About Entangled Pathways · 10:59pm Mar 3rd, 2016
So this is a blog about a subject that I never thought I would touch again. A week ago I didn't think I would ever touch it again... hell, twenty-four hours ago I never thought I would touch it again. But depending on just how recent of a follower you are, you might not know that there was a time around three closing in on four years ago that I wrote a little story called Winding Roads. I don't think it's any kind of surprise to those of you who have stuck around for this long that part of me has grown to deist the story. The short version of why I never finished the sequel, Entangled Pathways, has a lot to do with both what was going on with me in the moment.
I feel like the fact that I deleted over 200 blogs from when I was writing Entangled Pathways might be apparent of how I feel about that time in my life. I think it's normal to look back on yourself and cringe because of what you've done or how you did it, and who knows the writing that I produce now might make me cringe. I've been bitter about Entangled Pathways in the past, mostly because it felt like this giant hurdle I could never overcome. I feel like I finally after so long of trying to work for it finally got people to stop asking me when I was going to continue it. I feel like I've finally distanced myself from the work that I've grown to dislike and I'm able to be my own writer again without it looming over my head.
Which brings us to the biggest question... why the hell am I continuing it?
Well, I'm not sure why, honestly. Entangled Pathways is a story I wrote at the time and a very clear projection onto Braeburn in a much less seamless way than what I do currently with characters like Blueblood and by extent Caramel. I write a lot about my own anxiety with characters because I've always wanted male characters to relate to, and I want to be told it's okay to be over emotional. But as I've aged and matured in both my mental state and my writing I feel as though I've changed my mind and I've been able to expend on how characters act. Braeburn, in my mind, should be bubbly, talk a lot, never know when to shut up, and is just a bit thick in social situations. The Braeburn I wrote in Entangled Pathways and Winding Roads felt like such a victim, and his character started and ended there. I think I've made this clear to all who asked that I really disliked how I handled the story, but if I was able to actually finish it I might not look on it so poorly as this dark spot that I should be ashamed of. Plenty of people messaged me about Winding Roads telling me it helped them come out of the closet, which astounds me mostly because the story was a shitty rip off of Social Standards, another SoarBurn fic which if my memory serves me right was much better written.
I feel like the fact that I wrote a sequel at all was just to continue the high I had while writing Winding Roads. I finished the entire story in a month and sometimes posted multiple chapters a day. And in the end, it was all too much for me mentally. I tell myself why I stopped it looking back as me hating what I had made, but I don't think I ever hated it at the time, just got burned out. I don't exactly know what I'm expecting when I post this new chapter. Hell, if I'm honest, I'm not even happy with the new chapter. I felt both constrained by a story I never really knew how to end and a characterization of Braeburn that I was never happy with. It's not my best work, and not what I liked to romanticize as my big comeback to show off how great I became at writing. There's a reason that I wrote it, and I think it's just what I said before, this hurdle that I was unable to overcome.
I want to be a better writer. When I was writing Winding Roads and Entangled Pathways and EVEN Melting Snow I didn't want to be a professional writer. I knew I enjoyed writing and shipping and thought I was decent at it. It wasn't until Blossoming Roses where I actually thought to myself, "Yeah, I can do this," and really believed in myself. I think in a way Entangled Pathways ruined my self esteem for writing for such a long time that it took until I finished Melting Snow (Which had about 1 chapter per month) to really truly think of myself as a writer, quote on quote. I don't think I'm a writer yet, but I'm working for it.
I don't even know if I'm going to continue Entangled Pathways after this. It was more some kind of personal journey quest kind of a thing that may or may not result in anything. I half expect it to be unnoticed depending on how many people who followed it have inactive accounts right now. Part of me wishes that when I post this chapter it'll be featured and recognized, but I doubt it. Simply because three years have passed and 90% of my active followers are hopefully from work I can actually be proud of, not something I randomly decide to write because of emotional reasons rather than drive three years later.
So, if anything, I suppose at worst this is a hint of what fans wanted and at best some kind of emotional grounds for me. Maybe it's because of what TheVClaw told me yesterday that made me think like this, something along the lines of as I was leaving him at the Greyhound station that he knew I could be an amazing writer because I was his inspiration. And I feel like this is some kind of barrier that I've been ignoring in a sense? But you also have to understand I'm currently operating on about 4 hours of sleep from an overnight bus ride.
We'll see how this ends up, because honestly I'm not sure.
Good to see it back! Your SoarBurn was always my favorite and, as I recall, Social Standards was never actually ever finished. Even if you feel Winding Roads was a rip off, at least you finished it. I look forward to seeing how you bring YOUR Soarin, and YOUR Braeburn to their ultimate conclusion. I've long admired your work, keep it up man, you've got serious talent.
There is this funny thing about the past: we cannot change it. Whether we like it or not, it's there and it's there to stay. What we can change, though, is how we treat our past, what we learn from it, and how we build our future upon it.
And there is this funny thing about writing: it tends to capture the writer's essence at a particular moment of time. Kinda like a photo of your emotional state, with a filter of whatever plot you come up with.
It was a long time ago that I saw that story in the feature box, I was intrigued, I'd never read something that had M/M shipping, or that was even "Slice of Life". So I read its predecessor and loved it, when you announced you cancelled it and planned to never write it again, I was bummed but it happens. Time to re-read it.
I hope you find happiness no matter what becomes of this story.