Hello, dreamers.

And so we find ourselves over halfway through the month of October. Once again, NaNoWriMo is just around the corner. And while I will be waiting until next week to make my formal announcement, I figure now is as good a time as any to get back into good habits.

That said, time to talk a bit about my upcoming project:

The Pioneer Era

Don’t let the new name fool you: this is the same project I was working on last year.

Readers will no doubt remember my 2019 NaNoWriMo project, Dawn of the Pioneers. They may also recall my constant frustration with the project, and that I ultimately abandoned it not long after actually completing NaNoWriMo (I was so disappointed with the work I never even bothered to publish my post-NaNoWriMo blog entry). I’ve had a lot of time to think back on my failures (and few, modest successes) in DotP, and I feel much better equipped to handle the project this time around.

Upon reflection, I feel one of the biggest problems I faced with DotP was my propensity to pants my way through…sort of. “Pantsing” for those unfamiliar with the term, is writer slang for writing without a set plan or outline (flying by the seat of your pants). I generally consider myself a “Plantser”: I like to have a firm plan in mind prior to writing, but I understand the need to sometimes step back and let the story take me where it needs to go. In retrospect, The Pioneers was the first novel where I truly embraced that hybrid approach. I started out with a firm plan, but the story still managed to surprise me. At times I allowed it to take an unexpected turn, and at the conclusion of each phase of the novel I paused to recalibrate the plan for coming phases, to accommodate any changes made.

Looking back, I first went wrong with Dawn of the Pioneers when I began second-guessing myself. For years, I’d had a fairly clear idea of the story in mind (as had been the case with The Pioneers), but I’d grown self-conscious. I began to question my story concept, for reasons ranging from concerns regarding changes made during The Pioneer to questions of inclusion and character development. All of this led to some last-minute changes to the plot and characters. The sudden switch of one character for two others early in the novel became a major point of divergence. As I wrote on, other parts were altered. It became a ripple effect; soon, the entire story had changed. As a result I found myself attempting to write a story I was unprepared to write; one I had no interest in writing regardless.

The sad end result was what I have come to view as my personal The Last Jedi: a painful mess of canned devices and plot holes, vestigial elements and failed characters, all tied together clumsily with forced diversity designed to score cheap PC points. In trying too hard to create a story that would appeal to everyone, I’d succeeded in creating a story that appealed to no one. Nobody would like this novel. Even I don’t like it.

I regard Dawn of the Pioneers as my single greatest failure as a writer thus far. I was so disappointed with it, and myself for writing it, that I gave up writing for months, only returning to it amid the pandemic, and my need for a personal escape. Were it not for that…I’m honestly not sure when I’d have picked things back up again. So perhaps, at least in this instance, this year wasn’t all bad. Perhaps everything really does happen for a reason.

In the end, I finally managed to read through DotP. Not entirely, but enough to draw some conclusions. Chief among them:

1. I need to stop trying to force things. Sure, the humanity of the future will look very different (and, I’d like to think, better). I feel I did a good job showing that in the previous novel. But who’s to say what the future will look like in terms of other cultures? Will the Pioneers revert to a more rustic mindset? Will there still be Clint Eastwood-style male archetypes in the future? I feel, given time, I can answer some of those questions. But this much is certain: I cannot keep letting myself alter my story based on the ideals of today.
2. I need a clear plan prior to writing. Not a full outline, perhaps, but a clearly-defined plot with understood waypoints, a clearly-defined ending, and fully-developed characters. I’ve realized, looking back, that while my insecurities with the story were clearly a problem, the wheels didn’t really come off until I started veering off into unknown territory. The primary divergent plot change was made shortly prior to NaNoWriMo, which meant the new idea wasn’t fully formed in my head before I began writing. The result was predictable: I began pantsing, making things up as I went. The further into November I got, the further I diverged from the original story idea. Thus, the narrative fell apart.
3. I need to go back to the basics. I had a clear idea in mind from the start, and things only fell apart when I started trying to diverge from it. At its heart, the entire Pioneer story arc was intended to be a modern interpretation of Manifest Destiny: humanity living on a new frontier, pioneers struggling and thriving, then fighting to preserve their way of life. That’s the basis of the story.

To wit, I plan to devote the rest of October to planning, at least as far as my WIP is concerned. I need to revisit and flesh-out my concept notes, a process I’ve already begun. Once that is done, I’ll need to really read through Dawn of the Pioneers, to see what, if anything, is worth saving.

Once that is done, I’ll be starting over. I often caution other writers against simply trashing a largely-completed work and starting over. But that approach does have its place. In this case, the very core of the narrative (assuming there even is one) is inherently flawed. I see no point in trying to finish Dawn of the Pioneers as it stands now, knowing I’ll have to essentially rewrite everything anyway.

Thus, come November, I will not be resuming or rewriting Dawn of the Pioneers. Rather, the way I see it, I will be writing a completely new story: The Pioneer Era. And, it is my hope, this time it will finally become what it’s meant to be. – MK