The Second was the First

Ever have a story idea that just stuck with you?

You write the story then, months or years later, you reread it and…it’s garbage. Instead of using it for spare parts like the others, you start over. You repeat this until you’ve rewritten the same story maybe four or five times. The characters didn’t ensnare you because every time you rewrite it, they change. You fell for the story at its core .

It’s strange. I’ve been working on the second novel in my series, Isolated, far longer than the first.

I mentioned in Characters, Powers and Too Many Drafts, I was working on three novels and never intended them to be a series. But, they take place in, pretty much, the same world just different time periods so, I’ve been building them together.

The basic idea in Isolated grabbed me, so I kept rewriting and rewriting and rewriting it. Each story looked completely different from the one before it but the core was the same. I can’t tell you why this one is different from the other novels I’ve simply scrapped without a second thought. It just is.

This one is maybe the fourth or fifth generation. It would be interesting to read the others and compare but I didn’t keep them and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t read them. They were written when I was in high school and early collage- when my writing needed more than a little work.

I wonder if, years from now, I’ll look at these stories and go…what was I thinking?! Doubt it. Given the years I’ve spent fine tuning these novels, they will hold a place in my heart forever. You really don’t realize you’ve spent maybe ten years polishing a story until you sit down and think about it. Time flies.