Once More With Feeling

Things have not gone 'as planned' with my novel.

Actually, I suppose in order for things to have gone 'as planned' that would have involved me having 'a plan' for them to deviate from. Don't get me wrong; I knew there would be complications involved in the writing process. It was fear of those complications (and a mire such as the one I've been stuck in for the last several months) that stopped me from writing a novel for the first ten or so years I was determined to write one.

I knew that, after the completion of my book (manuscript, insists my semi-agent) that there would be an extensive period of editing and re-editing. That entire sections would be removed, chopped up, torn apart, glued back together, and then presented to me as being 'better' than my original vision. I knew that, even with the help of my semi-non-official-agent-agent, there would be a lengthy period of shopping it around to different full agents, and that even once (if) we'd aquired a full agent we'd still have to begin again (again) and re-re-re-edit the whole thing before we'd be able to submit it to a publisher... who would doubtlessly have notes on how they'd like us to re-re-re-re-edit it.

In a way, I was almost ok with that. As one author (self-published, but hey) told me at PhilCon 2006, "I keep a printed copy of the 'original' version on my shelf and say to myself 'That there... that's the real story'. That's how I got through editing." I knew the story was going to change. Hell, the story has changed so much inside my head over the years, there's nothing anyone else could do to it any worse than running through the mulcher of my brain for ten years hadn't already done.

No... what I've run into is a new and entirely different sort of problem. One that, I suspect, most authors would give their right shift key to encounter. One that, nevertheless, has still flumoxed me for the last six or so months.

See, I started out trying to create a fairly detailed history of my world. The story is set in and about the year 6000 in what more or less is our future. In addition to the future-forward version our own native human culture, I invented several sub-cultures deviated from humanity throughout the years, as well as a handfull of alien races each with their own backstories and unique origins/secrets/stereotypes/social constructs/classes/castes/religions. Timelines were drafted, maps were drawn, small encyclopedic entries written. And that, in a nutshell, is my problem.

What I wrote is a perfectly good, fully functional, well-compiled... third book in a series.

Normally, that would be great. However when the third book precedes the first and second, and even the author isn't entirely sure what ought to go into books 1 and 2, it can tend to occasionally cause - and how can I say this delicately - bloody awful confusion. I know what I wrote is good. I'm not going to pull my usual modest BS line here and go "Awww, shucks, really?" No. I believe in my own abilities to tell stories. I just apparently don't have a firm grasp on where to START telling stories.

What I've written stands alone; you don't need books 1 and 2 to understand it or even to fully appreciate it. We COULD send it out now, shop it around, try and get some interrest going in it. Heck, it might even sell well and make me some money (I tell a lie - you never make money off the first book unless you or the publishers are insane). But, if I did that, I'd never be able to revisit the bit that I so conveniently skipped over to get to "the good part", as I call it. It'd be gone, obscure history, nevermore.

So... the last six months or so have been me, languishing. Not because the production turnaround time of my book isn't what I had hoped for; but instead because I screwed it up. Do I begin again, start where I can at least now clearly define the particular story arc beginning and write forward, trying to dovetail the already written and established story and this new exciting prequel together into one unified masterwork? Or do I just say "bugger it all" and do something else?

As of now, I've decided to write the first book and see how it goes. I've got a good story, even if I didn't deem it originally fit-for-print (and therefore shoved it into 'history' instead of 'story'). And I'm currently working through some various embellishments that, while not corrupring or bastardizing the original intent, make the events leading up to the current point of my work far more 'exiciting' and less 'people riding around in broken spaceships fussing with computers'.

The working title for Book 1, lifted with love from the less-popular-but-still-awesome Laziest Men On Mars song, is "The Terrible Secret of Space".