When talking about my first novels, people had asked me, "So are you going to write it as a series?"
So, what did I usually tell them?
"No, it's just a singular novel! I refuse to write a series! Stop asking me that," I exclaimed adamantly upon finishing my second novel ever back in the year 2001.
(I was 15-years-old and knew so little.)
"I will not conform! Let me write my 360k-word manuscript in peace!" I still said while finishing the second draft back in 2005.
"Are you happy now? You convinced me to split this story up into a duology," I finally said during the outlining and writing stages of the third and final rewrite in 2012.
"Fine, why not. Trilogies are the in thing, aren't they?" I threw my hands up when I conformed in 2013.
"I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I AM DOING ANYMORE!" I scream to the heavens in 2014, while divising that I write a much longer series than initially intended well over a decade ago.
I really hate writing sequels.
There, I said it.
When I first started writing novels, I'd have rather written a 400k-word tome than to split it up into separate novels, no matter how much more cost-efficient that would have been for me. I'd been told by several people before "You should write a series!" and I was so adamantly against it. No way, no how.
Why?
For one thing, it's difficult trying to find an appropriate cutoff point that would contain just enough of a climax that would leave both the writer and reader satisfied, but not too much because you want them to read the next book and learn where the story and characters are going next. And in that case I'm not so much writing a sequel, but a continuation to a really long novel, which was the problem I faced when writing just a singular really long novel - it's just a lot of pages to print, and a lot to read, and ain't nobody got time for that.
Plus, I don't know about you, but holding big books tend to hurt my wrists.
Secondly, how much paraphrasing is necessary without sounding like I'm just awkwardly summing up events from the previous novel? Should I just figure that people have read it and carry on with business as usual, or do I assume that they assume that each book is a standalone? Should I offer a brief description of the previous novel somewhere in the prose, and where? At the beginning? Of course not the beginning, because your readers don't want to read pages upon pages of information before cutting to the action - that's just too much, and there's not a faster guarantee that they'll put the book down than info-dumping them into your world. Then should the information be littered throughout the book instead? How do you do that without confusing new readers?
Now that I think about it - an author that I greatly admire, Tad Williams, had written up a rather lengthy synopsis for each of his installments in his Otherland tetralogy (if you haven't read those books, I totally recommend it to any science fiction/fantasy fan). But I don't think I've honestly seen another writer do something like this before.
Bottom line is that because of this, I have never finished writing a sequel before. I've started writing sequels, but there was always that point where I would stop for whatever reason. It's kind of nonsensical, really, because in the whole noveling process I have always loved rewriting. Don't ask me why, I just love that feeling of seeing "old friends" again, so rewriting is more of a treat to me than a chore. And you'd think that writing sequels would be the same thing, right? But as we speak, I am already rewriting most of the 90k words I had written for the sequel to Seraphim Ascent last year, simply because of the length of the duology-turned-trilogy (and who knows? Maybe I'll be hit by a line drive to the face and there will be even more books than that).
So, not-moral of the story: Have I found a dead set solution to my Sequel Dilemma yet? No. Mostly because, like I said, I have never finished a "sequel" before. I've only started sequels that I never finished. But while I am currently in the process of doing one right now (which is ironic, considering I haven't even published my first novel yet), I am finding myself faced with tracking down that balance of standalone and info-dump, both which I think are bound to happen when writing a continuation one way or another.
Maybe it's time for me to break open some sequels and learn from other people.
Despite my age, I'll admit that I'm not terribly educated in the ways of social media. I used to write in my blog every day, but that was back in the days of LiveJournal when I was a teenager. Now? Not so much.
But I'm working on it, having set up a Twitter for all my professional stuff, among a variety of other things that are in the works. Honestly, I wonder how you writers are able to keep up with it all and still have time to write!
Once I got through the initial stages, I find myself taking a step back and looking at everything I have done and it's all starting to slow down, finally.
And now today I managed to successfully accomplish in something I have the most trouble with: Writing summaries. I don't know why, but I guess getting into the habit of telling people "I write crap" when giving my "elevator pitch" won't hack it in the indy writing world. The good thing was that it was surprisingly a lot of fun, and it even managed to put certain things into perspective while I was in the process of doing some finishing touches for my manuscripts.
For those curious, the summaries can be found here. Not bad for a first attempt, I guess.
So far Seraphim Ascent is semi complete and (I think) is ready to be sent off for beta. What the Thunder Said is still in its initial first draft stages, but I find I'm having a blast writing that. Something about going back to the early years of characters and spending some time with their childhood is just... not something I get to toy with on a regular basis.
More on that on a later date. For now, I've got work to do...
I've arguably accomplished a lot in my short time. Rather, I've written a lot for what some people would consider me at a young age. From short stories to novellas to whole novels, it's safe to say that I've written well over a million words up to this point in my life.
So it's no surprise that I am often asked the golden question: Are you published?
And I've felt silly to say my answer has been "No."
And why is that?
Updated my writing blog with a short story (an old but tweaked version), from which you can read over here.
