A writer-friend sent me a link to this post a while ago, thinking I’d enjoy reading it. I liked the idea enough to give it a shot with my N&S characters.

It’s pretty simple: a list of song lyrics that remind a writer of a character they’re writing. Fair warning, putting these posts together is way too much fun! All you writers out there should try it. . .

The blogger I linked to above included three characters in one post, but when my list of song lyrics started to get long (as we all know my posts have a tendency of doing), I decided to feature my characters one post at a time. It seemed fitting to start with my main character, Alin.

“Loving can hurt, loving can hurt sometimes/But it’s the only thing that I know” – Photograph by Ed Sheeran

“Together we touch the sky/Wherever we go we fly/Forever we know adventure’s in the air tonight” – Adventure by Matthew Parker

“We heard a voice proclaim: ‘lay your weapons down!/They’re calling off the war/On account of losing track/Of what we’re fighting for.’/So we found our way back home/Let our cuts and bruises heal/While a brand-new war began/One that no one else could feel.” -Mars by Sleeping At Last

“Stand face to face with the younger me/All of the mistakes/All of the heartbreak/Here’s what I’d do differently/I’d love like I’m not scared/Give when it’s not fair/Live life for another” -Fix My Eyes by for KING & COUNTRY

“Back when my mama used to hold me/I wish somebody woulda’ told me/If you want love, you gon’ have to go through the pain/If you want love, you gon’ have to learn how to change/If you want trust, you gon’ have to give some away” – If You Want Love by NF

Bonus – here’s some story:

“Alin could feel everything―every inch of damp soil, every piece of mossy wood, every stick pressed into the mud―through the worn leather of his boots.  The leaves around him were smearing dew onto his bare arms with wet, feathery fingers. And morning was coming, so he could feel the first promise of warmth on his face and his shoulders.

The wet, chilly winter had left the forest, leaving spring to do her work.  And that meant Alin Selvan-Tradson was off the training field, and into the forest. . .”

If you’ve been reading my blog lately, you’ve probably heard me talk about “Nieo & Star”, the high fantasy story I’m currently writing. If you’ve read my blog very recently, you’ve also heard me whine about the ACT. These two things (this story and this test) were two very big parts of my life last year. I left the ACT in 2018, but “Nieo & Star” came with me.

Part of my preparations last summer for the ACT was taking College Algebra at our local community college. As I was finishing up my junior year of high school last spring, I was not exactly thrilled by the idea of doing math all summer, but since May was going to be my only month off, I (thankfully) had the sense to make the most of it. I decided I would try to write 300 words in “N&S” every day. 300 words-per-day eventually turned into 500 words-per-day, which I managed every day all month, almost without fail.

Combining what I wrote before last May, during last May, the following summer, and the following school year, I ended up with a meaty start to my novel, 60 pages long and over 30,000 words. My words-a-day count was a roller coaster (usually on the lower side, but my record is 1600 in one day), and I took a lot of breaks to figure things out. I had out-written most of my prior plotting and world-building that May, so things were slowing down.

During one such break I did some rereading, and began to realize that this 60-page, 30,000-word year’s worth of story wasn’t really what I wanted my novel to look like: I hadn’t known Alin, AEmilia, Nieo, and Star very well, and some of them had been acting out of character. I also hadn’t known my elves’ culture very well, and now that I understood it better myself, my characters (Alin in particular) had been doing things that were awfully culturally inappropriate.

Overall, I was very excited about how my story was developing, but I didn’t like what I had on paper. The idea of rewriting was not a very painful one, because of that, but I was worried about time. Should I charge ahead into my main conflict, or spend time resetting the stage? In the end, I decided to reset. I needed a better foundation to work off of.

So on December 10th last year I opened a new word document, which I called “Nieo & Star (second 1st draft)“. I already have 6 pages, and they make me happy.

So was that over a year and lot of work wasted? 30,000 words down the drain? I say, no.  Not at all! I’m in the process of rereading those 60 pages and finding what I still want to use. I also think that writing all those out-of-character interactions helped me understand my characters better. I think every word that hits paper makes the writer better at writing.

I would have told you in the past that I wrote stories for the finished product. And while the finished product is important and I still desperately want to someday get published, what I learned last May was how much joy there is in the process.

I am a writer. Because I write. And I love writing.

So I’m not upset that I’m rewriting the beginning of my story. Nor am I upset that I think I’ll probably rewrite the beginning again when I edit “Nieo & Star”. Because I’m a writer, and writing is what I do.