Damn, it’s been awhile since I last posted. But it isn't because my level of focus on the project has dropped. Quite the opposite: with the exception of a brief road trip and a couple of weeks spent on writing theory, I've been following Rule #1 more intensively than ever before.
Most first novels are in the 300-page range, and there are good reasons for this. From the publisher’s perspective, it costs much less to print a shorter book. From the reader's perspective, it's less of a commitment. From the writer’s perspective, whether new or experienced, it’s more manageable: longer works are harder to write, harder to rewrite and much more time-consuming to edit. Also, it’s harder to keep them tight. It’s the same reason most writers start out with short stories: learn to say a lot in a little space, then take those skills into larger formats. Not only is there nothing wrong with this approach, it's just smarter.
On the other hand...
When I set out on this project, I wanted to begin a series in the urban fantasy genre, but beyond that, I wanted to create something rare, something I haven't seen much of out there: urban epic fantasy. I wanted to follow several characters through robust stories of their own that are intertwined with each other, within a complex, multilayered story world. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, to the best of my ability, for the last year.
The first draft came in at about 850 pages and was largely done in six months. As I've worked my way through the second draft, new ideas have come up, characters have gotten more refined, subplots have undergone some slight course corrections, and the story world lore has gotten deeper and more broad. It’s a difficult and time-consuming process, and it’s been consuming all the hours I can throw at it. I dream about it, and wake up worrying about it. It’s becoming an obsession.
The much slower pace of the rewrite process has made it clear that this is going to take a lot more time. There’s not a lot I can do to speed it up: it’ll take as long as it takes. This is a project I've put a lot of time and thought and work into, and it’s important to me to get it done right. There’s no point at all to inventing an elaborate story world filled with rich viewpoint characters, forces and factions, layers of hidden agenda, and weirdness galore, only to push it out before it’s ready. Not when the point is to hold the attention of increasingly demanding readers.
The project’s consumed the better part of a year now, and I wouldn't be surprised if the second (or hopefully third draft) takes another year. But so be it. The way I see it, and what I tell myself whenever the difficulties become disheartening. Is that I don't have anything better to do…or to say it another way, there isn't anything better to do than to put everything you can into a piece of work you care about.
And so I forge on. Yeah, the glass is half empty, but every day I'll pour a little more into it. My story grows, and the story world with it. And hopefully in the end, I won’t be the only one living there.
