When the idea for Phoenix Unrest was born 12 years ago, it was a very different project and story. I've always been a fan of vampire stories, my major inspirations being Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Interview with the Vampire and all the Dracula stories. One thing I noticed throughout my reads and views, was that each vampire story had differing characteristics for vampires. In Buffy, for example, Spike could be outside in the daytime but not in direct sunlight lest he burst into flame and die rather quickly. However, in all the Dracula stories, there was no going outside whatsoever during the day. Some stories feature vampires with retractable fangs while others have venom and no fangs at all, and still others have perma-fangs.
With this in mind and being the fan of the mythological species that I am, I decided to write a story containing vampires where all the contradicting characteristics made sense in one world. How was I going to explain this? I had no idea, but I started writing anyway. Then, no more than 20 pages and 9500 words in, I stopped. See, I let someone close to me get in my head and convince me I couldn't write worth a damn. This person told me I wasn't a good writer and I would never be a good writer. Being that this person was an avid reader, I believed her. I thought she knew what she was talking about. What I didn't realize until years later, was that she may understand books from a reader's perspective, but she knew nothing about the writing and authoring process. Now, I could go on and on about the psychological ramifications of this interaction for me as a person, but I choose to remember it and grow in spite of it instead. I choose to use it to fuel my writing.
The truth is, no one starts out a stellar writer. No one knows what they're doing until they spend hundreds of hours doing it. It takes one 10,000 hours to master a skill. I was no where near even 1,000 hours. Of course I wasn't a good writer! What I should have done was keep writing anyway, getting better and better along the way. What I did, however, was stop all together. I stopped working on the book, I stopped writing short stories and poems, and I stopped reading. The thing is, I didn't even realize it. Before I did, 11 years had passed and I was no longer writing or reading for pleasure anymore.
So what did I do? I picked up my book again. Of course, 11 years after writing it, re-reading what I had written was super cringe-worthy. The level of immaturity in my writing was palpable and discouraging. So I kept it on my hard drive and started over. I watched videos to help me figure out where to begin, how to character build and how to world build. Jenna Moreci (https://bit.ly/2MUHPeB) and Hello Future Me (https://bit.ly/2tqjEh4) were such an instrumental help with this process. I highly recommend them for first time (and even repeat) novelists.
I spent about three months building my world and main group of characters. I researched, I took copious notes, and I couldn’t shut up about it when I spent time with my partner and my friends. I was relentless. I also had some friends during that process who were so supportive and helpful they will appear in my book’s dedication. That being said, the world-building was excruciating, yet exhilarating. There were days where I needed to trudge through hours of (sometimes unrelentingly dry and boring) research, but there were so many days where I got to, excitedly and without reserve, think and speak of the most outrageous things! And to go through and make each of the components work in cooperation and balance, impossible and thrilling. It’s like a giant, tiny-pieced jigsaw puzzle of words and concepts and rules.
Of course, what comes after world and character building? Actually writing the story. My goddess, what a whirlwind that is. I wrote approximately 5,000 words in a fury during the course of a month or so and then…stopped. I hit a road block, or a writer’s block, if you will. I couldn’t figure out how to execute one of my reveals, for lack of a better spoiler-free term. I spent months agonizing over the possibilities and the potential plot holes my decision could manifest. I didn’t want it to be cheesy or incomplete or overdone. Let’s face it, oftentimes, vampire stories have some of the same moments: the hunger, the death, the change. It would be really easy to botch such pivotal moment in a vampire’s life…or rather, un-life.
I let it eat me alive. I let this roadblock halt my writing for five whole months. Mind you, I had set the goal to finish my book by the end of 2019 and it was now November. So when, on November 1st at 2am, I stumbled upon a YouTuber’s video about NaNoWriMo 2018, I couldn’t deny the universe and her signs. I needed to get back on task, writer’s block be damned. See, what I couldn’t admit to myself was that I was using writer’s block as an excuse to avoid a challenge. I could not let this fly.
For those who don’t yet know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month and has been going on since 1999. The challenge and goal is to write a 50,000 novel in 30 days. It was a staggering challenge for which I felt completely unprepared, but was eager to attempt. I did not finish the 50,000 words (and I do have a vlog about the experience on my YouTube channel), buuuuut I did write more in that 30 days than I had yet written. Though I did not “win” NaNoWriMo, I was really proud of myself. I finally had something, a story, the beginnings of a book.
I am now finished with my first draft of Phoenix Unrest and I still have a long way to go until publishing. I’m currently working on proofreading and self-editing. I have a lot more to fill in that I kind of glossed over while trying to get the flood of ideas from my brain to the so-called page. Also, when I began NaNoWriMo, I vowed to myself to just write, to not go back and re-read what I wrote until November was over. This allowed me to focus on the new stuff and just getting the words down. I thought this would be the hard part, translating it from images and concepts in my head to actual words and flow on the page. Boy, was I wrong.
I am now trying to go through it and really take a hard look at my writing to polish it and make it the best version I can. I have released a teaser (the Prologue) in an earlier blog (https://heatherhedera.wixsite.com/author/post/sneak-peek-prologue) but the rest will need to go through my alpha and beta readers and agents and editors and publishers before I can put it out there for y’all, but I will be writing more things that I can share, so don’t worry!
Man, there’s so much work still to do! Better get to work!
Peace ✌️
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