Updates from life
The small achievements of a person who struggles to complete things, including writing a novel
Over the years, I’ve had a lot of moments when I desperately wanted to do something and gave up not even halfway through because things haven’t been going as smoothly as I imagined they would go or because the actual sitting down and doing the thing was less rewarding/interesting/engaging than I expected it to be.
The best thing I’ve done from start to finish, while I barely enjoyed the process, but greatly appreciated the reward, is finishing my university studies. I had a rough patch in my first uni year - figuring out how to live by myself, getting used to the culture of the country I was studying in, trying to come up with a proper study plan, all the while facing depression because moving to another country for uni had been nothing like I hoped it’d be. The struggles were horrible and my first year was extremely tough. After switching faculties, and trying again, I got it right. The process was slow, excruciatingly so, sometimes depression caught up with me, but I pushed through and ended up on top.
There were small joys during that time in the form of escaping through reading and, sometimes, writing - mostly fanfiction (one-shots, or max 3-chapter short stories). Whenever I tried to come up with an idea for my own story, I either started by writing a scene that popped into my mind or tried to lay out a story plan. Nothing concrete happened. Since then, I’ve had several other false beginnings - I still wrote for myself small scenes with my OC characters, I still wrote fanfiction for my then-favourite fandoms (I did end up posting those, they are on AO3, I consider them good especially since the feedback was positive), I still dreamt of being able to one day write a full novel, even if it will never be seen by anyone else except myself.
Recently, I have been extra busy with work, going on long business trips, interacting with frustrating people and having virtually no time for myself. However, I have found time in the late evening to watch the web series Critical Role1 - a Twitch-streamed game of Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve never played D&D, didn’t know the rules, but the way these people play, the Dungeon Master (the one creating the storyline, basically, for the players to go through) wove this wonderful fantasy story that made me itch again to try my hand at writing. The idea of building my OCs based on the D&D Player’s Handbook (race, class, background, weapons, spells, etc.) is tempting, but I cannot create characters if I do not know what story I want to tell.
As such, I decided it was high time to get my story going. For the first time ever, in 2 days, I made a complete layout of a story. I figured out who the main characters are, three secondary characters, and the main plot - I found the themes, motives and conflicts of my story. I wasted no time and wrote the full outline. Obviously, it’s not perfect - some things need to be altered to raise the stakes, some things need to be better thought out because they are not as clear to me as I’d like them to be. I may be outright in the process of building something I’ve never had the courage to finish before. Although, only time will tell.
I guess this is my biggest personal achievement lately, and it feels incredible.
Most other times I was stumped because my ideas became humongous and overwhelming - the research that had to go into a full medieval war-centered fantasy novel was daunting, so I abandoned it after setting the characters. Other times, I thought starting out with contemporary fiction would be easier - I had only to draw from my every day life - I dropped the idea when I wrote the outline for the first scene. Other times I had one scene in mind, wrote it out, and the rest of the story was never meant to be - it was a fleeting dream. Plus a lot of insecurity in terms of language proficiency, ability to engage a reader (even if the reader is myself) and, the worst of all, always considering I don’t have enough time for myself to be able to write undisturbed for hours on end.
I truly hope my new budding novel will evolve and I will be able to prove to myself that it’s possible to be a writer.
About other stuff, I’ve been slowly going through my Autumn TBR. I strayed from the list just a little - adding and reading Outlander #8 Written in my Own Heart’s Blood by Diana Gabaldon. I finished Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and, currently, I’m reading The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien de Castell - the tone of this fantasy book is quite different from what I’m used to, it is refreshing. I may write a proper review for it. Maybe.
Also, regarding fantasy books, I was finally able to get my hands on the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steve Erikson. I had a hard time getting these books because there are TEN of them and all my country’s bookstores either didn’t have the entire series or, if they did, the formats were all over the place , and I just can’t stand odd-seized books from the same series. Buying them from abroad would’ve broken my bank account. Shout out to my favourite indie bookshop for coming through - Nautilus.
