The inaugural post! For those that may not know what this is all about, allow me to recap:
About six months ago, I started toying with the idea of writing a novel, and had the smallest, teeniest little nugget of an idea for a story. It was safe to say that if I wanted to actually turn this shred of a thought into the next 100,000-word New York Times bestseller, then I had a lot of work to do.
Knowing virtually nothing about novel writing, or even storytelling, I felt completely overwhelmed with this far-fetched goal of mine. So I did what any millennial would do: I googled.
You’d be surprised (or not) just how many resources are on the interwebs for budding novelists like myself. A quick search of “How to write a novel” resulted in a biblical flood of information, some of it useless crap, but much of it was sound advice from viable sources. I’ll spare you the boring details of what I came across, but I will say that I had more than enough information to get the ball rolling.
And so, with the help of my OCD-laden brain, this whisper of an idea began to take shape, in the form of a detailed chapter outline that my 7th grade English teacher would be (I hope) immensely proud of. As I went through this process of outlining, which was NOT quick by the way, the story literally built itself as I wrote. I had no idea what I was doing, really, I just chugged onward through each chapter of bullet points until I was sick of it. The result, quite honestly, had me surprised. There were main characters, secondary characters, interwoven plot lines, hooks, suspense, cliff-hangers, you name it! I couldn’t believe that I actually had a story that I was excited about writing. The feeling was, well, pretty cool.
More googling, more reading, plenty of self-doubt, and many rough attempts at kicking off this grand epic filled the days thereafter. When it came down to it, I had to just sit down and do it, dammit.
Low and behold, after several weeks of trial and error, MANY revisions, and that nagging voice inside my head that told me to just quit nit-picking the damn thing, I finally had a decent first chapter that I was proud of.
Which brings me to this blog post. Hopefully, the first of many. I am (reluctantly) releasing the first chapter onto this blog for the world to see….and I’m terrified!
For those that choose to read onward (using the link below, or menu above), I only ask one thing. Be brutally honest! I’m serious, I need feedback to help me grow as a writer and to help this story become the best that it can be.
So without further ado, I present to the world, the first chapter of my debut science fiction novel, The Architects.
Enjoy!