Wednesday, February 19, 2014

What's Happening in Wardiloth

This is just a short post on what's been going on since winning NaNoWriMo 2013, since I've been pretty quiet about the topic recently.

The answer is: pretty much nothing, and here's why -

My enthusiasm has suffered a major - and I mean MAJOR - lag; if you're reading this, you may know about how I struggled with this in November, but back then, I only knew some of the truth. My intrinsic reward was gone, which was definitely true, but I couldn't pinpoint why. Now I know. Here's why. I've been sensing this for a while now. My story is...off. Majorly. Some of the characters are kind of messed up, the overarching plot is formulaic, and I have way too many planned main characters. I plan to keep most of them, but I'll need to shake up the series completely to do it.

That means a complete rewrite is in order.

Oddly enough, I'm not sad about it in any way. I'm confident that now that I know what I should salvage and what I should throw away, a complete second (or is it third?) draft will be much better than the previous ones. The themes will be entirely different, but I think this is a good thing. My friends and family were understandably shocked about this decision (how could you just throw away such an accomplishment?) but I'm not throwing it away. The file is still on my computer, and I never plan to delete it. I have, however, removed it from being accessible on this blog.

The story world, by the way, now has an ink and watercolor map - the world also got a complete makeover. Incidentally, my art class now thinks I am awesome.

Comments? Please don't be shy.

~ Sophia-Rose