First of all, thanks to Deborah for inviting me to guest
blog here today. I appreciate the offer!
Once upon a time I started a novel. I was in high school,
I’d just decided that I wanted to be a writer, and so I tackled a novel (after
a few half-hearted attempts at short stories). I had an idea after all, and I
had a map I’d drawn in U.S. Government class, and I could see the world in my
head. So off I went.
And now, five published novels later, I’m looking back at
that initial book. Why? Because the current series—in fact, all of the books
I’ve written—have been set in that same world. My first trilogy, the “Throne of
Amenkor,” was set at about the same time as that first book, but on a separate
continent. The current series—including Well of Sorrows and the just released
Leaves of Flame—is set on the same continent but at a much earlier time period
than that first novel. However, both series are connected to that first book in
significant ways.
That’s one of the most important things I’ve learned about
writing over the course of the years: that everything you write, everything
that you do, is useful in some way. Nothing is ever wasted. That first book,
even though it didn’t find an agent or an editor or publisher to call home, is
still to this day being used in various ways. I didn’t realize exactly how
important a part it would play in the novels that I’m writing today.
My current series is inextricably tied to that first novel,
since it’s in essence the “history” of the characters I created there. I now
view that first book as “research” for the current book. In that book, the
characters were dealing with the actions of their ancestors, people who had
resorted—in a last desperate act—to a magic that they did not fully understand
called the White Fire. It was a wall of white fire that spread out across the
world, touching everyone, changing them. While the Fire solved the ancestors’
basic problem, it of course had unforeseen consequences, ones that their
successors had to deal with. In the course of writing that first book, I had to
flesh out what drove those people to resort to this Fire. At the time, I
thought I was simply creating a believable back story to the novel, since every
novel must feel like it’s part of a much larger whole, a much larger world. At
no point in that creation did I think I’d be actively writing that back story
as a series in and of itself. Even after it was rejected, I thought that story
idea (and its back story) was dead in the water. I turned my attention to a
different story, a different set of characters, and set that story aside. Thankfully,
I didn’t trash everything I’d written, or the notes I’d taken about those
people and that back story.
Because here I am, returning to that setting and those
people with Well of Sorrows and now Leaves of
Flame. Everything that, at one point, I thought was worthless because
it didn’t sell, is now coming back into play. This is an example on a large
scale—an old novel returning to play an integral role in a new novel—but I’ve
discovered that everything I’ve ever created is important to keep, even if it
goes nowhere at the time. Not just on the large scale, but the small as well. In
one project, I started the novel and wrote five chapters, but it just wasn’t
working. Okay, that’s generous—it sucked. *grin* So I decided to trash that and
start over again, with different characters at a different point in time. I
thought those first five chapters would never see the light of day again. But
then, about halfway through the new version of the novel, they returned. I
ended up integrating large portions of those chapters into the book. They
simply didn’t work as a good starting point for the novel, that’s all.
So you see, EVERYTHING you do—draw, write, jot down—is
important and should be kept. That map I scrawled in utter boredom in my
government class in high school is now full color, with annotations, places,
names, cultures, and is the basis for all of my novels (and most of my short
stories as well). That first novel, now trunked, became research material for
my current series . . . and might eventually be taken out of that trunk in the
future as well (reworked of course); it’s not dead, just set aside. Even scenes
that I write and discard, or delete during a revision—all of that is kept in a
file (called my “cut file”) and stored away for potential use in the future. It
might be returned to the manuscript during a future revision, as happened a few
days ago when I returned a scene I cut before my editor saw it because she felt
something was missing in that section—the scene I’d cut, of course. It might
become the genesis for a short story, or even a novel in and of itself. A
throwaway scene in that first book about a warped throne that, when approached,
caused the characters to hear multitudes of strange voices all speaking at once,
became the central part of my first published series, the “Throne of Amenkor.”
And I can’t wait to find out exactly what their stories are.
o0o0o0o0o0o
Joshua Palmatier (aka Benjamin Tate) is a fantasy writer
with DAW Books, with two series on the shelf, a few short stories, and is
co-editor with Patricia Bray of two anthologies. Check out the “Throne of
Amenkor” trilogy—The Skewed Throne, The Cracked Throne, and The Vacant
Throne—under the Joshua Palmatier name. And look for the “Well” series—Well of
Sorrows and the just released Leaves of Flame—by Benjamin Tate. Short stories
are included in the anthologies Close Encounters of the Urban Kind (edited by
Jennifer Brozek), Beauty Has Her Way (Jennifer Brozek), and River (Alma
Alexander). And the two anthologies he’s co-edited are After Hours: Tales from
the Ur-bar and the upcoming The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity (March
2012). Find out more about both names at www.joshuapalmatier.com and
www.benjamintate.com, as well as on Facebook, LiveJournal (jpsorrow), and
Twitter (bentateauthor).
"Nothing is ever wasted." So true!
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