Leaving Tracks: On starting over, or not · 2:22pm Jan 5th, 2022
Hello, my name is Katie Bunn, and today I start down the path of being a professional novelist.
Well that sounded nice, didn't it? Big bold statement, a line drawn in the sand, more than a bit of ego. It's kinda bullshit though. There is no "today", in this sense. I've been practicing being a professional novelist since the day I started writing Inner Strength, back in May 2015. Or eve earlier, I aspired to be one as early as middle school. Those lessons haven't vanished, and I do myself a disservice to claim I'm only "today" starting down this path that I've been on for most of my life, in some fashion or other.
But still, there's something to be said about my first serious attempt at writing an original novel. Except… I started writing one back in December 2019. Then picked it up again in November 2020. Hell, I started writing a horrible novel back in middle school. Two horrible novels, even. So writing original fiction isn’t really new to me.
Then what’s up with all this “today” stuff? It does actually carry some weight, I think. Let me explain.
When I was younger I didn’t think much about writing well, I just wrote. And it sucked, but I was maybe good for my age at any given time. After graduating high school, I made my first big attempt at writing well. It was a five-chapter novella, and it sucked, but maybe less so. I stopped writing for a long time. Then I started reading fanfiction, and I decided to take it even more seriously, and I made that my rebirth as a new author: Krickis. I had used the name before, but I had never used it as a pen name. It became the core of my identity.
And I started it with something like: “It was a beautiful day in Ponyville.” That was the opening line to Inner Strength, my line in the sand ‘I’m a big adult author now’ attempt. And like, it’s so horrible. But if you go back and look at Inner Strength, you won’t find that. I changed it to a much stronger opening months later when I re-edited the story after it was finished.
And that’s sorta the crux of what I’m getting at. It doesn’t matter if and when you draw that line in the sand. It took me a whole novel to figure out not to use the single most cliché fanfic introduction. And after that, after it was cleaned up? I still wasn’t there yet. The version of Inner Strength you can read now is the third edition. The first revision added a few chapters, cleaned up some bum lines, rewrote the first chapter, etc. The second revision was when I reworked the whole thing and added a new act in the middle of it, as well as another new chapter toward the end. I put a lot of effort into making sure Inner Strength holds up as a story.
Getting a little rambly here. This isn’t a blog about Inner Strength. I just want to emphasize that at no point did I stop learning, but at some point I got kinda a clue about how this all works. I’ve written a lot of novels. Inner Strength, Looking Glass, Acts of Love, Tension Points, various others. I’ve learned a lot. So to say that today marks the start of my journey is wrong.
But it marks something. A dedication to it, perhaps. Because see, that’s what this is really about. When I was a kid writing novels about cows taking over the world and Inuyasha ripoffs, I was just a kid learning by playing. When I was a young adult writing a gritty dystopian novella and trying for the first time, I wanted it all to be easy. I gave up when it got a little hard. When I was in my mid twenties and I started my first serious novel, I was using fanfiction to learn how to write. When I was in my late twenties and I started my first real attempt at an original novel, I was just doing what I thought I should, not what I wanted to, and so I failed.
But now, today, I came to a new realization. It’s been hitting me for a while, but I’m dense. I’m kinda tired of fanfiction. I said once Tension Points is done, I’d work on To Hell and Back. I really don’t have it in me to do that right now. I have Life in Equestria, the next WWB fic, half-written. I have no drive to finish it. I have Torn, my NSFW for fun pony fic, and Solve et Coagula, my for fun Deltarune AU, and neither is being much fun lately.
When I finished Tension Points, I made a “blog post” (an afterward published as an additional chapter, because AO3 doesn’t have blogs) where I mentioned a hypothetical of it feeling like a good sendoff to my writing if I never wrote again. I didn’t know why I said that, I still wanted to write, but it felt right so I left it in. I figured it out though, I was picking up already on the fact that none of my current projects spoke to me anymore. I was tired of fanfiction, and I wasn’t looking in the right places for original fiction.
I had this idea, that I would turn Tension Points into a four-book original novel series. Queer kids in a small town, combining my love for queer storytelling with a small-town vibe in a combination you don’t normally see. It’s a good idea, and I might come back to it. But like, that was me trying to cling to Tension Points as a half-fanfic thing, and it was the wrong approach. But when I came back to my original fantasy novel, something clicked.
