Retrograde and Alignment
"Apprentice" by ArtbyValerie
I want to keep this short. I've got a lot going on this weekend and it's already getting late this evening, but I want to get better about being regular with my posts again. Ask any medical professional, it's important to stay regular. I seem to recall my publishing advisor with Createspace saying the same thing. It's just good advice all around.
I talked a bit last time about not really feeling motivated to work on my current book. I also commented about how this was frustrating to me because I really like the characters and story. But if I'm being honest, that last part rang a little hollow even as I typed it. It had been so long since I actively worked on the manuscript that I started to feel like I didn't actually know my characters anymore. They had grown distant and estranged to me. I knew I liked them and the story I had written for them so far, but I forgot why. With a little encouragement from my author buddy, Lynn Main, I decided to remind myself what was so special about them by going back to the beginning and rereading what I had already written.
I can't really go into too many details without hitting some major spoilers, but now that I'm almost caught up to where I left off, Holy Sh**, I'm excited to get back to this project! The characters are fun. The action is steady. There's some wild stuff going on. The crunchy bits are extra crispy and the parts that I feel make my writing uniquely mine are intact and very much me. Whatever it was that I had convinced myself was lacking in this manuscript was apparently a crock of poodoo that I cooked up in my own head. These characters need to complete their journey and this story has to be told. There's too much good stuff here to keep to myself.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that my opinion on the matter is automatically suspect for being biased. I'm the author. It's kind of imperative that I like my own work (or what's the frigging point, right?). But one thing I persistently suck at is self-promotion, even if it's just for my own benefit. For me to sit here and openly say, on the record, that this book is going to be good and needs to be published... well, let's just say, I'm a bit surprised with myself. I'm usually much more modest than that. I don't know what came over me (but I kind of like it).
In retrospect, one of the things I know has hindered my motivation is a lack of steady input and external validation from others. I have certain folks who were reading the initial chapters, but after a while I stopped getting feedback from them. I'm not about to riff on the people who were doing me this favor. I understand, things get busy, life happens, priorities get rearranged. Hell, it happened to me in my own writing, and it's MY project! I certainly can't fault the people who were pre-reading the manuscript when it happened to them. But what I recognize now is that I was relying a lot on that early feedback to keep my momentum going on this project. When that feedback dried up, so did my motivation. It didn't help that the last round of updates I sent out included a significant amount of material that I was already edgy about for various reasons (not that my pre-readers would know this). When weeks went by without any sort of response, my brain didn't just jump to the worst possible conclusion, it threw itself off a f***ing cliff to get there. Things kind of just continued to spiral after that.
But, here I am, rereading my current project and legitimately enjoying what I've completed so far. I've impressed myself and hit that happy place of "Holy sh**! I wrote that?" which is the space I typically like to land in. I figure if I can impress my absolute worst critic (me), I must be on the right track. Now I just need to run with it.
For all of you who are still following me, thank you for your support. For those of you who are "patiently" waiting for this next installment, thank you for hanging in there with me. Volume 3 is coming, it's just taking a heck of a lot longer than I had hoped or anticipated.
Real life is so much weirder than fantasy.
