Weekly Wander Update (Week One): On Starting Over · 11:57pm Aug 17th, 2019
Thank Tayman for this quality meme.
This will be a weekly blog series, posted on Saturdays, related to my attempts at writing. As this is the first blog of this type, it will also be the longest. Future update blogs will be posted on Saturday as well but probably not nearly as lengthy as this one. So buckle in: it's gonna be a long one.
So, about a week ago, I announced that the narwhal in the room was (possibly) coming back from the dead. The parenthesis are there because, well, this would not be the first time I declared the story to be 'back' so to speak. Since 2013, I've perpetually claimed that Wander would be worked on again or rewritten. In typical Razed fashion, I'd go on about how the story was not forgotten whilst simultaneously pushing it as far out of my mind as possible. Over the years, that pushing led to a radio silence on fimfic that spanned years. A mix of things lead to this long period in which I was a member of the fandom in name only—two to three years when, save for Bronycon and a daily visit to check on if anything interesting had been posted, I would not even say I was a writer. And NAWWAL continued to atrophy. If I'm being blunt, up until August of this year, the fic was 'canceled' in everything but the status tag (which said 'on hiatus').
So, what changed?
Back around... 2014 or so, I decided (or rather, got it stuck in my head) that NAWWAL as it stood was not salvageable. Even now, looking back at it, it's a complete mess, but back then I thought it was a complete mess that could be rebuilt by burning it to the ground and starting from scratch. The Daring Do sections were pointless, the adventure needed to be more natural, Babs should be involved because Season 3 rolled around and Babs is a pretty good horse. Then Season 4 happened and Princess Twilight, so of course I had to throw in that. Then GlimGlam and the Crusaders getting their cutie marks? Okay... I can work with this canon. Oh, and season 8 was a thing and we have students now, so maybe alongside Babs and Gabby I can figure out a way to throw an Ocellus or Gallus in there to build a secondary mane six or something. Canon happened. All rewrite attempts fell apart. Any idea that sparked in my head on how to 'fix' the narwhal of angst seemed to die before it could be born.
And then Bronycon 2019 happened, and a lot of things happened, and more importantly I got to thinking. I'm graduating from college come May of next year. Chapters of my life are closing one after the other, and here, on Fimfic, is a story that I put 92,000 words of work into that has been sitting dead for years. A story that, of all my stories, I can say that I truly loved writing back when it was active. Was I in a dark place when I conceptualized it? Sure, though I was not aware of said darkness--much like Scoots within the story. Did it fall apart and descend further into a tar pit of angst as I descended further into depression? Oh god yes. I do not look forward to cleaning up the Vanhoover chapters because those were written by a RazedRainbow who would keep himself locked in his dorm room for days on end, never attending classes, edging dangerously close to even darker considerations and actions that I don't even want to think about.
Yet here I sit in my apartment, door locked typing this blog. It's a decent apartment. It perpetually smells of weed due to my roommates and the air conditioning doesn't work at all (which in South Carolina in August is a legit problem, not just a first world one), but it'll do. I use it to sleep and, until the campus library and/or student center open up at the normal semester hours, work on lesson plans and write pone, and that's it. I'm in a good place now. That could make writing the ScootaAngst a little harder but maybe it will also make it better.
So what's the scoop? How alive is Wander? Well, there's good news and more good news. The first is that I've gotten to working on fixing up the previous chapters of Wander. Some of them, such as Chapter One, have remained mostly unchanged save for a little ironing out of the prose/dialogue, more sound character moments, and just tender loving care. Then you have the chapters that have gone through heavier changes. A prime example of this is the recently 'cleaned' Chapter 6. The original Chapter Six of NAWWAL was around 7,000 words; upon reworking it, the chapter now stands at 10,000 words. What happened?
Daring Do happened
As I have worked on ironing out both the current chapter set of NAWWAL as well as future planning (which I will get into at the end of this blog), I came to a realization on Daring Do. In the original version of Wander, Daring Do was simply an 'excuse;' a set-up for the wider adventure of Scoots and company. Sections of 'Daring Do and the Phoenix Pool' popped up a few times past the first three chapters (when they were necessary for getting the story going) but they were clearly afterthoughts then. When the idea of rewriting Wander started back in 2014 or so, my first order of business was to scrap Daring entirely. It served no purpose to the greater story.
