We All Have to Start Somewhere: 2016 Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

2016 Merry Go Round Blog Tour

I talked about my writing origin story here, but I didn’t start writing novels until college where I turned an anthropology assignment to define gender differently into the novel that eventually became my thesis. Funny thing is between the time I started writing The Land Above, and when I had it polished and ready to submit, standards for novels had changed. The spare, condensed style of early science fiction fell out of favor, so what I found myself with is a very detailed synopsis for a sociological science fiction trilogy. I still haven’t rewritten it, but I will as The Land Above introduces a whole world with very many stories waiting to see the light. Beyond the original novel/synopsis, I have two novels in what is a 4-5 book series in the same world that are waiting to be polished and published.

I also started another novel, Three Women, when I was in college. This one is a contemporary story loosely based on my experiences doing data entry and playing around with the question of whether I wanted to have kids. It has a fascinating cast and some lovely writing, but I decided I wasn’t a strong enough writer to convey the story and set it aside, unfinished, for a later date.

Here’s the problem: those characters and their story still bug me from time to time, but having raised two wonderful sons, the question has already been answered for me. The pressing need is gone so I don’t know if I could do the story justice now. It stands as a monument to the need to press on even if the result might not be as strong as you want it to. All I accomplished by telling myself I couldn’t adequately tell the story was to lose touch with the–admittedly raw–emotions of the novel.

I understand now how foolish I’d been, but there’s no way to turn back the clock. The roughest, weakest, and most horrible writing can be edited, or rewritten from scratch, until it shines. That’s the plan for my thesis after all. For the story I didn’t write because it wouldn’t be clean and beautiful? Three Women may never be told, and even if I finally let these characters earn their spot in the schedule, the story is likely to warp into some other question entirely, or the answer will be obvious.

The characters may be strong enough to draw the original tale from me. These are very powerful characters with fully fleshed backgrounds, but whether they’re strong enough to push past the knowledge I’ve gained in the intervening years, I don’t–and may never–know.

Fast forward to 2013. Though not the first year I considered going indie, it is the year I decided to stop holding myself back. I’d been treating this question much like how I treated Three Women. I knew I was interested in the indie proposition, I had good reasons to do it, and I had a large number of ready or close to it novels. Instead of moving forward, though, I kept pondering the question as if waiting for the moment everything would seem easy.

I don’t remember what made me do it, but I tossed one of my written, but never edited, novels onto my Kindle and started to read.

That story? It was Beneath the Mask, and it wasn’t ready for the limelight right then. The novel was, however, strong enough to be one I wanted to share. It has the exploration of the Regency Era, touches on the divisions between the nobility and others, and possessed a character with a dream she refused to let flounder because of convention.

Sound familiar?

But where I sat on the fence between traditional and indie, Daphne leapt off a cliff, chancing her position, her family’s honor, and everything for the opportunity to seize her dreams in both hands. Sure, her life doesn’t turn out exactly as she’d planned any more than mine has, but she had the courage to try.

I don’t know whether I borrowed from her example or had just reached the decision point, but from that moment on, I became ready. I had many steps to complete before Beneath the Mask appeared in eBook and print, but I no longer sat on the fence. I had taken my own leap, and have been charging forward ever since.

Beneath the Mask went from a standalone title to the beginning of a series of sweet Regency romances, and two other series came into being as well: Seeds Among the Stars and The Steamship Chronicles. The rest, as they say, is history.

We all have to start somewhere. That can only happen, though, if we take the leap and hit the ground running.

Today’s post was inspired by the topic “May – We all have to start somewhere.” — May’s topic in Forward Motion’s Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. Links to additional posts in the series will be added below:

From Connie Cockrell: http://conniesrandomthoughts.com/2016/05/we-all-have-to-start-somewhere-may-merry-go-round-blog-post/

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