[I am delaying my return to the 14th. Apologies! It’s the best thing to do to keep rested.]
I am almost done. And then the largest actual book I have ever writt–no, wait. The first book I ever wrote was perhaps longer than this. But I never edited it, and that story will never see the light of day. It’s super bad, and I lost it to PC crashes maybe. Either way, I’ve reread the opening, and it was so bad that even eight years ago it made me cringe.
Let me tell you about it. I was worse at coming up with character names back then. You may think I have uh…issues now. But back then I copied names from RPGMaker XP’s default character list, because I was so uncertain. It was my first book, and it had themes that I was surprised to recall were in other stories.
A living slime (not as cute as Healing Slime), Battle Golems, an anti-magic spear…maybe it would be illuminating for people to see what has changed and what hasn’t, but dead gods it was bad. And it was, technically, the longest ‘book’ I’ve written. I think it was over 600,000 words.
The Shadows of Life, Book 1. Argh. I think that’s the title. Again, I don’t know where the doc is if it exists. The name hurts me. The story hurts me. It wasn’t good, but it was…something I put everything I had into. The difference is I think even back then I could tell, deep in my soul, it wasn’t close to the level of the writing I wanted to capture in the stories I enjoyed.
Maybe someday I’ll release it. Then again, maybe I’ll wait until I’m dead because it really does embarrass me. Not just because the writing is poor or cliched. But because I realize now it didn’t show people what I was actually trying to say. I didn’t do the story or character’s justice. That’s the embarrassing part.
Now, today? Huntsong isn’t perfect, but I don’t feel visceral shame when I work on it. I know for some it’s been a lot of wasted time, but I have personally improved my writing abilities while fixing it up, and I am almost done with the entire thing. Period. No more revisions, I send it off and I am free!
…Until I revise something else. But I need one more update off. I’m taking two in case I need it.
I could get back to work and push out the final edits, and it’s probably within my power, but I’ve been feeling good of late. I’ve had more sleep and more energy as the blog posts indicate. I’ve even begun chatting on the Discord and wow is Inktober going strong there. I have already more than 70 pieces of fanart to show people, and I want to get back to writing but while maintaining good spirits and energy.
This…strange feeling of balance and not overwork actually makes me feel guilty. There’s some unhealthy part of me that suggests that if I don’t work MORE than 7 hours in a day and feel like I’m dead, did I actually do anything productive today?
I am trying to learn to keep more time for myself because that improves the quality of my life and writing. So I’m trying not to feel too bad when I say that I need an update off. I feel guilty for not following my promises to my readers, so I hope you understand my perspective. But either way, I’m trying to change a part of me, and that’s never easy. Well, this sounds very melodramatic, but those darn lawnmowers AND someone cutting down a tree have been keeping me awake when I tried to sleep. Thanks for waiting as I put Huntsong to rest,
–pirateaba
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