Or so I thought. Then I got to looking over the original plan while working on the reboot and I realized two things. A) the original outline was complete and utter crap and those of you who are upset over Wander being dead for years will be thankful that I never wrote the original 'version' of NAWWAL to what was bound to be a very poor and unsatisfying conclusion. And B) Daring Do was integral to the story all along... younger Razed was simply such an inexperienced and inefficient writer back then that he couldn't see how important it was. Getting rid of Daring was not the answer. Adding more Daring was!
So I've been going from chapter to chapter, fleshing out the Daring Do segments that already existed and adding new Daring segments to chapters that previously contained none. The story of Daring's quest for the Phoenix Pool is more realized, and the characters within are no longer simple cardboard cutouts (Pallah and Cay now have actual characterization!). Time will tell whether or not this is just yours truly being super excited over finally getting back to finishing an epic or if the story will turn out for the better. The outline I have now, while not shared with anyone due to spoilers, is significantly better, and I have made significant progress on the reboot. It's been over a week since I started again, and I'm still going strong. I consider that a good sign.
And now we get to the final questions on everyone's mind? 1) How do we know to trust you, Razed? and 2)When can we expect the chapters to be republished/new chapters to be produced?
For starters, I have an outline. The story will be split into 5 'stages' (ha, get it?). Chapters 1-8 are 'Stage One,' Chapters 9-17 will be 'Stage Two,' Chapters 18 -26 will be 'Stage Three,' Chapters 26-36[1] will be 'Stage Four,' and a single epilogue chapter will make be 'Stage Five.' So, as you can see, I do have a plan and an outline which will be kept secret due to spoilers but rest assured it exists. As you can see, that's a lot of fresh chapters (only 13 were written before Wander went on hiatus), and thus a lot of writing. I can, luckily, write around 2,000 words a day pretty easy even with my current student teaching obligations (i.e. I have no life outside of school at the moment). Doing the math, at that rate, I would have 260,000 words written by the end of the school year--not counting the extra writing time of weekends--which is when I'm hoping to have this story completed. While this will be a long tale, I doubt it will be much more than 250,000 words (now that I've said that, it's bound to wind up exceeding 300,000). The long short of it all is that, while you all have every right not to trust me about this being 'the real reboot, for realsies this time,' I can say that this is the strongest attempt at a reboot I have thrown together yet. It took over 5 years, but better late than never.
So when will the new chapters come out? The current plan is to begin the publishing of reworked chapters this coming week, starting on Monday. Originally, I was going to post them Monday through Friday but starting at Chapter Six, the writing quality of NAWWAL took a bit of nosedive due to yours truly going a bit crazy, and thus the reworking of those chapters is taking significantly longer (due to both the addition of Daring Do scenes and the removal of plot threads that have either been changed or were never going to go anywhere anyway) , so that plan has changed slightly. Monday, Wednesday, Friday shall be the schedule until 'Stage One' is republished. Once 'Stage Two' is completed up to Chapter 13, it will follow the same pattern. Past that... I doubt we'll be getting weekly chapter updates, though I will try. Making promises on chapter release dates in the past has not done me any favors, so I'll just say that while there will be an attempt to complete a chapter every week, there are no guarantees, but rest assured I will be writing everyday.
For those not into Wander, there are one-shots on the table that I will be working on as well (A Tempest one shot mentioned in previous blogs as well as a Smolcellus fic because the shipper within Razed shall never truly die)
Now, on with the Scootaventure
1 Depending on the 'feel' of the story, there's a chance the chapter count for 'Stage Four' will be shorter. Without getting to into detail for the sake of spoilers, the final three chapters of this stage could easily become one mammoth of a chapter. My reasoning behind this possibility is that (again, avoiding spoilers) this is a very grueling sequence that leaves every party involved very worn out, and thus combining them all into a 20k+ word mammoth feels like the right way to make the readers 'feel' said fatigue... or maybe I've just been reading too much Brandon Sanderson and his influence is wearing off on me way too much. That's a possibility as well.
So as excited as I am about this actually (possibly) happening(!!!!!!), I can wait another few months. So I think I'm gonna save this for an excited binge read once it's done.
I appreciate this joke.
I think it's great to pick things back up, even after a long time. Maybe especially after a long time. The pursuit of artistic creation is... fraught sometimes. But I think it's uplifting to see others engage and re-engage with it.
I wish you luck, RazedRainbow!
It lives!
Gonna have to steal that meme there