From Un-Me To Real Me: Giving Up On My Dreams

Part 4

I've been reflecting on my journey as a writer, how psychological horror movies began influencing my style, pushing me beyond boundaries that my co-author wasn't comfortable with.

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A QUICK RECAP

After my first fantasy novel had been published when I was 17, my friend Mitch came to me with an idea for another fantasy novel. He knew he wasn't the strongest writer, but he had great ideas. So together we spent several years crafting a trilogy and book one was published in 2004.

OK, MOVING ON...

The publishing company we were signed with was a small outfit based in Virginia. They were putting out quality work, but they had limited resources.

They also strung us along and screwed us over, but I'll get to that.

When my co-author and I submitted a sequel to them for publication in 2010 they seemed more than excited about its quality and content. We signed a contract that stated the book had to be published within two years or we, the authors, would have the right to shop it to other publishers.

Honestly, I don't know what happened. Maybe this small little publishing company bit off more than it could chew. Maybe sales of all its books were so bad that it started to go under. Maybe the personal problems assailing the executive editor were bogging things down. All I know is that two years came and went and our sequel still wasn't published.

I had sort of given up on it anyway. My co-author and I had reached some disagreements about the resolution of the third book in our trilogy and we couldn't settle on an ending.

A few character sketches I did for our book series.

A pensive old codger.

A dark warrior anti-hero sorta guy.

The bad guy... in case you couldn't guess.

So what happened?

I'm glad you asked!

When Mitch brought me his outline for the first book in our series he literally had a beginning and an ending, but no idea on how to get there.

So I did the writing. We'd meet, discuss our ideas, flesh out the story, and then I'd go home and write some chapters. A week or two later we'd meet and discuss what I'd written. And back and fourth we went until the manuscript was finished.

From my point of view I was the one who was living and breathing these characters. I was the one who was getting inside their heads and trying to figure out what they were thinking and what was motivating them. Mitch knew them very well also, just not as good as I did. I'll understand if I sound like I'm high atop a horse here, but both Mitch and I knew this was the case.

Now there comes a point with every book that I write where the characters start speaking to me. (Check out What My Non-Writing Friends Will Never Understand About Me if you're curious about how insane I am.) It usually happens if I've scripted something that goes against the grain of the character. I'll feel the character in my head saying, "No, this isn't what I want to do." And if I allow it the character takes my story in new directions far more interesting than anything I had conceived.

Mitch didn't understand this. So when one of our characters started speaking to me, telling me how he wanted the story to go, Mitch wasn't in agreement with the changes.

In fact, he had his own idea for a complete rewrite. He wanted to start the book over from scratch! Years of work and he wanted to start over.

I said, "No, thank you. I want to be done with this series. In fact, I want to be done with writing. We're barely breaking even on our book sales. The time and effort isn't worth it. There's no money in writing. I want to be done. I want out. We can finish what we started, but no WAY are we starting over."

And that little impasse is what pushed me into giving up on writing.

I admit, I was a bit depressed. There was other life stuff going on at the time that was stressing me out, but I think my interests were changing also. I thought my creative life was headed in a different direction.

And, honestly, it was time to go get a real job. I was an adult now and I needed money.

But my depression was about to reach new lows thanks to a little push from Stephanie Meyer, author of Twilight.

To be continued...




PS. Think it's time to give up on your dream of writing? Maybe it is. Read, Six Signs It's Time To Give Up On Writing, by Chuck Wendig, or here's a more palatable post, Signs It’s Time to Give Up on Your Dream of Being a Writer.