I searched far and wide, and posted many and waited long *sigh….* AND GUESS WHAT?!

I FOUND AN ILLUSTRATOR! For my series! No joke! It was crazy, I just couldn’t describe how connected his work seems to be with my story, and what i have envisioned. I seriously think this is divinity at work. For those of you that know me, this is no small deal. This series and pieces of writing are something that I hope to be my life’s work. Melissa, one of my dearest friends, understands the depth and the chains I have into this story. I wish i could explain at that depth, without taking hours of your time. But I do have one thing i can give you, a little sneak peak:

Tod Wills
thestorydragon.com

I have been thinking and pondering thoughts for a few weeks about why i choose to write a book, why i accepted the challenge, and how it all started. All of this thinking has significantly helped me to realize that story “is” process. Story is daily living, and the things that happen to us throughout every minute of our lives.

We can coast through it — taking in others creations, or we can add to it and feel triumph of many different kinds.

Everyone writes for different reasons. I recall growing up being told that writing was the result of people wanting to be heard. I thought about what that meant. Sure it’s true that the ultimate end goal is that you want to share something with the world, whether it is your raw thoughts, or your daydreams. Maybe it is some of your life lessons you have learned, or possibly quotes you have run across that have touched you deeply. No matter the writing, there is always a voice and a prospective on the other end that wants to be heard, but then i started to think about this more critically.

I don’t think that everyone writes to be heard, no, it can be much simpler then that. Writing can nurture and comfort the voice by getting thoughts to the page — somewhere words can rest and not bother the busy mind of the individual that scribbled them frantically. Writers write to be free. They place their thoughts on a page to feel and to learn from themselves.

I can’t recall all the hours of thinking i have spent formulating working designs and creations of creative greatness in idea construction, but i can tell you that my desire to write a book bridged from a few core driving forces. The first involving the concept and curiosity of character.

Growing up i remember behaving badly, and having my mom look at me wide eyed and ask me if i was struggling to cope. I also remember her asking me if i knew what i was doing, and why i was doing it. She even went as far to say that she should get the video camera out and record me so I could see how crazy and unnecessary I was acting. I remember feeling so embarrassed and screaming “Nooooo.” but the truth hit me and within seconds I fell silent and crossed my arms looking away.

Thinking back, the statement of recording my behavior made me curious and blatantly aware. I became curious what my character would look like when viewed by my own eyes. My judgment judging my own actions. I think this curiosity has stemmed into a story. A book with characters that represent different pieces of my own insecurities, and strengths that aren’t always present at the right times. Ultimately, I wanted (and still do,) to see how my character would react in a fictional exaggerated world to test my own disposition.

The second reason I have concluded that I have set out to write a book, is simply to prove to myself that I can do it, and enjoy the process while I accomplish the end goal.

I remember sitting in my room laying on my bed while still living at home, and spending hours zoning out to audiobooks, letting my mind drift into the description of the well spun tale. Often times i drifted so far, i missed parts of the story and when i would listen to the book again, i would wonder how i missed entire chapters. Was it because i fell asleep? Or maybe because i started listening a chapter too far past where i stopped? No, I simply suffered from a creative mind that when given a little, could create worlds and let me hide within their beauty and wonder.

Back at that age, I struggled to find what came naturally, I knew I had a knack for writing, but I wasn’t a novelist. There was no way i was good enough at describing and developing plot.

“Those people who write books and these tales are born with a gift to write novels. The words of the story come naturally to them and they end up on paper and somehow become famous.”

These are the very things i kept thinking and telling myself. And you will find that many people think this way and will until they die, but these things simply aren’t true!

Anyone — ANYONE — can write a novel.

You have to stat writing with what you know. Write something that maters to you. Get your personality down on paper. Give that creative entity a name and a place to go. Punctuation can come later. Spelling can come later. If you have story, that is all that maters. Get it all down on paper — the dialogue that becomes real because you feel the words as you write it. The magic that excited your body as your came up with its design and methods in which it is used in your story. These things have a power that propels good story. Not money, not fame, not love, and never do it to prove to others that you can.

“Do it because curiosity and creativity needs somewhere to go.”

The third reason I started writing has everything to do with Joy. I wanted to write a story that i enjoyed to read. A story that tugged on my heartstrings and my emotions. I wanted to have a series of twists involving characters that i cared deeply about. These intense feelings helped me, early on, to take the time to develop the world that is now starting to live on its own.

I started by creating a map, with unique names and places, then i started to create a magic language and give it a firm foundation and meaning. The next thing i started to toy with was the prologue, and where the story needed to begin and why. The fifth piece then became the struggle to create plot and characters that held depth and intrigue. The challenge after that rose back to the foundation of what was the through line of the story that propelled my main character and why should the audience care. Once i figured out these things, all that remains is how to manage the proper pacing of world information and tension (this part is by far the most challenging for me, but i have found when i go back and read what i wrote the day before, it is not as bad as i thought it was while writing it. Tip? Keep trudging forward regardless. Build a habit to write).

With the holiday season, it is hard for me to find time to write, but i am trying to at least blog to help my writing and to relax my brain. The story is slowly moving forward, I promise! =]

*is thankful for all my future readers that have faith in me to finish it.*

Throughout the day, I find many snippets of story surface and run through the inside of my head. They flail their arms and make funny faces at me, and they play with my emotions. They come to me at such speed that they often don’t leave me enough time to get them down on paper. Recently I have had some amazing pieces of dialogue play out within my conscious, but when it comes time to write, i clunk out gibberish and jagged phrasing and awkward characters, like i’m sawing a giant log with a tiny chain saw blade.

