Let’s Start the Thesis! (A “Land of Shadows and Thorns” Writing Update!)
Dandelions count as flowers. I will not be taking any questions at this timeProject: Land of Shadows and Thorns
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic / Fantasy Rapunzel/Sleeping Beauty Retelling
Deadline: none yet (give it some time, we’ll get there lol)
New words written: 2,725
Present total word count: 2,725
Things accomplished in real life: I haven’t done a proper writing update like this in what feels like forever. Years and years ago, I used to do them on an old blog that has long since bit the cyberdust and I would do them obsessively. I’d update several times a day if I was particularly vibing with a project and I’m honestly really glad I’m getting back into doing them. Even now, as I’m writing this one single post, the amount of joy I feel is enormous. It’s like going back home after a long, long time away.
I want to document the writing of Land of Shadows and Thorns because I like the idea of myself (and anyone else who is interested) being able to look back on these posts after its finished and gets picked up by an agent and watch the progression of the novel come to life. Someone, someday, might find it incredibly fun to wade through the past pages of the blog to find the start of what (I hope!) ended up being their favorite book series and that fills me with indescribable joy.
Lets see . . . what else?
I’m planning to start gardening soon. I have plans to turn the back yard into a cute little pastel fairytale garden (because pastel has felt like the correct answer to how I want the backyard garden to look). I’m gonna do a DIY post when I paint my terracotta pots, and maybe a little garden tour too. You can tell its the early days of April because all I can think about is gardening, and how I’m planning to give myself the gift of a “self-care summer,” in which I want to try and make myself the main character of my own life a little more than I have been. I’m still thinking about what that means, really, but I think it will ultimately culminate in just doing stuff that gives me joy. I’ve got a whole list of summer to-read books that I’m eager to sink my teeth into when the weather gets warmer and I spend more time outside.
Things accomplished in fiction: We started to work on our thesis stuff in class (which is what Land of Shadows and Thorns is, btw) and I couldn’t be more excited. This week’s assignment in my Speculative Fiction 1 class was to write the opening scene and inciting incident for our thesis project, and I really wanted to stretch my creative muscles with this one. I wanted to teach myself new skills when it comes to openings (I’ve always been abysmal at writing openings) and I think that by repeatedly making myself write new ones I’m starting to get better at them. I had never considered starting this story at a place that I would have previously thought of as super late in the narrative, but after I did I realized that everything I’d planned to put before it can be better weaved in later and will actually allow me to explore other storytelling avenues.
This, any aspiring writers who might be reading this post right now, is exactly why we stay open-minded when it comes to how we start our work. It’s completely okay to write a ton in a story and then realize that none of it is going to go into the final product the way we first intended. I had 17k worth of story already written before I started this class and realized that I wasn’t going to do it the way I started it.
That being said I’m super nervous about what my teacher and peers say! I love when we get to write stuff and get it critiqued. But then I also turn into an insane little gremlin of a person who checks her school updates obsessively until the grades are posted.
If you want to read what I wrote for class, you can check it out here! This is the only full part of the story I’m going to post. Future updates will just be a line or two! (So don’t forget to comment on it and tell me what you think!)
