Water Under the Bridge

When the pressure gets tight, my general response is to write.

When it's writing that's causing the pressure, I panic.

Not really true. Sometimes I do excessive amounts of art of the thing I'm supposed to be writing, because that's creative and close enough, right? Sometimes I just procrastinate and like... Study, and stuff. Most often, I... Well, I write.

Just not what I'm supposed to be writing.

Normally, I consider this a good thing because there's not actually much "pressure", so it's good to get my brain in another place, give what I've been writing some space, come back to it with a fresh head and new inspiration.

Now, I can't do that. Sylvestus needs to be finished, which means no breaks.

When I started in April, I worked out how fast I was actually going to have to work, and decided it didn't look so bad. I decided it's time to add context to that.

An Approximate Timeline of Tatiana AS Webb's Novel-Writing Career:

The Red Prince

350,000 words

19 months

2012-2014

 Never published

Seeking

 120,000 words

15 months

2013-2014

Published 2014

(withdrawn 2017)

Each Separate Dying Ember

140,000 words

18 months

2014-2015

Published 2017

Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum

210,000 words

13 months

2015-2017

Never published

Sylvestus Vol. I

Predicted ~120,000 words

6 months

2017

Due 2017

If you want to do some calculations on that, feel free; I did them once, but like... I didn't write them down. It's also worth noting that all of that is from memory and reference to "A'ight I know I was writing that during this life event..." so like... Not that anyone's checking, but accuracy is potentially not the most umm... Accurate.

(do you know how hard it is to make words do the thing outside of a novel??)

On the surface, I think it's easy to look at this and think that my writing accelerates and decays almost randomly. Four months fewer for Seeking than The Red Prince, but 1/3 of the word count? This might be true to a degree if you take into account other life commitments (lower secondary school, then GCSEs, then A-levels, and now a Bachelor's degree - plus work and theatre which have come in and out in the meantime) but actually, I think this timeline is incomplete in the scheme of my overall writing. These are my completed novels, sure, but for a long time novels were just a small part of what I wrote.

Before I started the very first The Red Prince in May 2012, I wrote a lot with online communities. A lot. They come and go in cycles, and I had been working with them on various plots and stories since about 2009; they're active for a year to eighteen months, and then they suddenly die, without warning, for six months or more. Most never come back. The one I worked with from 2010 always came back, but after the first time it went inactive in March 2012 I was left stranded - I had gone from writing hundreds of words a day to having nothing at all to put my mind and inspiration to.

Then I had the first idea for The Red Prince in May, and suddenly I knew what to write.

And why not? I didn't have anything else to write any more.

I had started novels before, of course, trying to write with no plot or plot the whole thing before writing, hesitantly discovering Word documents or just scratching out pages in notebooks I still have stuffed in drawers - but this was my first big commitment. And somehow, 19 months later, 350,000 words down, I finished it.

For reference, I believe The Hunger Games is about 100,000 words.

I may have gone a little overboard.

My community actually started up again a few months into The Red Prince. I re-joined and balanced my time.

When it went inactive in early 2013, I started Seeking - even though The Red Prince was still halfway done.

Since then, that's what I've always done: two projects at a time. Either two novels, where I alternate between them every few months, or a novel and a writing community. By the time I finished the first draft of Dying Ember, I had been writing thousands of words for the community almost every day on top of the novel (and A-levels, of course).

I stopped that habit halfway through Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum (now adapted to Sylvestus Vol. I & II). I wanted to be more serious and focused, so no community writing, and if I was going to get novels out on a reasonable schedule, I couldn't keep splitting my energy like that.

It's added complications. I tend to go steady on writing something for a while, then suddenly get a burst of energy for it, then burn out. I then can't touch it for anything between a week and six months. Then repeat.

Writing communities prevented the surges of inspiration and burn-out by steadying my progress. Two simultaneous novels gave me something else to work on for a few days/weeks/months, until I burned that out too and went back to Project A.

I have taken some small breaks to touch on Red and [City Novel], but otherwise it's been pretty much solid Sylv for a long time.

I hit burnout about three weeks ago, and I hit it bad.

I went from being far ahead of my schedule and still smashing out a chapter every two days, to having my deadline smack me over the back of the head as it overtook me again for the first time since about June. This is, honestly, what I was worried about; I currently have a desire to write, but when I try to touch Sylvestus I just get bluescreen. But I daren't get into anything else, in case I get too into it.

I need to finish this draft in about three weeks. I'm not gonna' lie, that thought is currently making me feel a little

But we'll... Keep going. I'm sure I can force something out in that time. And like... It is then going to be edited, right?
I've never actually written a novel to a strict deadline before. It's a different experience than I'm used to.

I blame music a little; since I discovered Spotify a few years ago, I make a playlist at least four hours long for writing each novel, which includes character-relevant songs, but also atmosphere and mood (different to the public playlists, which are a more reasonable one hour long). Because I've been listening to the Sylv playlist for like two years, I can't listen to it now if I'm not writing, because I just get bored. The result is that I listen to my Red, [City novel], and [Pyrate novel] playlists quite a lot - studying, travelling, cooking. Then I get more into the mood for those; that song has such a good atmosphere, I'd rather write in that place than in ancient Rome; that song is so emotional, I'd rather write that relationship than those in Sylvestus... Among other things, my characters and worlds live in music, and if I'm listening to the wrong music, I can't get back into that world.
Consequently, in an attempt to beat down my inappropriate Red feelings (the equivalent of shoving Rheimer bodily into a box while he squalls and kicks and tries to climb back out), I've been listening to Claire Laminen's Across the Formidable Sea playlist.
I wouldn't really say I have a "kind of music", which is evidenced if you look at the contents of my various playlists and albums; I have a few genres I won't touch, but other than that I'm game. The AtFS playlist, however, still contains music I... Wouldn't normally listen to.
And I'm currently obsessed with it.
In particular, I'm losing my mind to this at least four times a day now:

And y'know what? I think it's working. Aside from a few cases of "Ooh, I could so steal that song for my Red playlist...", the atmosphere of AtFS is so different from what I write that there's no crossover in my Creating vs. Consuming brains.
So I guess I'll keep belting out off-key Adele, shoving Rheimer back under the bed, and drinking Ikea blueberry juice until I can coax Sylv onto the page again.
And if you're lucky, I'll even let you look at the Sylvestus playlist next month.

And yes, I stole the title of the Adele song for this post, because I am truly phenomenally terrible at post titles, and you can probably make a metaphor out of my old novels or my problems with writing being water under the bridge, or something. Idk. Whatever you think would work as a metaphor.
As the Welsh would say (but probably not really), joio.

Genuine live-action image of me enjoying the AtFS playlist with my new headphones, because I couldn't be bothered to draw a representation. You can tell it's not Water Under the Bridge that's playing because I'm not visibly losing my mind and shrieking along