I have a confession to make guys.
I didn’t know what it meant to be a writer when I started this journey again.
I’ve written in the past, but never with the intention of publishing my own work. Well, scratch that; I did intend to publish my work. But as most bright-eyed, naive 18-year-olds are prone to do, I wrote the novel I thought would be my magnum opus, didn’t realize you had to you know, edit and revise and stuff, and then threw it into the junk drawer on my computer and went on to write fanfics.
I wouldn’t trade my time writing fanfics for anything in the world, but jumping back into my life long dream of being an author in my 30s and understanding there is actually a series of steps you need to go through to you know, get a book you’re proud of out into the world is a shock to 18-year-old-me’s system.
But 30-something-year-old me takes it as a challenge. How do I turn this grungy, unpolished rock into the diamond in the rough I see?
I know, I know, I’m keeping you all in suspense. What project am I talking about?
Well fair readers, I’m talking about a project I announced at the very start of this blog. Silly me, I thought I’d be able to go into my draft, fix it up then profit. But I was tinkering with formatting E-books, and started re-reading the draft I thought would be easy to revise into something I could be proud of.
Oh boy, was I wrong.
I don’t know if it’s because I finished this draft at the end of 2024, and have distance from being involved with the story plot and characters. But I can’t even get through reading the first 3 chapters – which, in my defense, I knew I would have to smash into one chapter for pacing – but it just floors me how many errors I see in what I thought was a draft 1.5, which in reality, is probably a dump draft.
I wrote this story during NaNoWriMo in 2023 and worked on the rewrites periodically while working on another manuscript for a trilogy that has since been put on the back burner after seeing standalones and novellas are helping hone my craft more.
But I didn’t think I would see the same sort of thing in this stand-alone when re-reading it. Now that I’m older and wiser, I see the story has a lot of issues. Too much telling, not enough style, wonky plot beats, too many things to count.
There’s also the matter of genre. Back then, I wasn’t aware cozy fantasy and low fantasy were a thing. But if I think back to my original outline, the idea was much closer to a travel fantasy with cozy, found family vibes. But because my mind was like “No way, it has to be bigger. More explosions, more drama!” and that turned it into a half political drama, half low fantasy character drama romance thing.
There’s nothing wrong with that sort of mashup, but it isn’t the story I set out to tell.
So I’ve gone back to the drawing board, knowing what I know now about crafting characters, outlining, staging, and writing in general. I’ve already gotten the character sheets written for my main cast and the villains, and I have a pantser style outline that gives me enough flexibility to write between the lines of each major plot beat.
But most importantly, I’m writing a story that will not suffer from having split plot and character disorder.
I love combining cozy fantasy with the character drama and intensity of fantasy romance. I like setting the scale to be intimate at the core, but all of this crazy kingdom ending scale on the outside of our MC’s core story arcs and plot beats. I’m pretty sure I learned this while writing Princess of Dragons Bane. Yet another thing I wouldn’t have learned without joining Substack, and taking my craft more seriously.
I never know how to end these posts haha. But yeah, this is what I’ve been learning about myself over the past few weeks, while I’ve been writing the last few chapters of Princess of Dragons Bane. I had this epic final battle all planned out in my head; I’d been ready to write it ever since I started the story. But when I got to that stretch of chapters, Maeve did what she does best and did her own thing, deciding to run away from the conflict to reach Garreth on her own terms instead.
I want to learn to trust my characters’ instincts, and for this other story specifically, I feel like starting from scratch is how I can do that. Draft 1.5 was a great way to understand how my characters tick, and to see exactly the story I wanted to write. But going back to a manuscript that is a few years old has really shown me how I’ve grown as an author, and I’m both excited to re-read it as I go along with re-writing, and to re-write the story whenever I get time on my schedule to start.
Alright, I’m done with this post for real haha. I’ll be posting on and off about this, and other projects on my off serial fiction weeks. I hope you’ve been enjoying this very shooting the breeze, stream of consciousness posting style, because I sure have!
Have you dealt with this sort of realization when revisiting one of your projects? Let’s talk about the writing journey in the comments 📔📖🖋️
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Writing Clean Fantasy Romance With a Humorous, Cozy Heart