Rising Winds Progress Update!

Rising Winds has a full draft!

Rather, I should say it has had four full drafts. This book has been a challenge for me as it has never felt quite right. After creating a new character to be the protagonist, the pieces have finally fallen into place for a draft I can appreciate from start to finish.

That said, Rising Winds still requires editing and polish before it is ready for release. I can’t commit to a specific timeframe just yet, but know that this new fantasy novel inspired by Nordic and Japanese culture is coming soon! I’ll be providing more information in this blog in the coming days about how the cultures are used in Rising Winds as it takes place in a very different part of The Eastern Lands than Twin Paths’ Shindo.

Remaining motivated through this project has been at the front of my mind. So how did I keep motivated to write four complete drafts of this novel? Here are my writing tips for staying motivated!:

1) Keep your eyes on the goal

I found it easy to become discouraged when my first, second, and third drafts all failed to capture what I had been intending. Each time I had to put it down and walk away for some time to attack it with fresh eyes, and each time I found some of the issues and reframed the narrative to get closer to the target. It took a lot of effort to pick it up again and again. It was having that image of a line of my books sitting on my bookshelf that got me going.

Never give up on the dream!

2) Push through

I typically write novels from start to finish, chapter by chapter. I tend to hit a bit of a wall when I reach the middle. At that point it doesn’t have that fresh new feeling of starting the project, but it isn’t far enough in to be able to taste the end. This is when I slow my pace. To get through it I simply force myself to write. I give myself a 1000 words per day minimum, and even if they wind up being heavily modified in the end, at least I am making progress instead of staring at a blank page of a chapter I can’t quite wrap my head around.

You can always go back and edit after!

3) Appreciate the accomplishment

I find this last one in particular really helpful: even if a project doesn’t turn out how you wanted, appreciate the work you put into it. Finishing a project is better than being afraid of it. Go ahead and fail! Fail again and again, but never stop being proud of the fact you attacked it head on. Accept the failure. Learn from the failure. Do better next time. Keep working through the cycle and you will find success. I’ve been writing for over ten years and am still constantly failing and growing! 

Keep pushing on!

Why Japanese? (And Roman...And Norse)

I love fantasy. I love dwarves and elves and dragons. I love kings and knights. I love representations of feudal Europe and the Catholic Church. My favorite book series are The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire. As a simple glance at the earnings and popularity of the visual adaptations can attest, many people agree that they are very, very good. In my mind, they have become the definitive fantasy versions of what they contain.

When I pick up a new fantasy book that has dragons and knights, I inevitably compare them to these definitive versions. Let’s call it a vice. I do the same with any new versions of cinematic Batman. To my mind, The Dark Knight trilogy is the definitive version, and anything else is an impostor. I’m finding more and more that regardless of how well a medieval fantasy is written, they always lack the wonder I long for. It feels like I’ve been there before.

When I set out on my journey to create my own world, I wanted a breath of fresh air. I thought of several possibilities for inspiration, such as Greco-Roman, Indian, Chinese and of course, Japanese. After much deliberation and fiddling, my love for Japan won out.

Japan had everything I was looking for. A unique political system that was both different and familiar to a Western audience. An influence on North American pop culture in the form of samurai and ninja’s. And a fascinating integrated belief system that allows for new ways to understand and explore life. And most of all, while there are certainly many wonderful examples of Japanese culture used in Western stories, I feel that there has yet to be a definitive high fantasy inspired by it.

As the ideas gained clarity, some of the other cultures I had considered crawled their way back into the picture. The classic concept of Rome vs Eastern empires remained firm in my mind, and when crafting a world where both could co-exist naturally, Nordic cultures reemerged as well.

The end result is a world that is strongly based on Japanese culture, but has natural give-and-take with the other cultures to form something else entirely. The Odicians (Roman) have a touch of Japanese. The Ainoens (Japanese) have a touch of Roman. They do not feel like two worlds being forced into one, but a single world with believable social and economic flow based on a shared history.