For the past couple months I have been trying to write a book. In college I knew I loved writing, and I wanted to one day be a Writer. However I was also a big chicken and didn’t want to be poor, so instead of majoring in Writing, I only minored in it, majored in Computer Science.
Follow your dreams kids.
Actually to be fair, when I was a kid I wanted to be a scarecrow. Or a magician. Or a fighter pilot. These dreams became inviable when I realized I wasn’t made of straw, magic wasn’t real, and when I could no longer see the writing on the white board whilst sitting in the front row of class.
Follow your dreams kids. Follow your dreams until you realize they no longer make sense.
But I haven’t given up on everything! There’s still hope. I am writing a novel.
A fantasy novel.
Ok, well, sure, not the great piece of literature I at first I imagined myself writing. Not a tale of youthful struggle and search, filled with life-truths and heart-gripping characters. But what it DOES have is magic.
I figured I’d write a fantasy novel first, for a couple reasons. One, I feel like I have more leeway to loosen the shackles of perfectionism. If I tried to write my Crowning Symphony first, I’d probably just sweat over every word until I dug myself into a unproductive hole of guilt and shame. Two, I find Fantasy Novels as a genre to be pretty poor. So I figure it’s a fitting market in which to produce a tome of mediocrity. It’s the standard! And Three, I figured it would be easy.
How wrong I was.
Writing fiction is a billion million times more difficult than writing nonfiction. In nonfiction, you already know what happens. You just have to figure out a clever way to retell it. Add in some hyperbole and some new metaphors. You’re set. But in fiction, … in fiction you have to agonize not only over the construction of every sentence, but over the the damned idea behind the sentence as well. You have absolutely NO IDEA what is happening, or going to happen.
You have to make it all up. And that’s not as easy as I at first thought.
I spent the first month outlining characters, scenes, themes. I had my first chapter planned. With a smile and a cup of coffee, I wrote my first sentence:
The sun had risen slowly over Apacheta.
It was somewhere soon after this sentence that I was pummeled by a stream of unending questions, which were mostly variations on the following theme:
“Now what happens?”
This question must be answered hundreds of times each time you sit down to write. It can be crippling.
But my story has magic. Or it will. Hell. I should include a scarecrow jet pilot just to round it out.
