Write Because a Story Bruns Within You

“Write because a story burns within you, and you find yourself thinking and dreaming of it every free moment.” Christoper Paolini (The Inheritance cycle) tweeted this some time ago. I can very much relate to this quote. While I have written (or better said started) several stories before, nothing burned so within me as the current one does. Wanderers’ Tale saga (this is the working title of the series) that I write with a co-writer, is always on my mind every free moment. Unfortunately it tends to slip to the front of my mind when I shouldn’t be thinking about it as well.

For those who do not know, I am co-writing a story that started out as a fan fiction (we used our idols as the main characters) but we decided that the plot was interesting enough to turn into an original story. Now we are finishing off the fan fiction version and will use that as a rough outline for the original story.  We are writing this round-robin: we each take turns writing short pieces, continuing on what the other has previously written. This is a very fun way to write and explore possibilities but it also creates inconsistencies and is very very slow.
 
I do love this story a lot, especially the characters, but it is starting to become tedious. It has been dragging on for about 10 months now and we had to postpone the deadline a couple of times because we could not reach it. The latest deadline we agreed on is the end of October. While the story is coming to a close, we are not going to be able to finish it in time unless we rush. Thus we agreed to abandon the deadline and just try to get it finished as soon as possible. It is not an ideal solution, but there is not any better. This weekend I actually realised how tired I am of this method of writing. It was the first time I had not really thought about the story for more than a day. The last 9 months the story and the characters have been on my mind daily. I love plotting and creating scenes while I try to sleep, it relaxes me and helps me fall asleep. It became a habit that I finally broke this weekend. It felt good!
 
The most annoying thing of it all is that I have quite some free time and thus writing time this term, but there just is not much I can do! I could prepare some world building for the rewrite of the story though as long as my co-writer and I do not have a contract about the book(s), I am not very keen to start on it. My co-writer is very busy until the end of the year and then, when I will have a busy term, she will have more free time.
 
Waiting to be able to write something can be frustrating. I tried to start on another story, but I discovered that I could not really get into as long as Wanderers’ Tale is stuck in my head.  I suppose the only thing I can do is have patience. I am, however, not a very patient person. What makes up for that is that I do not complain easily and thus when I am frustrated, I do not show that quickly.
 
In the future I am going to try to post at least one blog a week in the weekend and write more about my personal writing and share my struggles and victories!

Why do I write?

 It's simple, actually. I love writing because I enjoy doing it. I enjoy stories and I want to tell stories and I cannot think of a better way than writing them down. Humans have always told stories. It's a big part of our lives and we need stories to process what happened during the day. Cavemen told stories by painting images on walls, the bards sang stories and eventually stories were written down. First as (long, epic) poems like Beowulf and later as novels.

Now I want to tell my story. I want to entertain and perhaps inspire people. I want to bring a world alive and create great heroes and fantastic villains. While I have been writing for almost as long as I have been reading for pleasure, I have never been this serious about it. The reason for this is that I hadn't found the right story yet. But about six months ago, I did. I started to write a round-robin story with a friend for fun. It started out as a fanfiction but the plot had such potential that we decided that, after the fanfiction version is completed, we will rewrite the whole thing as an original story with potential. I am very passionate about this story. I really comprehend now what Christopher Paolini meant when he said:  "Write because a story burns within you, and you find yourself thinking and dreaming of it every free moment."


Writing has been my creative outlet, but now it has become more than that. It became one of my favourite ways to spend time.  I want to get my stories out there, in the world where people can read them. Writing has become a job. A hard, but enjoyable job. The chances that I will earn enough money to live from it are very slim; so it won't be my only job. And I actually don't care a lot about the money even though I put so much time into it. Money is just a bonus. If you write for money, you are doing something very wrong.

I'm going to end this blogpost here. I will try to write a blog at least once a week and I might update the lay-out of this blog in the coming weeks.