Welcome to my musings. The blog where I'll be posting snippets of my mind for all to see.
In this first blog post, I've decided to tell a quick tale on how my novel SOUTH came to be.
As we all know, stories can take years to tell and still never be perfect. But it's the imperfection that, oddly enough, makes it perfect to me.
So, a bit of back story before I go any further. SOUTH was originally going to be a comic (and it might very well be someday). The story started many, many years ago, however, it has changed drastically over time.
The original story was called Silent Tears. Here is what it was originally about:
Minami Kyuki’s hearts a battle ground of despair. Faced with more difficulties in her life than the normal teen, Minami copes by living one day at a time. But how long before the tragic events of her past haunts her to her death?
Pretty dark, right? Then in 2010, I changed the story to Shattered. It was still dark but not nearly as much as Silent Tears was. It focused mainly on Minami’s past and eventually leading up to college. I never wrote anything on Shattered, however. I just couldn't figure out how to start it or where it'd go. All good signs that it wasn't a good story to begin with if you ask me.
Then in 2011 I went to Korea for the first time. On the train I saw this one lonely blonde haired white girl in the crowd of Koreans. This random stranger was my inspiration for AJ. This made me want to skip all that back-story stuff and go straight to college years. Somehow this inspired a complete 180 in my story and SOUTH was born.
SOUTH was still originally going to be a comic, with my friend Ryuu doing the artwork. I had originally written two volumes of comic script, but something didn’t feel right. Then one day, while listening to a song, it hit me. I suddenly knew what was missing. I then changed a few small things, which in turn, changed the story a lot. So, I opened up Word and started writing. The words just seemed to flow. Writing it as a novel felt better for this new format.
I started writing the novel version SOUTH around February of 2015. Then I slowly wrote the second chapter a month later. Then I kind of stopped writing for a while. What got me motivated to write again was actually sitting down and writing down and plotting the whole plot on a timeline on paper. To any aspiring authors or hobbies writers, I highly recommend doing this. It's an amazing motivator, especially when you write you can see your progress and it motivates you to keep going. At least, it did so for me. After writing down the plot and seeing the clear path written down so I could write more clearly, the writing poured out of me.
I started writing again in August of 2015, around the time I got an editor. Nothing motivates you to write like having an editor. Within months, I wrote the entire novel to SOUTH. I finished the first draft on December 27th, 2016. Considering I wrote it while doing my BA in Spanish at the University of Prince Edward Island, I was pretty proud of myself.
And that is the story on how SOUTH came to be. The short version, anyway. I am currently working on my third round of edits, and let me just say, thanks to my editor this version is going to be even more amazing if I do say so myself. I'm still learning as a writing and will constantly improve. I strive off good critiques and even hope that if I made any grammatical mistakes or spelling errors in this post, would you be so kind as to point them out in a polite manner. After all, how can I improve if no one says anything?
That being said, I just want to give some quick advice. Write. Never stop writing. Even if your story sucks -- 'cause let's face it, we all have a sucky story written at some point -- just write it anyway. The feeling of actually completing a story is like non-other. Doesn't matter what kind of writing it is, be it a poem, short story, or novel, just write.