I was beginning to see that I too had a real fondness for the outside. I’d unintentionally built up a bank of notes based on Jordan’s characters that had taken up more of my head than I knew. Her pragmatic nature came through loud and clear, and to this day it remains one of the best things I’d written. I could see everything she saw very clearly, because her travels and life through the wilds of a parallel Scottish world were just like those of Perrin Aybara, Rand al’Thor, Matrim Cauthon, Egwene al’Vere, and Nynaeve al’Meara as they escaped from the Two Rivers chased by Trollocs. I wrote a random scene based in my fantasy world with a girl called Kyira and it was total game changer. Chapter 2 was equally as hard, but then something weird happened. I’m getting obsessive, but thankfully Evernote is helping me cope. (At this point the sheer number of super important things is beginning to break my tiny little brain.)Ĭhapter 1 – Draft 2 was better, but I couldn’t nail down the narrative style. It’s something I later learned is often referred to as “voice” and it’s another super important thing. It was creative enough, but the narrative was screwy – I had no clue how best to present my ideas into words. Short stories that had nothing to do with the finished book’s world or characters, but it didn’t take long before I asked myself why I wasn’t just learning by doing (a mantra that I hold dear).Ĭhapter 1 shot off the page and it was bloody awful. The studies were focussed on unreal things and unreal places. I was lucky, and excitement guided me through that stage, and after deciding on Evernote as the obvious choice to begin for taking notes, the actual writing came very quickly. Some people find beginning one of the hardest things to do – there’s writer’s block, formatting, style, tone, the dreaded first line. I was excited to be embarking on a project. In all honesty, I didn’t think of writing a book as a long haul at all. Small things designed to get me thinking about how this long haul would coalesce.

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