National Novel Writing Month 2021 kicks off exactly one week from yesterday.

And I’ve decided to change my story.

In an earlier post I talked at length about how I’m prepping, getting my story plotted out under tense circumstances, and the format I’m following. Turns out, the book I was planning has a lot more wheels under it than I initially though. Think of it as something that used to be a four-wheeler truck but it now it might be up to six wheels. So, is that a dualie?

I think it’s a dualie. (Note to self: Look up what a “dualie” is.)

Basically, this story needs more space to be explored. Honestly, I wasn’t planning on it to be this kind of tale. I was planning on it being a straightforward, good vs. evil, kind of thing. Even The Book Plan I’m using to plot out all the checkpoints was designed to give me a linear path to a completed story.

Alas, not. I don’t have the time to try and wrangle all the potential parts to make it work. If this ends up being the kind of story that deserves a little more attention, then I need to make sure it gets that attention.

So, Project: KING is changed from In-Development to Planning on the imaginary white board of writing projects I keep in my mind.

(Note to self: Get another white board for projects.)

What now?

Project: TREES was the first book I wrote after moving to Phoenix, and it’s one I did for NaNoWriMo back in 2015. I won with it, in that I surpassed the 50,000 word minimum for the month.

It was also the first book I started querying when I decided to make the leap from classroom teacher to aspiring author.

But, it wasn’t working, there was something missing throughout the story, and the beginning was dreadful and I could never quite figure out the right methods to fix it. Not only that, finding appropriate comps as well as figuring out the right angle to sell it was tough. Feeling like maybe I wasn’t the right writer, at the right time, to tell this story, I shelved it, thinking I would never go back to it.

Then pop culture catches up to you

An aspect of the story revolved around the idea of a “multiverse.” Outside of the most hardcore science fiction and fantasy stories, there isn’t a lot of “multiverse” in stories beloved by the masses. Then Into the Spider-Verse came out and smashed barriers. Then Loki happened, and suddenly, “multiverse” is not an uncommon word to throw around. It’s part of the vernacular. Suddenly, I don’t have to spend an extra few minutes explaining to someone what a multiverse is, I can just jump right into the story.

This story NEEDED that five years ago when I started pitching it to agents. It needed that wider world support and understanding. But more importantly, I needed to be a better writer, to be able to tell this kind of story.

I’ve rewritten the opening, to ensure it feels more grounded and real, changed up some aspects of the characters, and now, I think it’s good to go. After the first ten chapters it should link up with the current timeline, so to speal, which was the problem I had when originally writing it. The outline for the series of events to take place after, so, here we go.

Project: TREES is a go for National Novel Writing Month.

Thanks for reading,

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