Jackdaw, Learning to Stay: Lessons Unlearned from Eight Years of Novel-Writing

Well... Dunk. Exactly what it says in the title: it's been almost eight years since I started writing my first novel.
That's - hm. "First novel" is interesting, actually. I think I've talked a little about it before, but to save anyone having to go back through the trash fire that is this blog, and because I don't think I've gone into details: what I'm talking about is The Red Prince, its current working title simply being Red. It wasn't the first novel I had ever attempted to write - my three most prolific attempts before that were, I believe:

The extremely dramatic saga of a vampire bat adventurer (whose name is sadly lost to time), who was hired by a vampire bat princess to retrieve her stolen necklace from the vampire bat sorcerer's castle. He had to cross a desert to get there, which took a long time and involved fighting and then befriending at least one dragon, and, frustrated by the time he took, the princess hired another vampire bat adventurer to track the necklace down and also kill the protagonist (i was always one for dramatic plot twists and betrayal, even at the tender age of six). In the castle, he had to fight a pterodactyl and possibly a slime monster, and was helped by Scooby Doo, before finally confronting the rival adventurer. Whether he defeated the other adventurer, killed the sorcerer, retrieved the necklace, and confronted the princess was, unfortunately, never determined, as I became frustrated by Scooby Doo's inconsistent characterisation and abandoned the project. As I recall, though, it had a series of excellent illustrations;
The somewhat darker, Amazing Maurice- and Deptford Mice-inspired (two novels i should not have been exposed to at the age of approximately nine, but nonetheless enjoyed thoroughly for their gore, body horror, and rat content) series of stories about two rats, Trixie and Tanzy, who were cursed by an evil rat and forced to fight nineteen progressively more powerful supernatural animals to be free of the curse, proving that the size of one's body matters less than one's ability to kick ass. Despite never writing more than four chapters of the first book, I was convinced for many years that I would eventually finish all nineteen books in the planned series. If I recall correctly, the final boss was to be a blue whale;
The even darker but still rat-oriented Warrior Cats-style War and Peace detailing the campaign of brown rats spreading across Europe and systematically waging war on the black rat populations which were responsible for spreading the plague. I planned every chapter in excruciating detail and never wrote more than about 100 words. This was the last time I ever attempted to write chapter plans, about ten years ago.

There were other, shorter pieces, but these were the only real concerted efforts to make my fame and fortune as the world's youngest New York Times bestseller. Every one, you may notice, was about talking animals; they all involved far more violence and blood and betrayal than I was willing to admit to patiently curious family members; and the older I got, the more self-conscious I got of my efforts, and the less I actually wrote of them.

I was involved in the theatre from the age of twelve, surprising absolutely no-one, which was eventually what brought The Red Prince about. I was helping with tech and stage management on a production of Romeo & Juliet in February-May 2012. I had just finished A Game of Thrones. I was fourteen and I was going to be the next George RR Martin. I had bundles of creative energy, I was surrounded by amazing actors and creatives anywhere between three years older than me and, like, sixty years older than me (idk, i was fourteen, the only age categories i could conceive of were "younger than me","adult", and "old"), and my only real creative sink - a forum RP about, strangely enough, talking animals and violence and blood and betrayal - had just been shut down. Cue Tybalt (in the adaptation, the chief of police's son) running on stage, stabbing a protestor Montague during a riot, and then like, idk, getting away with it. Quite why this was what triggered my serious attempts at novel-writing will never be known, but it was enough: I became fascinated with that character moment. Murder. No justice. Prince of cats. Blood on teeth in a wicked grin. Not the hero the world wanted, but the prince it was given.
So was born Rheimer. Over the next eighteen months, I wrote over 350,000 words (the combined length of A Game of Thrones + The Hunger Games + The Hobbit) of, frankly, absolute overwrought garbage. It was problematic. It was not feminist. It was definitely discreetly racist. It was weird. It was uncomfortably sexual because my knowledge of that was taken entirely from reading books written by middle-aged men. Given that I can remember only about four distinct plot points, I have absolutely no idea what was going on for most of those 900 pages. I lost all copies of that draft years ago, but I imagine there was a lot of rambling exposition and inconsistent character profiling.
It was the best thing I have ever done.

Yes, I can grankle about The Red Prince in all its unnecessarily long glory, but like... You have to hand it to 14-16 y/o me. I wrote an insanely long novel from start to finish in less time than it takes for 22 y/o me to write something half that length and a quarter that complex.
I've tried to re-write it a few times since. Completely overthrowing the world state to make it more appropriate and less deeply white privilege, adjusting and re-naming characters over and over again. I think at this point I've written the first 20,000 words six separate times - in a different setting, with a different start point, with a different ending planned; with one of the three PoV characters switching from a socially awkward straight man to an autistic lesbian; with another going from blonde skinny straight girl to plain, chubby, crippled by very real panic attacks; with Rheimer, the Red Prince himself, going from heterosexual asshole white teenage boy to bisexual asshole white teenage boy, to bisexual asshole white young man, to pansexual asshole brown trans teenage boy (listen, he's always gonna be an asshole, it's just that it's a much more endearing story coming from a troubled genderqueer kid than from a white kid whose angst came from the fact that he didn't like his father and was like, i dunno, left-handed). I added magic to the world, I put real concerted effort into worldbuilding - religion, economy, ecosystems, social groups, crop cycles, civil rights, fuckit - and...

