The First Novel I Ever Finished!
Vixen Parallels is the title of the first book that I finished during NaNoWriMo back in 2015. I had finished a lot of short stories and written a few partial books, but I had never actually finished a novel before. That November, I pumped out 60,000 words. I was so excited because I wasn’t just an aspiring author but I had written a book. I even went on to beef up that manuscript a bit until it was around 85,000 words.
When I was sure the book was ready, I printed the entire damn thing out and sat down with a red pen to mark it up. I made a lot of changes, worked my way through the first few chapters and I felt proud of what I had written.
Now, What to Do With It?
At this time, I was really interested in self publishing. I’d been learning about the industry through podcasts like The Self Publishing Podcast and the Creative Penn. Six years later, I still listen to Joanna Penn pretty faithfully. I really felt inspired by her attitude of empowering writers. I knew that I wanted to turn writing into my career, so I came up with a plan for my first twenty books (across three series) and committed to writing them.
While I sat down to write what would become Mythical Investigations, I also found a website called Inkshares. It was basically a way to crowd-fund stories. The writers with the biggest following would get bumped to the top and once you hit a certain threshold, you would get published. I loved the idea and wanted to make it work. So, I started up an account and started posting chapters.
These chapters were not really well received. My editing job had not been as thorough as it should have been. This was partly because the story was so huge and I worried that if I changed something fundamental in the beginning that I would have to rewrite huge chunks of the book. There were other things I didn’t like about Inkshares, so I left the platform when my campaign didn’t get anywhere. I decided to take the knowledge I had gathered from the Creative Penn and turn it into a real career.
People Hated It – Like a Lot.
I’ve talked about this part before, but it was a pretty pivotal moment for me as a writer. In this industry, it doesn’t matter what type of publishing you choose, if you are putting content out there, you have to have thick skin. This was certainly tested with me when I sent my book off to a few beta readers. I wanted to get more perspectives after a lack of interest on Inkshares.
Well, the beta readers really had to force themselves to finish this book. It wasn’t good and what I learned was that a lot of the scenes were just not translating well. I would write something that made sense in my head, but the feedback I was getting was full of question marks and confusion. Whatever I was doing was not working.
I was still certain that I could fix these problems pretty easily, so I had a book cover made for the story anyway. Clearly, the criticism didn’t stop me from writing. It did make me realize that I had a lot of work to do before I could justify putting something out there.
I Rewrote the Book.
I wrote Vixen Parallels again. I changed major storylines and rewrote chapter after chapter. I was certain that this time, I had nailed it. I sent it off to a beta reader again and started on some other books. In this year, I would go on to finish a lot of manuscripts. I felt even more confident now because I had also written Mythical Investigations and I sent it off to beta readers and the feedback was really positive. I was killing it.
Until I got the beta feedback that suggested I look into some beginner courses on what a plot looks like because this one wasn’t going to work. I was so frustrated. I didn’t get how I could be writing one series that everyone who read it loved and one novel that people were simply not interested in.
I Was Done.
At this point, I had sunk money into a cover and poured hours into a book that was never going to see the light of day. I sat it on a shelf, I burned the first draft pages I had printed (a bit melodramatic) and I moved on.
I put all of my remaining energy into The Leslie Kim Serials. If this series was somehow more likable, then it’s where I needed to be writing. I would sometimes pull out a plotting tool and come up with a new outline for Vixen Parallels. In fact, I have probably six alternative outlines sitting around here somewhere. I even rewrote the book one more time to see if I could make it work. But, it wasn’t until this year that I finally worked through what had gone wrong.
This Post Could Also be Called “Why You Don’t Write an Epic Fantasy For Your First Novel”
Recently, I started looking into ways to rework this book once again. I can finally see a path through the muddled mess of years of writing and rewriting… But first, I need to finish the drafts for the next few books in The Leslie Kim Serials.
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