’t focus on making my work perfect. Right now I need to just write, and figure out where I need to improve and where I need help. I can’t focus on getting better and learning more when I’m carrying the weight of an entire series around on my shoulders, worrying about how what I’m writing now is going to effect the rest of the story. Planning a series like this takes a lot of looking ahead. I may even end up writing the entire thing before I try to publish the first book—I’m that determined to make sure they all flow together properly. And now with the first book growing into a trilogy (yikes), I don’t think I can handle that kind of epic challenge yet. When I’m writing a standalone book, at least I know that if it doesn’t work out I can just move on to something else with the satisfaction that I’d learned in my failure. But with this…?

So, my plan is to set The Alpha Saga aside for four years, until I’m done with high school. By then I’ll have improved a lot and I think I’ll be ready to take it on. For now, I’ll do a little worldbuilding if ideas happen to come to me, but for the most part I won’t work on it at all. It’s kind of sad, because I’ve fallen in love with the story and the characters, and I’m really going to miss working on it. But I think it’s for the best.

HOWEVER, that brings me to the third announcement—I’m starting a new WIP! Last Wednesday I sat down with a blank document and started typing down random ideas, and so far things have gone very well! I came up with a title today, and I’ve never come up with a title that fast. I already have an almost decent plot set up, which also never happens. I’ve been working on TAS for seven months now, and I still don’t have a plot that developed. I did do a ton of worldbuilding on it first (obviously) and a lot of history and character stuff, but still, I’m pretty shocked that this one worked it’s way out so quickly. Maybe in a few days I’ll tell you about it 😉

So, my goal is to work on all the preliminary stuff during the fall/winter (or summer for you, @j-a-penrose :P) and begin the actual writing after school ends, and have a good draft done by next September. Then I’d spend that school year studying how I can make changes and doing some heavier revising. By summer (or winter, whatever) I would hopefully be done with that and be able to look for an editor while doing some touch up work.

I have no idea how that’s all going to work out or what God is going to do in the next two years. But I do know that I’m extremely grateful for all He’s done for me so far—for my salvation, my talents, the opportunities to make a difference in the world for His glory, and for all of you guys and the ways you’ve helped me grow. I can’t wait to discover how He will use us as a part of his master plan!

@j-a-penrose @evelyn @writercatherine @ariella-newheart @esjohnson @cassie-hartfinh