Ok, I'm here to procrastinate writing again, mostly because I feel oddly motivated to do precisely dick. So I decided to come on here and babble about my novel- its initial premise, what inspired me and most likely a summary of the story as I see it in my head.
The story goes like this: I work in retail and they make me take breaks, and during those breaks I tend to read. Anyway, while my store was moving to its new location, I got an idea for a story. This blew my fucking mind, as I'd not had a viable story idea in perhaps 20 years. See, I'd just finished Brent Weeks's Night Angel Trilogy for like the third time and the idea of immortality struck something in my subconscious. As I walked to the mall for lunch, I started thinking about thieves in a medieval fantasy world. The two ideas melded and I began thinking of how a thief who'd practiced his craft in medieval times and who was cursed with immortality would have to adapt to modern technology.
I almost immediately dumped the immortality conceit, mostly because I didn't want him to come across as a vampire, as vampires are extremely overused in pop literature. So I just began to focus on the thief; who was he, where did he live, etc. The same day as the idea struck me, I went to the mall and bought a notebook and I began writing. In hindsight, I probably should have let the story stew in my mind before writing, but I was so excited that I'd finally had an idea that I had to get it onto paper.
Cut to about six months later and I had a rough draft typed out. From beginning to end, the document was about 36,000 words. I initially was writing this with Fantasy & Sci Fi magazine in mind, but their upper limit for novellas is 26,000 words. So I was left with the prospect of cutting 10,000 words, or soldiering on and lengthening the book to full-on novel size.
While struggling to lengthen the languishing book, I moved on to other stories; it seems that this one story broke the dam as it were and story ideas were coming to me left and right. I conceived of a sequel or two to my original story, as well as a prequel. I came up with several other stories, and as they were fresh and on my mind a the time, I spent more time working on those. Eventually, I stopped writing altogether for perhaps two months, spending the time reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
It wasn't until I purchased Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, which I mentioned in my earlier post, that I began to re-examine my thief novel. On my computer, I opened a new file and began rewriting. Before, I'd been just going through the rough draft document and trying to add one word at a time. By rewriting, I was able to lengthen more naturally, to get rid of the parts I didn't think worked and to add things that I wanted added. As of this writing, I'm approximately halfway through the story and I've added close to 5,000 words at last counting.
Ultimately, the story is coming along, and while I don't expect I'll finish within the year, I do believe I will finish it at some point.
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