We are very close to November 2024 right now and if I can be fully honest with you, I wish I was far further along with my final draft of the first volume. I set myself a deadline of late July, which I changed to late September which I then changed to this year. I don’t think I’ll make that deadline either. But there has been progress. And I think the most important thing here is that I am quite pleased with what I’ve done so far. It’s not as much as I wanted, but it is of a quality that I wanted it to be. Truth be told, it’s quite scary to write a “final” draft. It’s not really that it can’t be changed or edited after this, but this is the final version I’m writing for myself. When this draft is done, I’m sending it out to potentially get it published, so any edits or suggestions that are made after that point are for a public version of the story, and not just the version I wrote for me.
I watched a video from Brandon Sanderson a little while ago, which was the first in his series of lectures about creative writing. I still need to watch the rest at some point, but the content has been good lately so I don’t have time to watch it in between all the other things I’m trying to keep up with. The reason I’m bringing up this video is because he talked about something that I think I needed to hear. Lately I’ve been very focused on showing off my story to the world – and that’s still something I want to keep doing – and part of me has been thinking about the possibility of making a living off of my writing. I know that’s a pretty big goal to have and perhaps a bit arrogant, but it does primarily come from a place of wanting to be able to write more. I’ve long given up on being rich or even middle class, that’s not really much of a priority in my life. I want to be healthy, make enough money to not have sleepless nights and I want to spend my free time writing and doing the other things I enjoy doing. It’s mainly that selling books would enable me to do two out of three. And sometimes it’s important to realize that two out of three ain’t bad. (Thank you, Fall Out Boy).
I am so unfocused right now I almost forgot that I didn’t explain what the Sanderson quote was. I need sleep. But he talked about how his course was designed with the idea that those taking it wanted to work as an author and write fantasy novels. But he also said that this wasn’t required at all to learn things from the course. If you want to write stories as a hobby, read them, edit them, and then put them on a shelf never to be seen by the world (or not to be seen by more than a few people) that’s a perfectly valid thing to do as well. Money, fame and many people seeing your stories aren’t as important as enjoying the process. And I can truthfully say that the process of writing stories has been incredibly enjoyable for me. I have been doing it (on and off) for well over 2 decades after all. Although I will add, seeing people like my posts and even seeing the same people come back weekly has been a huge motivator for me. I really hope people are enjoying my world and my characters and I want to keep creating good content for them. I also still want to be an author as a living, but teaching isn’t too bad either.
Anyway, to come back to the first volume of the Hesitant Hero, it’s going slowly but it’s going well. I’m currently figuring out what I want to do with Kimi’s magical prison inside the Torii gate. I liked the concept but I feel like I need to expand on it and I need to put more emphasis on how the magic worked. That’s a throughline in these final versions that I’ll be writing. I don’t have a very set magic system in this world – and that’s not going to change – but I do want it to feel consistent enough that people who read it don’t think “oh, it’s just magic and it works to further the plot”. I don’t like that stuff either, so it needs to feel earned. With NaNoWriMo within sight, it’s time to take a break from volume 1, but I am hoping to finish it early next year. Mainly because I want to finish volume 3 before starting on volume 5. If there’s too much of a time difference then the final version of the story will no longer match up with what is on my blog overtime and that would not only be bad, it would also be quite confusing. As of right now, I think volume 1 and 3 will not get changed an awful amount. It will primarily be updated worldbuilding, more consistency and some changes in the flow of the story. Volume 2 will probably undergo major changes. There are large parts of it that I feel are super boring. I don’t think it was good that the party took several chapters to travel across the Rilodar kingdom. I want to figure out a way to adjust that. But the start, meeting Eliana and Grac, and the place the story ends will all stay roughly the same, so nothing major will change. It won’t be that once the story gets published Eliana is suddenly no longer there or something, but I have some other plans I want to include.
I’m rambling again and I apologize. I can talk about this stuff for hours – and I will if you don’t stop me – but right now I should focus on thinking of volume 4. I have some plans and it might include some stuff that happens in volume 1 and gets expanded upon in the rewrite. Look forward to it and know that if I change any big story beats – like the gang meeting with Guthir Vadier – I will post those changes on this blog. Thanks for reading!
Oh, one last quick thing. Due to me working on some uni stuff as well as having my fall break to prepare (and start) NaNoWriMo, there will likely not be any posts next week. Things will go back to relatively normal the week after!
Opal Kaharis 