I know that some planning is key. Once upon a time, I wrote a short story that people absolutely loved. So I wrote another, then another. People loved the story, so I decided to write more of them for people. Then a friend of mine said, “You realize your main character changed names?”
I remember writing the stories and thinking in the third, “Its time to give this guy a name.” I thought I had written the first two stories trying to keep everything nameless, but after rereading it, I didn’t. In fact, other details changed, like eye color.... It was my first time trying to write a series and realizing I need an Outline. So I went back, reread those stories and took tons of notes along the way. Then I went back and rewrote the first two stories, and started to conceive and plan the rest of the series.
Then my computer died, destroying that harddrive. Word of advice, back up your work! I’ve gotten to write a lot in my life, even if I’ve never been published, I have writing all over the place. I have written well over 150 poems in my life, and well over 1000 pages of short stories and scrapped novels. There’s no telling what this blog is going to add to that. I love writing, and I love people reading my words and enjoying themselves.
And in the long run, that’s why I write. I want to inspire someone as much as I have been inspired by reading the things I have. I said in a post about gaming, about how readers get to live multiple lives. There is a quote I found while browsing around the internet:
“You are all the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest color and the darkest corner. You are a collective of every experience you have had in your life. You are every single day. So drown yourself in a sea of knowledge and existence. Let the words run through your veins and let the colours fill your mind.”
This quote touches me as more true than most. And the fact you are reading this, means that I have affected you in some way, and that is the most humbling thing to know. What I strive to do with my fiction is simply inspire someone, anyone, to dream of something more, something different, something amazing. Live a life that is not your own, then come back to your life richer for the experience. And as the sun shines down onto your skin, see it with new eyes, knowing that imagination is real, and is one of the cornerstones of this existence.
