A Process Update: Writing About Writing

It's been over a year since I last updated this blog. Soon after I began I moved to Zurich to study an exchange semester there, during which I was too busy to continue most of my hobbies - including writing. After moving back to Finland in January I've resumed to my writing and for a while I've been considering updating my progress on this blog, since "Writing About Writing" could easily help me understand the creative process, learn from my mistakes and help me ease my writer's block.

The project that I'm currently working on is a book called "Jään palvelija" or "Servant of Ice" in English. It's the sequel to my first novel "Tulesta syntynyt" ("Fireborn"), and part of a trilogy currently entitled "Alamaan tarinat" ("Tales of the Downland"). The entire series is continuation to my project from 2016, a romantic fantasy novel entitled "Gifted and Cursed". I first started writing the current version of the story in 2018 and it's been going on ever since.

The genre is fantasy, drawing heavily from my personal favorites and influences, including The First Law by Joe Abercrombie, the Raven Rings by Siri Pettersen, and His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. Other series that I've found particularly inspiring have been the Twin Suns trilogy by Erika Vik, the Kingkiller Chronicles by Partick Rothfuss and the Faithful and the Fallen quartet by John Gwynne. I'm also influenced by other forms of media such as games and movies, most importantly Game of Thrones, Star Wars and Dragon Age. In a nutshell it's a story about a world in which humans have acquired a "sixth sense" which allows them to sense and identify changes in the natural environment around them in a superhuman way, including temperature, air pressure, humidity etc. This has resulted in a world where freak accidents are almost nonexistent, and humans live in constant "harmony" with their environment. The conflict of the story begins when, contrary to popular belief, an accident does happen, challenging the world view of all those living in the world, and posing the question whether the "accident" was a mere accident. The known world is called "Alamaa" ("The Downland") and consists of four separate states - or "Downland proper" (3 states or the northern continent) and the southern continent, which is a separate state. Much of the conflict of the series centers around the increased tensions between the northern and southern continent.

The story is told through the tales of five main characters (or six in the 2nd book). My main character Z is a guard by profession, and a strong female character. Guards are basically a cohort of elite law enforcers who are exceptionally proficient with their sixth sense. Their task is to keep the peace but also to act as symbols and model citizens to prevent the collapse of society as we know it. They refer to themselves as "the wall that stands on the pathway of doom" in which they also refer to an actual event which caused the destruction of the world before them. The four secondary characters include E, the "strong male lead" - a former guard who's turned rogue and is enjoying a life of simple earthly pleasures - until the events surrounding him will force him to take initiative. A is another male lead, a mysterious wanderer from the southern continent with a great purpose in the upcoming conflict. The two remaining characters include I, a female university researcher who gets dragged into a life of politics against her will, and R, a primary antagonist and commander of the guard force. A multitude of secondary characters also emerge (~100 in total...) throughout the story. The events take place all around Downland, although they are all brought together by the same conflict.

My MC in her Guard uniform. She's badass.

The main themes include cultural clash, conflict, racism and prejudice, serving a cause, the greater good... but also the nature of knowledge and the power of lies and truth and the rise and downfall of societies. Although it takes place in a fantasy setting it's heavily influenced by steampunk / sci-fi (airships! ships in general! cool tech!). There is a constant feeling of mystery and also of upcoming disaster & dread - meaning that the writing can get very dark at times. To soften it up there's some (mostly dark) humor scattered throughout, and a few romantic subplots. Although the stakes are high it's not only a story of solving this huge ongoing conflict, but also a journey of growth for the characters - although not always in a positive way. I'm a fan of grimdark which means realistic, gritty and mostly gray characters. Sometimes the heroes act like douches and sometimes the villains do good. Thus I mostly prefer using the protagonist/antagonist logic rather than talking about good / bad guys.

What I've really noticed while writing this trilogy is how complicated writing can get at times. I've written a rough plot outline for the whole trilogy and as I write I aim to keep to the outline. Yet, as I mentioned, the outline is rough, e.g "character X travels from place A to place B. Their travels last 4 weeks. During this time characters X and Y fall in love." But I rarely write down individual plot details at this point (e.g how do they meet? What do they do in between important events?). This means I'm also heavily a "pantser" which refers to a writer who kind of comes up with stuff as they go. This results in the fact that I sometimes come up with crazy ideas in the middle of the story that I hadn't planned originally - thus having to change the original text and plot until it's heavily derived from what I was planning to do. Due to this I'm going to have to write the whole trilogy first and then re-write all of my books into following the plot whichever I want to go through with in the end. Even now that it's only been a few months since I finished book one I know there are some major plot details I'm going to change.

My main toolkit: the Writing folder. This contains all the necessary (written) files important to my story, including a timeline, history of the world, character backgrounds, a dictionary, the rough plot outline - and the books themselves. I also have a separate picture folder for reference images and art.

Yet it's going quite well at the moment. I wrote book 1 from the end of January until the end of June and it ended up being 620 pages. Since August I've been working with book 2 I'm now around 250 pages in. The 2nd book will definitely be longer than the first, considering that there are more POVs and just generally a longer story arc. Impossible to tell the length now, since I've shifted from writing in chronological order to POV by POV and I'm currently only nearing the end of my MCs POV and there are still five to go. Aiming to finish this somewhere around December though. 

What's the most important thing in writing - especially to someone who has no chill like me, is not to constantly read your own text with the critical eye - but to write. I'm heavily compelled to go into editing things I've already written constantly, changing this and that and getting stuck with the same parts. This will get me nowhere. What a writer needs to primarily do is write - because without writing there will be nothing to edit. Thus writing has become a part of my daily lifestyle. Mostly I aim to write somewhere around ~1500 words per day, but sometimes the amount is closer to 500, sometimes closer to 2000. The main thing is that I write something. It may be absolute garbage, yet even the most absolute garbage can have diamonds hidden beneath. Write first. Edit later.

This is my first process update! From now I'm planning to update the process at least once a week here. Maybe I'll even finally finish this mammoth of a project someday!