Now it can feel as large as Everest, but After Life started as the little glowing idea that somehow snowballed into something with its own life and mood and personality.
If you’ve seen my Project page, After Life is the project that, at my time of writing this, has taken the top spot, and for good reason.
The beginning for this one actually goes back several other projects.
One sunny and bright June my life was rather in chaos. Not the work kind or the easy-to-solve kind, but the kind that can cripple people emotionally and for good. I had left writing to the side for a time and knew that without some kind of way to escape what was happening in my world, I doubt I would pull through and remain myself. So I picked writing back up, with some serious, intentional goals in mind. Something I would work towards and build up good writing habits along the way. I decided a great place to start was the idea that I had carried with me for about 15 years, but had never gotten started on.
After outlining and drafting, I ended up shelving that one.
There was too much pressure, too many years of me creating this impressive, expansive story in my head to have it realized on the page as I wanted it to be. I needed more time to learn the craft of writing so I put that one away and decided to move on to an idea I had had for only 10 years.
Again, after outlining and drafting half of that novel, I shelved it too.
Similarly, I was putting too much pressure on myself in a time where I needed an escape and not more stress. This particular project came with some other issues, like getting to the 52k mark (after a 25k+ outline) and deciding that it was in the wrong genre. It was too tangled and stressful so that one I put away. So I moved on to an idea that I had had for merely one year.
Yet again, after outlining and drafting to about the halfway point, I had to shelve that one.
This one had the disadvantage as being one that I not only had had some time to sit with and figure out at great length, but one that I had been obsessed with over the course of that year since it came to me. It was shiny and new and was filled with exciting possibilities. The two others before were simmering away in the background and had been for some time, but this one had been front of mind for a while. Again, the pressure was too much. So I moved on to an idea that I had had for only a brief amount of time.
I think I made it a couple weeks of working on that outline before I shelved that one. Again.
It was well into autumn now, with winter about to rise up and take over my part of Canada, and not only did I not have a project I was working on, but I had the incredibly discouraging reality of four recent failures with their sting still fresh on my heart. All of them were projects I knew- and still know now- that I will return to, but none of them were right for where I was in my life or my level of writing.
So I took a break.
For not quite two months I decided to find my escapism in reading copious amounts of books. I think all told I read or listened to about 20 to 25 books. I was always reading, always trying to get lost in something. And somewhere in the haze of 20 different fantasy worlds, I got an idea.
It was a little thing, something small and unformed in my head. I didn’t want to scare it away but I also thought I was likely to fail should I attempt to write it anyway. I gave myself two weeks while I kept reading to see if the idea grew or faded away. When the end of December came, that little idea had grown.
Tentatively, I gave myself one month to outline it and see what I could do with it. Many tens of thousands of words later, I not only had a plan but some confidence back. To keep myself from spiralling and doubting again, I had a goal of finishing the first draft in two months.
I wrote it, start to finish- at a total of 144k- in a month and a week.
As I wrote and the world expanded and the characters stories became clear, After Life went from one book to three to five, and so there is stands. It’s a project I started outlining in January, and by July- about a year from when I started to take writing seriously again- I had the first book in its third draft and its second zero drafted, with the three others outlined.
A series is a complex thing, and I’ve taken a break from it to try and see it from different vantage point. After Life can feel massive and complex and like a wild thing that lives on the page. But also small and dear and wholly, uniquely mine. I’ll be climbing to reach the finish point for this series for a while but unlike the others before it, I know this time I’ll one day be able to reach its peak and write “The End”.
