HLIB, Take 1
Back in 2014, I joined the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) excitement with a sequel of sorts to an earlier tale, From Hell (A Love Story). FH(ALS) was a raunchy space opera in which I tried to build a bigger backstory for Axton, the running-and-gunning bounty hunter from the 2012 video game Borderlands 2. Part of that backstory was the creation of an original character, Hal, an early (pre-game) partner of Axton’s. I wrote FH(ALS) between late 2012 and early 2014, but I had such fun building that world and the characters in it, I decided to return to that timeline with a host of new adventurers in November of 2014, for NaNoWriMo. The new story was called “The Highs, the Lows, and the In-Betweens”, and I pounded out that sucker free-form over those wild 30 days, plus an additional six months to bring it to a satisfying conclusion.
I posted my day-to-day progression of HLIB on a separate side blog. If nothing else, this process kept me accountable to my projected NaNoWriMo wordcount. Only one person read it…that I knew of. Several days ago, I received an email – more than three years after I’d finished the story – from another apparent HLIB reader:
Who knew?
HLIB, Take 2
Over the course of the next few years, I wrote a lot more stories following the timeline and characters of “The Highs, the Lows, and the In-Betweens”. When I looked at the original story, though, I found it suffered from the high-octane intensity of being a product of NaNoWriMo. The bones of the story I wanted to tell were there, but it needed work. A lot of work.
I sequestered the original story and put it in my archives, and started on a new and – hopefully – improved version. That version is Highs, Lows, and In-Betweens. It has become a significantly different story since I started the rewrite, with more characters, more conflicts, and more complications. It’s also become a lot more fun to be in that world, for those reasons.
HLIB principal characters – height comparison chart – doodle by Mayumi Hirtzel/bonusparts
Regarding that one interested reader’s original question – if I have plans to bring this story out again – the answer is, yes. Will it be the same story? No. Will it be better than it was before? Possibly. Have I enjoyed being in that universe again? Definitely.
I don’t know if readers will like the new HLIB, especially those who are familiar with the original version. I can only try to tell the most interesting story that I’m able to do. It will be a rollercoaster, though. I’ll be sharing more of this story – and my journey writing, or, rather, rewriting it – over the coming months. In the meantime…
Have you ever returned to a story for a rewrite, after a hiatus? Did that story change just a little, or a lot? Did you like the final product more, or less, than the original? Let me know in the comments below!
Oh, if I had a penny for every story I’ve shelved, only to come back to days/weeks/years later with a new shiny idea…only to shelve it again because life happens 🙁
Personally, I’m exited that you’ve picked up something that you stowed away and have this new drive to complete it. Be it the same direction or not, I know you will have fun with it wherever it goes. I could tell in ‘From Hell’ that these characters speak to you, and I at least have the feeling that they helped shape some of your style when crafting Seven and his story later.
Rarely have I been able to pick up what I put down and keep it going in the same direction. Which, I suppose is a pro for creative thinking, but also a major con for story focus. Sometimes, I just have too many ideas to keep a story on the path I intended, and that can frustrate me to the point where I have to shelve it. Of course, then I go chasing the new idea squirrel and the results you have seen on my page.
I don’t doubt that someday, in some way, I’ll have a complete story that’s been edited, finalized and completed. It might take me the rest of my days, but it will happen!
I have so many stories I would love to get back to! I used to throw my stuff away when I was a lot younger, if I didn’t like it, but now I know better. Just stow it under the bed or somewhere out of sight so it doesn’t taunt me.
I think that’s wonderful you had some fan mail! That’s all any true writer needs (besides our own self-love and self-acceptance) to keep at this gig.
That’s great, Chase! And, don’t worry about it taking time. I believe that our stories grow as we do, so it’s not surprising that leaving a story to sit for a bit will change the way we see it when we come back to it. Surely, you’ve been reading my stuff long enough to see the common threads woven into each. I can see them in your work, too. I have no doubt that you will one day grab a story by the horns and wrangle it to your shelf!
Regarding focus: ending stories is important, if only because by getting to the end, we can more easily see the whole. I think that’s why some folks find outlines so helpful. Depending on the depth of the outline, sometimes it can feel like we’ve already written the thing, sapping some of the excitement. But that also allows an opportunity to move on without spending a lot of extra energy on a story that might not be able to sustain a level of necessary passion to keep going sentence-by-sentence. But even if it’s only a rush of notes showing where the characters end up on their journey, that can be a huge help. For that story, and for the ones to follow. Because every story owes a lot to the ones that come before it, at least on my writing journey. Sometimes, stories I wrote years earlier come back and reassert themselves in a vastly different form. (Captain Aral comes back in a way in Highs Lows; Seven is based on a sci-fi character I did a long time ago codenamed Ursus, who was part of a team of adventurers called the Menagerie.) Other times, I just need to take a break from a story in order to see it in a new light, and some little spark will start a fresh fire. (Fearless is one of those; I’m excited to get back to that one, as well.)
Stories come to us all the time: while we’re doing chores, when we’re falling asleep, while we’re out for a walk. Embracing them – and letting them go – is all part of the process of our own growth journey. 🙂
Thanks, Kate! It’s funny to think of it as fan mail, because it’s for just a NaNo story I did a few years ago, but I guess it kind of is? 🙂 Anyway, it felt great to hear that someone had read and enjoyed something I’d created, even if the news came after the fact. It’s the reason I keep writing, in fact.
I actually did throw out a bunch of notebooks at my mom’s this past summer. I even remembered some of the lines I’d written down! But they were so god-awful. I have enough bad writing I’ve actually kept, I allowed those to go to the recycle bin. 😀 Every story I’ve ever finished I’ve kept, though. Even the terrible ones. 😉