Reinvention
I stopped writing in college. At least, I stopped writing novels. I had written my first novel in high school, and knew then that even though the book itself was awful, writing novels was my bliss.
However, writing novels requires a great commitment of time and effort. Not so great, perhaps, when I was in HS, lived at home, and had like three friends, but I found that commitment much more taxing in college.
You see, I had a plan to reinvent myself.
I think this is something we all do whenever we change schools. There is an influx of new people who don’t know all the stupid shit you did in the last school, and you have a chance to alter/upgrade your public image.
But I think at no time in a person’s life is there a greater opportunity to reinvent themselves than going away to college. You are old enough to have your head mostly straight, but still young enough to make lifelong friends and decisions.
Because of this, I picked a school far away from home, where no one would know me as the shy, awkward wallflower who spent more time with his comics and fantasy novels than he did with people. The schlemiel who was always spilling drinks at the party. I could be anyone to these people. Mysterious and cool.
I was determined not to fuck that opportunity up. I was going to present myself as someone bold and decisive, who might like nerdy shit, but made no apologies for it. I thought that by acting like that secure person, I could become him.
In many ways it worked. The new me had many friends, and suddenly women weren’t embarrassed to be seen with me. Life improved vastly for me, but there was a cost. Suddenly, the time necessary to write novels just wasn’t there, even though I still felt the NEED to do it.
I tried to scratch the creative itch in less time-consuming ways, writing “cool” poetry about mythology, and porny short stories for girls. Taking art classes, reading, and playing dungeons and dragons. None of it really satisfied, but it took the edge off at least.
D&D was the biggest release. I had always loved it as a kid, but spent more time reading the game manuals by myself than actually playing. Around junior year of college, though, I had gotten a pretty solid group together to play an adventure I designed. I wrote elaborate storylines, created three dimensional characters for players to interact with, and worked with each of the player to give their character a strong, character driving backstory/quest. In retrospect, I can’t fathom any better training for novel writing.
But sometime after college, D&D ceased to be enough to satisfy me. Getting games together is harder when the players don’t all live in your dorm, and when we actually did play, the stories never unfolded the way I planned. I would spend hours creating an ex-mercenary innkeeper for the players to talk to, to provide crucial quest information and a side adventure. I’d spend WEEKS planning the side adventure.
Inevitably, though, the players would pick a fight, kill the guy before he could open his mouth, rob him, and then start wandering aimlessly until I could find a way to get the story back on the rails. Sometimes, I think they did it just to fuck with me.
Finally, something bubbled over, and I sat down to write how the story SHOULD have gone, taking all the places and characters I created and putting them into a narrative. I figured it could be a Forgotten Realms Novel, or something, and told myself I’d submit it to TSR when it was done, if it ever was.
I found immense satisfaction that I was writing again. I quickly amassed a ton of text, but I began to feel hampered by the D&D magic system and monsters, not to mention the YA tone of Realms novels.
At that point, about halfway through the first book, I should have just scrapped the project and started fresh, but I didn’t. I tried to “fix” what I had already written. I created a new magic system, and researched world mythology for new monsters that fit the needs of the already written story.
I don’t regret that decision even now, but I was definitely thinking with my heart more that my head. I just loved the characters too much and wasn’t willing to give up on their adventures. The story became a sprawling soap opera about life, friendship, family, love, sex and ass-kicking that I pretty much made up as I went along. It was called Heart’s Guard.
When I was done, there were parts of HG that I was (and still am) immensely proud of. But there were also parts that embarrassed the hell out of me. Parts that showed how hamstrung I had been by not starting fresh, and how immature some of my initial storylines were.
But the book was done. Like going to a new school, I had a chance to start again and reinvent my writing.
I did this, but again thinking with my heart over my head, I decided to double down on the setting and characters, this time putting them through a more tightly plotted adventure that afforded a full story arc for all the primary and secondary protagonists of the large ensemble cast.
That book was called Snowcrest, and it was and is vastly superior to Heart’s Guard. I wrote plotlines and scattered prose for two more books in the ongoing series, as well.
I still love Snowcrest. I read it myself and still laugh in places and get choked up in others. It’s a good book, despite its kind of generic high fantasy setting.
But it’s part two in a series. What good is that, if part one is deeply flawed?
I thought about tripling down, fixing Heart’s Guard a third time, but this time my head prevailed. I decided to start truly fresh, like I did in choosing my college. Make everything new.
That new start was The Painted Man, but, the first draft of The Painted Man was soundly rejected by my (now) agent, and for good reason. It had its own flaws.
So in a fit of pique, I went back and started on the third book in the Heart’s Guard series, Crestwood. I wrote like a third of it and plotted the rest. I was convinced it would be the best thing I ever wrote, and who knows? It might have been. I figured I would finish Crestwood, go back and fix Heart’s Guard a third time, and then try to sell the whole deal as a pre-packaged trilogy.
But deep down, I knew I was building on a shaky foundation, and eventually dropped Crestwood to go back and fix The Painted Man. This was obviously the right decision, as TPM has sold all over the world and will direct the path of my writing career for years to come.
But I often ponder what, if anything, should be done with those old books. I hate to see them languish, but that may just be vanity. Part of me really wants to have one last go at fixing them, and another part is temped to just leave them be, or to put them up online or print on demand as is, flaws and all. Maybe do it on a page on my website like a chapter book. I dunno.
Hey, you know who would be a good person to solve this problem? Future me.
I’ll let that poor bastard worry about it.
A review of The Warded Man, along with an interview I did recently, will appear in the June 2009 issue of