Friday, December 16, 2011

Looking Back At Writing Eria

I wrote Eria a while ago. It was the first novel that I ever really completed. By completed, I mean edited, revised, edited again, and so on, until I had something that I was happy with. To that end I think it's a success.

I've written other things before and after, but I've never bothered to polish them, and revisit them like I did with Eria. Maybe I thought that they were "done", or maybe it was that I was simply done with them. I'm not sure. What I am sure is that I never felt tempted to "do" anything with them again, never felt interested in revisiting the world, or the characters. I think that in and of itself is telling. If, as an author, I don't feel like revisiting these things, why would a reader feel compelled to feel anything for them in the first place?

As I said, I feel differently about Eria. I find myself wondering about what the characters are going to do next, about what they did before, and about the other people and places that are mentioned in the book. I hope that other people that have read it feel that way too.

I've read a lot of novels, stories, plays and so forth (as well as being subjected to a lot of television and movies), and, I believe, the memorable ones are the ones that you want to re-read, the ones you never get sick of reading. They're like old friends, or a comfortable pair of shoes. They just feel right to you.

I've never written fan-fiction, but I've thought about it. Most of the time the fanfic that I would have written plays out in my head, and that's good enough for me. It's like a pleasant daydream, I suppose. It doesn't really seem like a creative process, although I suppose that technically it is.

So, what am I saying? Where is this going?

I suppose the point that I am trying to make is that getting Eria to the stage where I decided to put it up on the Amazon Kindle store has got me thinking more about the world, characters, and so forth, and I'm definitely interested in writing more. Being the person that wrote it in the first place, I can hardly call what I write next fanfic, but it kind of feels that way, at least in my mind.

Is it wrong to enjoy writing more about something you like? Is it self-indulgent? Will people want to read it?

I suppose we'll find out!

2 comments:

  1. Are you also DMing in the world of Eria?

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  2. I thought about it when I was originally writing up some background for it. In fact, I've probably still got the folder that has all the maps and information that I created when I was looking at slotting the game into a D&D campaign setting (among the boxes of other stuff that I created for RPGs over the years). Alas, my gaming group moved on to other things like Shadowrun, Vampire, and Earthdawn, all of which already have their own very rich settings.

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