Amaranth and the Mountain update · 11:23pm Jan 21st, 2018
So last night I completed transcribing the first draft of Amaranth and the Mountain. For those of you who remember, about 1/3 of the way through the book I started doing all my writing by hand, which is a time consuming method for writing but one that I felt was well worth it. Now that it's complete, I have some actual facts and figures for you guys: work on the first chapter began on March 23rd 2014 (a few months after the first draft of Planet Hell was completed), and work on didn't end on the last chapter until July 19th 2017; the first draft is spans 24 chapters and 209,503 words, making it the longest story I've ever written and roughly twice the length of Planet Hell and four times the length of Awakening (much of the work on future drafts will be in compressing the narrative and distilling the word count to a more manageable number); it took me over 7,000 hours to write the first draft; it represents the 750,000th some word I've written creatively; and it took me over three months to transcribe the last half of the book.
Why did it all take so long? Well, between work and going back to school, this is what I've been busy typing up these last few months.
I honestly can't wait to start letting people read this, but there are so many problems I want to fix in editing first, so I'm going to edit up a second draft before I start seeking out feedback. So for those of you curious about this project, it may be a little while before I have anything ready to show.
But, for those of you interested in my writing, I did take a break between finishing the first draft and beginning the transcription to make a little short story. I don't know why, but Val Salia's comic, Out of Placers gave me an idea and I just sort of ran with it. Out of Placers is the story of a man who becomes a yinglet, these terrible little kobold type creatures, and Val Salia spends a lot of time telling us about the mental changes that come with this sort of transformation. I figured that the written word might be better suited than visual media to explore mental change such as these, and so I wrote "Yellow" as an exercise and a response of sorts. Since I haven't really had anything of mine available to read for quite a while, I wanted to share it here (click here for my short story "Yellow"). Despite not being pony-pony-pony, this work is fairly similar to something out of The Cycle of Eternal Return as far as the setting and sci-fi is concerned (I guess that's just the trend of my non-original work). If you do happen to read it, be sure to leave a comment below. I get lonely now that I don't really have regular readers providing me with positive feedback and support on a weekly basis.
Between now and the second draft of Amaranth and the Mountain, I'm going to try writing a short story or two of original fiction. I'm making it a goal to get something published somewhere before I start looking for representation for my book. So, at some point expect a few more short stories; I'll post links to them here along with updates on Amaranth and the Mountain as I edit.
wow, I don't think I've seen a fanfic author take writing quite so seriously as you
I'm hyped
Yellow was an enjoyable read. Thanks for looking it here.
4778951
Well thank you! I do try my hardest, and I'm hoping it all pays off in the end one day!
4779211
Get hyped! I'll be poppin' the biggest bottled when this whole Amaranth project is finally over.
4779455
And thank you too! I think you're the second person to actually read the final version of it, aside from myself, so that means a lot for me to hear that you enjoyed it.