I mean, I don't have an ending to that. I keep making changes and plans, but I haven't touched Red - actually written anything for it - in... Years. Maybe I should have saved this post to write about in two years, when it will have been a decade - I was just looking at this blog in the past few days and realised that it was coming up on eight years since I first wrote any of Rheimer and... Shit. I don't know. He means a lot to me.
I don't know if I'll ever write Red, really give it a go again. Plans change a lot, this blog is evidence of that (lol @ the posts that promised i'd have both volumes of sylv completely published by this time last year, when i ended up delivering vol i more than two years late - vol ii is on track so far, but i'm terrified of making promises i can't keep). I have two serious plans for the novel to come after Sylvestus is done; I haven't decided on which to pursue yet, and again with the promises I can't keep, but I know in my gut it's going to be one of them. Those characters are poised at the edge of my consciousness every minute of every day, breathless, waiting for their turn to take the stage.
And Rheimer? If I ever bring him up, it's usually to joke uncomfortably about how fucking bad that first draft was. But maybe, eight years later, it's time to lay off the criticism for a moment and consider how much he did for me when he sprinted onto that stage.
After The Red Prince, I wrote Seeking (less than half the length but took almost as long; equally as politically shaky and filled with overwrought metaphors and inconsistent characters, but significantly better, like, pacing and plot and stuff), then Each Separate Dying Ember (took longer, was longer than Seeking, explicitly social justice rich, better characters and less self-satisfied with its prose, but still clunky and clogged down in its own self-consciousness), then Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum (closer to the length of The Red Prince, took longer to write, some solid plot and characters but far too complex and clumsy), then Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall, and now Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise.

I do these portraits, see, from photographs and screenshots. The first one I ever did was of Rheimer. It was extremely bad, but it was absolutely shameless. I was learning. Just like how I wrote The Red Prince: shameless, free of concern, because I wanted to, because I enjoyed it. Then I did one of the villain from Seeking, then of one of the side characters. Then I did one of a protagonist from Dying Ember. Every one I did, I thought it was the best thing I had ever done, until about a week later when I looked at it again and decided it was garbage.
But looking from one to the next, I could see the progress.
After years of heavy use, my Wacom art tablet finally gave up after that one.
Purely coincidentally, that was when I entered the hardest part of my life, and my biggest creative slump so far. I published Dying Ember, my tablet broke, I did barely any art or writing for three years. After I published Sylv Vol I, I bought myself a new tablet as a birthday present. One of the first things I did was another portrait, a Dragon Age character this time. I didn't expect it to be nearly as good as the last one I'd done - I was out of practice and depressed and barely had time between work and life commitments - but it... Was really good.
Until a week later. When it sucked.
So I did another one, Dragon Age again. I finished it a few days ago. It sucked even before I'd finished it, so I put it up online with a scathing self-deprecation about the lack of effort and skill.
But for the first time in a long, long time...
I'm excited to do another one.
Because the next one will be even better. Every time I think I can't do a better one, the next one is better. And this one will be. I haven't started it yet, but I will. And it will be really, really good.

I tried to drop out of uni, and I also tried to die. I graduated with a 2:1, which is okay, but I'd always been told I could easily get a 1st if I really tried. Except I spent the majority of my third year trying to get out of bed, stay alive, recover, forgive, grow, fight for justice... Some days I powered through assignments and spent eight hour sprees in the library and swum until I had no thoughts left in my head. Some days I stayed huddled under the covers shaking with anxiety and quietly vomiting up trauma and missed exams.
In the end, I got 0.1% off a 1st. They wouldn't round it up, my request for reconsideration was denied. I could have appealed, but I was still trying to remember to want to be alive most days, so I didn't. It hurt. It still does. I think about every day lost to that fog of tears and rage and pain, wonder which of them I could have traded for that one mark gleaned back or one assessment attended. Even now, thinking about it, it's hard not to shake with the injustice of it. People will always think that I just didn't fulfil my potential and I have to be okay with that.

I will always look back on the last portrait I painted and realise that the eyes are crooked and the face shape is off and the light source is wrong. I will always look back on the last novel I finished and realise that the pacing is clumsy and the protagonist isn't sympathetic and the sentence structures are repetitive. I will always look back on my last relationship and realise every failure was 100% without exception my fault because I ruin everything.
I will always paint another portrait.
I will always write another novel.
I will always... Hm. Still working on that one. We'll see.
I've always been about that - looking forward, because my past is so littered with mistakes and faults and hurts that it's best left behind. Scathingly point out the flaws in the painting, joke about how just truly bad The Red Prince was, write a poem that blames myself for being unlovable, move the fuck on.
Maybe the eight year anniversary-ish of Rheimer - the epitome of my teenage self-loathing, growing up with me, scars and faults and gender identity and all - is the time to look back intentionally and say, Actually, well done me.
Let's be real: The Red Prince, shitty bits and all, was still better than some New York Times bestsellers I've slogged through. And most importantly, if I'd never shamelessly thundered out 350,000 words of garbage, I'd never have written Seeking, or Dying Ember, or Sylvestus Atrox Nigrum, or Sylvestus, either. If I'd never created Rheimer, I wouldn't have drawn literally hundreds of pages of art of him and the host of awkward copy-paste character tropes that grew up around him. I'd never have started digital portraits, or at least I'd not have done the specific one I first did. Maybe I will never finish Red: it will remain forever a garbage fire lost to time and USB sticks left in jacket pockets. But I wrote The Red Prince. Honestly and sincerely and badly and happily.
I painted a portrait. I stayed in uni. I stayed alive.

Thank-you, fourteen year-old me. You had a different gender, horrific hair, no personal style, and a mighty case of undiagnosed mental illness, and you did something pretty terrific.
This one's for you, you depressed fuck.