Greetings,
So. Some of you are aware I wrote and published a book called Sam’s Wasteland Within. I pulled it afterwords when I realized how poorly written it was with a promise that I would rewrite it and republish it.
In secret I’ve been attempting and reattempting to rewrite it. The problem with this story is it is attached to failure and comes with me overthinking it. I can’t give this story a rewrite because as soon as I think about Sam’s Wasteland WIthin, I think I can never ever do that again or make the mistakes I made.
I have 6 incomplete rewrite drafts. It’s become clear to me this story just isn’t happen for me. With that said, I’m not abandoning writing. I have a book I’m writing. I’ve already talked with a publisher and they are very interested and will serve in editing. This book I’m writing now is different from Sam’s Wasteland Within and it will take a few years to get to publishing.
I think the block on writing anything for Sam’s Wasteland Within will always be there for me. So instead of giving a false sense of hope, I thought it’d be better to tell you all it just isn’t going to happen. I may find a way to tell Sam’s story later but it isn’t going to be for a very long time.
To address the disappointment in this news, I thought it might be a good idea on detailing how I write now.
How I write now is very different than how I wrote Sam’s Wasteland WIthin:
How did with Sam’s Wasteland WIthin it:
I use to roleplay out the story in mind with all the characters and I’d write the story according to that. I came to later realize this isn’t a good idea just by itself. So I came up with a new plan.
The New Way I do it:
- Phase 1 The Raw Idea
- Phase 2 - Create Rules for World the story takes place in
- Phase 3 Write a rough 1 chapter based on the idea. Seek feedback.
- Phase 4 & 5 Take the feedback and start working on the outline. Also doing research.
- Phase 6 - Writing & Rewriting
- Phase 7 - Submit to Publisher
I’m going to use what I’m writing now to explain this. My current writing is called Project Camelot [I do have a title but this is the Project name for it so I can vaguely talk about].
Phase 1 for Project Camelot - The Raw Idea
I guess in a way for Project Camelot this came down me trying to figure out what to work on while I was working on the outline for the epic. I was getting no where with the outline and I thought it might be a good idea to work on a practice story. Just something to write, I had no idea how this would radically change my approach to writing. I thought what would be a story I’d enjoy practice writing with. I like fantasy but I didn’t want to write a medieval fantasy. Then I thought about the question: How many people have actually written a good Modern Fantasy? But I needed more than a genre. A genre isn’t an idea. The idea came to me when I was watching one of my favorite youtube channels Modern History . Modern History is hosted by Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion, yeah the same Rebellion that owns 2000 AD which is the comic Judge Dredd is apart of. In it he talks about knights in Medieval History. He dispelled a lot of the Hollywood myths and shows how he thinks it would have been. He is someone who has participated in reenactments and study the history. Anyway while watching a video I though what if we still had Knights in modern times. How would that look? What if there were magically creatures.
So the raw idea for Project Camelot was:
A story about a character’s journey to become a modern knight in a world were magic exist.
Phase 2 - Create Rules for World of Project Camelot
I can not stress enough having set rules for how the world works in the story has helped me a ton. For Project Camelot I’ve done the following:
- Create the Political Structure
- How magic works in this world
- What are the magical creatures in this world
- What do the knights do
- Brief History of Major Events of the world
Phase 3 Wrote a rough 1 chapter based on the idea. Sought feedback.
I did this back in April: Wolfleben Seeking Writing Feedback [Closed]
The feedback I received was exactly what I was looking for.
Phase 4 & 5
I don’t just have an outline I have a living and breathing Wiki that I work on a daily basis and has everything in there:
The Outline for the story is broken down by Arcs for the story. Chapters make up the Arcs. This story has 10 Arcs and at the moment 65 Chapters.
I’ve written out the whole outline for Arc 1 which is right now 10 chapters.
Meanwhile I’ve been research stuff that is relevant to the story. Like this:
Yes this video really helped with writing the story.
I also have an offline version of the wiki but a little more focused:
Tone, Support Characters, History, Supporting Arcs
I work on this during my lunch break at work. I transfer stuff to the online wiki on Saturday. This is where I did the bulk of the work on the history and timeline for the story.
Phase 6 - Writing & Rewriting
I’ve started rewriting the first chapter which is a part of the first arc. I’m going to keep writing till I finish the first arc. I’ll also work on the outline for the 2nd arc and I should finish it before I finish writing the first arc. I’ll keep working on the outline till it is done. Like I mentioned before I’ve done a timeline for the whole story and the events that occur. That is helping with the outline alot. Once I finish the story I’ll go back and edit/rewrite. I plan to do a couple of passes of that.
Phase 7 - Submit to Publisher
I do have a publisher in mind for this story but if they reject it I have four others in mind. I’ll need to work on a letter introducing the story to the publisher. It’s sometimes called the submission letter. I have had initial talks with them but I still have to go through the process like every writer.
That is my current writing process as a whole. I like this new process I feel like I’m finally getting work done and I know where to take the story.
