Writing thoughts: emotional investment

I have - while tearing up all of chapter 26 because, frankly, it was garbage - too frenetic, too chaotic, been thinking about respect. Again. So I am taking a break from pulling all my hair out at the end of this book which is not finished yet because I've reached that point where the words I'm adding are ... not the right words, and rewriting the same paragraphs over and over is not productive.

Respect. Emotional investment. Things that readers offer when they love an author's books. I know these very, very well from the inside, because I'm a reader. That part of me remains unchanged.

But writing books that I could never read as a reader shifted things for me; they opened up some inexplicable authorial reactions. I was standing on the other side of the fence, looking out, metaphorically speaking.

I approach anyone else's books as a reader--and I would hate to lose that; it'd be like losing half of me.

But with my own books I'm approaching them as the writer-who-pulls-out-hair. On bad days, I am certain that No One Will Like This (you should have seen me with Sword and Shadow. Or maybe not >.<). On good days, I am hopeful and excited. It's a bit of a pendulum swing.

The thing that makes it both better and worse is working in a continuing series, a continuing world.

When I approach story, I am carrying the weight of all previous books that occur in the world. I have notes. I have threads that I know are unfinished; they're being woven steadily into the tapestry. But when I write it's my story. It's the story I have to tell, and want to tell. I don't and can't sit down to think: What will my readers want? How can I make them happy?

If I think that at all, it's usual anxiously after it's done, or mostly done. I try to keep things current, to keep knowledge of each book current, to remember the books themselves and the stories started in them. But I am going to forget some things, and I know that will disappoint some readers. Some of the West novels are a quarter of a century old. There are elements I remember as if they happened yesterday. There are elements that I don't =/. I have reread earlier books, and taken notes, etc.

...but then I don't check the notes when they're relevant because I've... forgotten they're relevant in the moment of the actual writing of the scene.

What I want is to tell the story--well, no. I want to get to the ending that I envisioned, and have that ending have weight and meaning to readers. When I first started writing, I had plans and roadmaps - but the book immediately ignored all of them, and my attempts to course correct the plans and roadmaps (to me, the book was actually fine) took more time than actually writing the book. But the ending remained as the flagship structural element, always, so... I always had that in my mind. I never had to make notes about the ending.

***

Before I started this Patreon, I had 110k words, down from the 201k words I'd started with.

After I started the Patreon, in the end, I had ... zero words. The words I had written were written in a container of I need to make this overall story shorter. I need to keep it focused. (Ideally, four books, although I did tell Sheila that realistically I wasn't certain that four was possible). I knew there were things that were utterly necessary to finish the story in what I considered a reasonable fashion. And I knew there were things I absolutely had to avoid putting on the page, because the moment certain characters hit the page all bets - all bets - are off.

I have discussed this on the Patreon, and one of the things that became completely and entirely clear as I discarded that heavy imperative was just how... unhappy readers would have been had I avoided certain things.

And this is down to emotional investment (on the part of the reader) and the need for respect of that investment (on my part). Because of course those early books weren't written with the idea that I would never return to any of them in future.

No one is telling me what to write. I don't feel--and didn't--that people's response at the idea that I would avoid, say, as much of the Dominion as humanly possible, that people's shock or possible displeasure was a demand. But I did feel that my West readers have a sense of both my pacing and the way I build world, story, relationships between characters and the world they inhabit, and to them the decision felt Wrong. (Yes, that's capital W.)

Is it my book? Yes. Is it my story? Yes. Nothing anyone has said here has given me any cause to doubt that my readers understand--even expect--that.

But those early books were written without fear of anything but miscommunication. And when I wrote them, I had every intention of returning to certain key elements; I left Kiriel in the Dominion, after all. And I had come, at the end of War, to look at things, to attempt to be realistic about the publishing concerns.

I felt that I could make what was on the page compelling for my readers; that I could do that arc of the story justice; that I could reach what I've been writing towards for decades. I did not intend to write something sketchy, something that read more like outline than novel.

But there were new characters that were absolutely critical, and they needed the room to breathe, to become as essential to readers as they were to story, and over time I've developed some sense of how long things take T_T. If those characters are given no page time, they will never feel real, never feel essential.

My West readers have always accepted new characters, and they start books not with a certain sense of how things should go, but rather to see how they do go. And that's been a huge thing, for me.

But part of the attachment to the world - as readers - is based on the characters that already exist, and whose stories readers don't feel are quite finished.

So, there was a bit of stress. "A bit". It's not that I didn't want to write Dominion books. I mean--I have Adam, and he was front and center by the end of War. And while I thought I could write a series that could reach and move my West readers, I would have to be so perfect, so stellar, that they wouldn't feel the absence of the things that wouldn't reach the page.

...and I was afraid, at the time, that even the best that I could do might not achieve that.

***

My alpha reader from the very beginning wanted me to write and self-publish the books. He wanted to see what the books could be if I were free to just focus on the words and the story without the stress of word count (and number of books). He assumed they would be ebook only - but ebooks don't have length limitations; they don't have page counts and they don't have to be printed. It wouldn't matter if the book was 400k words because I couldn't afford to print even 150k words, and ... the story could be, from beginning to end, what it was, without constraint.

I wasn't at all certain about this, and also: these books have always been with DAW, and DAW has been their home, and therefore my home, for such a long time.

But I have 124k words of book now, up from zero, and these are the right words. I have so many strands, so many things that tie into the rest of the tapestry--and I can weave them all in.

I can't, of course, guarantee that all things will work for all readers. But I can guarantee that I will not simply drop or attempt to sideline ... anything that is part of the tapestry.

There's a huge creative freedom in that. I don't think I can make clear just how important that is, how much it means, to anyone who doesn't write for a living. The only way to make it clear is... to write these books for the people who are supporting them.

To let those books speak for me.

***

This post is mirrored from https://michellewest.ca/

I find it hard to have a conversation on Patreon, and have created a WordPress Patreon only blog to make it easier for me to find new comments and respond to them, sometimes at length.

This post is https://michellewest.ca/2022/02/26/writing-thoughts-emotional-investment/; you should be able to hit Login with Patreon, and should be able to read posts there at the same levels you can read them here.

I'll answer comments here as well if this is your preferred format, but probably not as expansively (which might be a good thing!).