- because there's never enough time to write it all down.
A Banner for one of my older creations, 'Dreamer'. The premise was amazing - it haunts me even to this day - but the execution was embarrassingly awful. That story will never see the light of day again unless it has a SERIOUS makeover.
“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind.”
-Dale Carnegie
The Very First Novel
When I was younger, I had this funny little daydream that it would be cool if I published a book when I was eighteen, just to have said that I's completed a book at that golden age. What a bloody idiot I was.
Now, I am much more adamant that the book I publish is outstanding, over anything else. I would love if a film studio asked for film rights, or if I published it in my teens, or if I got the exact cover I wanted, or if I saw it being advertised on various TFL platforms, yada yada yada. But WHAT is the POINT if the book I've written wasn't up to scratch?
The Fear
Oh, so many.
The fear that it won't sell.
The fear that my book won't 'move' people enough. That they just won't care.
The fear of criticism about something that I should really have known already.
(- ie. the fear of missing something important.)
The fear of it not being original enough (Remember my The Hunger Games / Battlegame Forfeit problem?)
The fear of not being able to publish every idea I've ever had. But that may not be possible anyway, if you saw my notebook.
Thing is, fears are just fears. They only exist in the mind. Half of those fears are just little nagging tics, not real fears. I can fight those. But my mind wanders.
The Habit
At this rate, I'll be lucky if, by the end of my life, I get ONE book finished.
Every time I hit a road block in one novel, instead of fighting it through, I jump to another. I have no fewer than ten in working progress, right now. I stopped Battlegame after the Hunger Games film was released. I wouldn't say I 'gave up', rather - I 'lost heart'. Perhaps I'll take it up later on in life (lol).
I'd been working diligently on The Urban Piper, until the rewrite of DVTJ caught my attention, and I wholeheartly, eagerly and excitedly threw myself into that. I don't regret it - but it's meant that TUP has been sitting there fermenting. I NEED TO BREAK THIS HABIT.
Like I said recently to my best friend Lola, there's kind of no point continuing to write like this. Instead of having the novels finished one after the other, It's much more likely that when I'm forty, I'll have fifteen books finished at the same time.
The Name
I've spent quite a while trying to get this damn pseudonym set in stone. I think I finally have it, the one I want to use. I've dipped my toes in so many genres that I may actually have to use two. Or a few.
But the problem with me, as everybody knows, is that I go through periods of hating my own name.
So I may get bored of it anyway.
Curious Things
Pride And Prejudice And Zombies?
Should people be allowed to rewrite classics? I mean, the copyright on P&P has probably expired, yes, but I prefer adaptations like the whole Pride And Prejudice to Bridget Jones thing. It shows that Helen Fielding did actually have to do some work decided the setting and characterisation and whatnot. It's funny, because I do like fanfics. But fanfics are simply that - fan fiction. I wonder what Jane Austen would think about somebody writing zombies into her tale. Haha, I can quite imagine that the fear of zombies would be considerably less than the fear of not making a suitable marriage.
I am going to read P+P+Z anyway, but the reason why I brought it up is because it made me think. What if someone, in the distant future, does that with my stuff? With all the books out there today, I somehow doubt people will look back at my work and want to mess around with it. But still, I wonder what they would do. I wonder what they would do with my plots, my characters, my creations.
... I don't think I would like it, to be honest.
Book-to-Film!
I see most of my creations as movies in my head. So much so that I am wondering if some of them should be written as scripts from the start. It's true that one of my fantasies is to see Quest, Architect and Detonator on the big screen. Oh, and Nine. I can't imagine them being anything less than awesome.
But at the same time, I wouldn't be able to STAND anybody else having control over my vision. I don't know how other authors do it. I think I would weep over the slightest change. I would have to direct and produce it and cast it and edit it all by myself. O_O
I leave that one up to God.
Star xx
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