So here is my warm up.

……The ground shook violently, jolting Rogers to his left and into the wall, “it was suppose to go off after we left the building you idiot” Roger struck the head of the henchmen in front of him with the blunt end of his gun. The man’s skull cracked and sunk to the floor leaving a puddle of regret. Roger raised his voice over the falling trinkets from the walls, “The men in here who make these kind of mistakes aren’t worth my time, and will share his fate!” The men all looked at him and nodded, they’re expression of emotion dry and tasteless. These men were trained to be drones. The kind that scare humanity. Roger did not see a need or reason to waste life by letting individuals that didn’t serve a higher purpose live. To him, man was expendable to the cause. A cause that Roger had sworn an oath to take part in since birth. Roger picked up his pace and rushed down the corridor to the stairwell. A wall caved in and blocked the way down to the front entrance. His escape and freedom was now in question. His anger ignited and he turned to his men and pointed to the pile of rubble that blocked his path. “Move this crap or die, NOW!!”…

Let’s Recap that:

alright now that i’m warmed up… that was a weird scene. Looking back and reading it over I have to say it is a bit boring and seems to have random interludes of facts that i seemed to think needed to be inserted to prolong action and intensify the worry if they would escape. The only problem is that i didn’t block the path soon enough, and didn’t say the police were on their way, but it could be implied. There is a bigger problem here though. It has to do with “why should i care,” and your right! Why should you care about a character that i have given you no reason to make his actions  justified or sympathetic. Right now the only justification I have given is that he’s crazy and has been since an oath from birth. The only thing I have accomplished here is that you might want to know what oath he pledged, other then that, this paragraph has no substance other then dry action and lousy dialogue because only one character is talking and lets be honest, he sounds like a meat head.

Now that my sensory is tuned in I think I can continue my chapter in Acliss. But before I continue i want to ask some questions that seem to be in my head just to get them down on paper.

I have ideas and notes everywhere, how do people keep their story organized?

What do you do with the scraps of your story that you decided to re write and they now don’t work? Do you save them at the end of the document or delete them just to clean up the clutter?

Making characters believable is actually a pretty difficult task. I have read books that talk about character building, and to me the main facet that needs to be mastered when it comes to character is that you must show how your character is perceived through other eyes and test his image. You also must show the insecurities of your character regardless of their position in the story.

Does a villain ever think their actions aren’t justified and that they are evil? Of course not! But the challenge is to make your reader understand their predicament and make it seem justified and so complex that we can’t help but feel for how lost the character is within evil.

Here’s a prompt to write if your feeling stuck:

If an individual was sitting across from you that you really liked and they were staring back at you, what features would you describe, what feelings would you instantly have. What would the look on their face be. How would you compare their emotions to yours if they somehow knew what you were feeling at the moment. The twist is that you have seen this person every day for the last year and never had the nerve to say hello. Now’s your chance, they are looking straight at you. Write the scene.

This is something I feel is needed for me to stay accountable with this project — to have regular updates on my progress.

Now that i am moved into Oregon and feeling cozy, I have finally had a chance to sit down and feel creative. There has been a story in me for so long, that sometimes i feel like I am living it, or that it has already been written down. I have to keep reminding myself that there is so much work ahead, but that to accomplish something like this of such caliber, i have to force myself to break it into little pieces that my stomach can manage.

A good friend of mine recently told me that there are many things of brilliance that we will attempt in our life time. He then went on to say that everyone should be careful what he/she calls a project because the word “project” implies that a finished product will be the result. He told me to call things experiments so that my mind would understand that it is ok to fail. Something I have struggled to accept all my life, and recently, been greeted with a lot of “failed projects”

Another friend of mine brought the concept of “mono-tasking” to my attention. We have a choice to multi-task or mono-task, but what is the difference? One has to do with rushed partial attention to several different tasks and the other has to do with giving your best attention to one task and keeping it simple. Mono-tasking is extensively intense and extremely efficient. Why have i tried to multitask for so many years? Well, because society says it get you places. Well, not for me. Focus Focus Focus!!

Anyways, Something I hadn’t realized when taking on my latest book project, was that i chose the hardest genre. Now with anything that seems to be the most difficult, the reward is equally equivalent to the effort related to the task. With that being said, I need all the encouragement you can give me. Please do send me an email with my contact form and keep me motivated. Every bit of encouragement helps. I am also always looking for writing buddies. If you want to partner write over Skype just to have the presences of another focused writer and hearing the keys going crazy on the keyboard, let me know! I’m also looking for writing buddies to hang out in coffee shops in Oregon.

The first step or bite of the giant cookie for me is to get my character bios of my mains done then to make a cause and effect list to the point that it creates a working first draft. Even though I am planning to write 5 books, I need to only focus on the first and make each book feel complete on it’s own.

The genre I chose is Fiction Fantasy with the sub-genre High Fantasy (which means two worlds hang in the balance, one of which is created from scratch.)

I have spent many days and hours designing this world and it is to my delight that I get to spend many more years in it’s rules and uncanny plot.

Tonight I will work on a single character. My main — Korin.