It’s called The Wide World, or at least it is for now. It’s meant to be part of a series, but one where I actually know what I’m doing from the start rather than what Who We Become wound up being. It’s hard. It’s so hard to write this thing. But it also feels like the right thing to do. When I look back on what I’ve written, I’m in love with the world. And no one but me can bring that world and these characters to life.
So I’ve been on this path a long time, But this is at the very least a significant step on it. Because I’m committing, for the first time, to be an original fiction writer rather than a fanfic writer who has an original story she swears she’ll get back to. I really hope I can stick with it this time, and I actually think I will. I’m ready for this.
It helps that I just got an Adderall prescription, so as soon as that’s filled I’ll be unstoppable.
I do still plan to get WWB to the stopping point I talked about. It’s not far. I’ve just got to write the second half of Life in Equestria, the sister story Life in Everton, and the finale Shimmers and Shines. I’m close, and I’ll get there. But not right now. Right now, I have to take this path to wherever it leads me.
“The most important step one can take. It’s not the first one, is it? It’s the next one. Always the next step.”
Congrats.
The path to becoming an original novelist is never an easy one, but the journey will be worth it. It sounds like you've already got a lot of experience and passion writing. I think you'll be set, as long as you keep to your advice and always keep focusing on that next step.
Good luck, and thank you for sharing.
Keep us updated on your journey! It's always exciting to see a fanfic author take that big step into published original work.
Looking forward to reading a Katie Bunn novel in print ❤️
woot :O
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Thank you! I definitely do have the passion, and I'd like to think I have the experience by this point as well
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I plan to keep posted here. I didn't really mention in the blog anywhere, but I plan to keep recurring updates of this endeavor under the title Leaving Tracks. It might spin off to a separate blog on another site (Tumblr because I like it there or Twitter because that's a better place for authors to be really) but I'll keep Fimfiction up to date on what's going on
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Gosh yeah, I get so excited when I think about the idea of this story being in print
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Hehe thank you!
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I find myself thinking about Tension Points now when I'm not reading it. :V
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lol but seriously, that's awesome to hear! Invading readers' brains is always a plus
Guess you should read more of it then, huh?
Well good luck, I hope you won't forget your roots!
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Thank you, and I'll definitely never completely move on from pony in my heart. I may not write it forever, but it'll always be a huge part of who I am
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Good.
You're going to do great things, I just know it.
Woooooo! Go Krickis!
I know you can do it! I'm really looking forward to reading what you write. ^^
I'm so excited to see how your writing career evolves, going into the future. You've got this, hon!
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I appreciate your support though!
Hopefully, I'm still intimidated by this whole thing
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Thank you, I look forward to being able to show off what I've got for this story! I think you'll like it a lot
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Thank you, I'm equal parts nervous and excited. Something tells me there's a word for that...
Good luck with all that! Would be super cool to be able to buy some of your original fiction someday, so I hope you do well with that :) I always admire people who wanna write original fiction because heck I don’t think I’d ever be able to but I feel like you have the strengths and the ability! Hope to see your name at my local bookstore some day :)
From one writer of original fiction to another, I wish you the best of luck in your creative endeavors, Miss Bunn. I hope to start writing novels one day too, but I'm not sure I'm there yet.
Good luck!
And Dalinar is right, but damn is it hard to live up to his example.
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I bet you could, but yeah it's a bitch lmao. Though if you ever decide to write original fiction I'll be happy to workshop with you! And haha I'll be happy just to be on Amazon, but being in a local bookstore would be so cool!
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What's weird is novels are way easier for me. I could never get the hang of short stories, they tend to be rushed when I do them. Thank you for the encouragement
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I tend to associate the quote with a friend who introduced me to it (said friend has also been trying to get me to read Sanderson for ages but it's not happened yet lol)
And now it's revealed that I'm a poser who has never read Sanderson, despite that being my favorite quote ever
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Oof.
I love stormlight. “Sadly” it’s got enough ties to the rest of the Cosmere stories that not reading them does result in missing some details. And Elantris and Mistborn 1-3 are only “pretty okay” and not great. But I did quite enjoy mistborn series 2 and stormlight and war breaker.
And that quote is great. The sequence that leads to it is also great. Because Dalinar doesn’t just have that as an answer. But “the next” works far far better than “the first”.
I wish you luck on your journey :). These days I don't do a lot of reading that isn't fan fiction, but I'm always happy for authors to follow their passions.
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Thank you! Whether you read any original fiction I write or not, I appreciate your support