TTT: My Writing Journey In Ten Steps

This weeks Top Ten Tuesday topic – as always hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl – is a Halloween freebie.

Although I am going to celebrate Halloween this year I don’t consider myself to be a Halloween person. I always have candy in my apartment for my neighbors nephews, but usually I am not part of the whole celebration stuff.

(I did celebrate Dias de los Muertos years ago and Samhaim but didn’t for some time now)

Anyway – this part of the year means something else to me. It is only two days until National Novel Writing Month starts again and so October is my time to prepare a bit and being overly excited for the November event. However – this year it is even more special for me – because since last year I am part of the 4thewords community – a writing game – and there NaNoWriMo is HUUUUGE! So I decided to share some of my writing journey with you – and because it is Tuesday – I’m going to do it in 10 steps.

Step 1: Writing Adventure Children Stories

I learned to read very early in my life, because books and stories meant everything to me. My first favorite reads were all the books I could find by Enid Blyton. Especially her boarding school novels and her adventure series‘. That was, what I was into the most.

The moment I attended school for the first time I quickly realized, that reading other peoples stories wouldn’t be enough for me and so I started to write my own. My first stories weren’t longer than 1 DIN A4 page and were about a group of kids I called “Die Satti Bande” (Satti was actually a name and “Bande” you can translate as clique or gang). These four kids had a cockatoo (how creative -.- ) and a secret hiding place, some secret language and they had to solve “cases”. I was maybe seven or eight when I wrote this stories.

Later I wrote a story about – again four kids – who found a treasure map and tried to find a mysterious subsided island. So they borrowed a submarine boat (wtf) and tried to find the island somewhere near Helgoland. They eventually found it but than a bomb exploded and they had to try to survive. Hooray. That was maybe 2 or 3 years later.

Step 2: Obsessed with everything Sci Fi

I wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of TV during my childhood or my early teens, so it was something very special to me, when I finally was allowed to choose two TV shows I was allowed to watch every week.

I chose Stargate SG1 (it was only Stargate back then) and The X-Files. So no wonder, that I really got obsessed with Science Fiction. That led to some stories about an alien race haunting the planet, while some kids received some super powers to fight them. There was also a urban fantasy kind of story about kids getting some crystal swords and being separated into “houses” to learn how to deal with “Schwingungen” (call it vibrations) and a pure Sci Fi story about kids being in a secret space program. (It was mostly Star Trek with Kids)

I have to admit, that I also wrote some Stargate fanfictions – mostly shipping Sam and Jack. I even uploaded them on some websites and got some mixed reviews. I don’t think, most of the people realized that I wasn’t older that 12.

Step 3: Writing emo poems

When I got older (read: a whiny teen) I stopped writing adventure stories and started to write a LOT of emotional vulnerable poems about love and broken hearts and suffering and stuff. The only stories I wrote in these years were short stories about abandoned unloved teenagers being lost in day dreams.

Step 4: Coping my broken teenager heart with romance

In my later teens I came back to longer stories again, but in a more “artistic” way. I was trying to clear my sexual preferences for myself, which isn’t easy when you are pan sexual and no one does explain it to you. (I learned it later) and I also tried to find my writing style. For that I was testing some different ways to express myself.

I started to write a fragmentary novel in two perspectives about a young girl falling in love with one of her female teachers (and yes I was THAT girl and I was obsessed with my 11^th grade English teacher) It is funny enough, that the English teacher wasn’t the model for the novel character at all. I gave it to one of my best friends to read. And every time something happened, so that I felt “inspired” again, I wrote another fragment. FOR MONTH!

In general I wrote a lot of LGBTQ+ stories during the time and most stories contained a real core. (Which means: I wrote myself into most of my stories)

Step 5: Writing Fanfictions

When I started university in 2008 I met my now best friend and she introduced me to the world of soccer.

And now I have to admit, that I wrote a lot of gay soccer fanfictions during this time. (Please: I did stop doing it and don’t use it against me. Also: I never uploaded the stories online.) And not only that, I also wrote some soccer fanfictions with me as an OC.

They weren’t very well written – but it was fun and entertaining.

I also wrote a short story based on my first time in a soccer stadium, which got officially published in an anthology later.

Step 6: My first NaNoWriMo project in 2009

I can’t remember how I heard about NaNoWriMo for the first time. But I do remember, that it was shortly before November in 2009 and I was SO DAMNED EXCITED. And I had no plot idea at all. But I had a title and maybe something blurry like a first line and so I wrote my first NaNo in 17 days.

I went to some of the Write Ins – even hosted my own in my favorite bar, was very active in the forum and was all into NaNo. (I even wrote during my university classes a lot)

My first project was called: The Glass Bead Embroider (is “embroider” even a job description?) – a fantasy novel about a girl who was able to work magic my doing glass bead embroidery. I stopped writing my novel at 56.000 words and never finished it. I still own it, but I never read what I have written back in November 2009.

Step 7: Puks Chronicles

The next years (yes years) I wasn’t writing much fiction. I blogged a lot and I read hundreds of books. I was really active in a fantasy literature forum and wrote a lot of reviews.

In 2012 I fell in love with an much older guy and he and my relationship with him were a HUGE inspiration for a new fragmentary novel called Puks Chroniken (Puks Chronicles) I turned a lot of scenes and incidents into small fragments one could read on its own or as a part of a bigger picture. This project was so dear to my heart and everything I needed to deal with the issues in our relationship and my deep emotions that came along with it. The story found an end, when the relationship ended and my plans to turn the fragments into a complete novel never got realized. You can still find all the fragments on Facebook. Search for: Puks Chroniken. Be aware: it is written in German.

Step 8: I’m still a pantser (writing Fantasy and SciFi)

However in 2014 I discovered NaNoWriMo AGAIN and started to write a humongous high fantasy story with several point of view characters, different magic systems, a lot of political intrigues, plot twists and enormous world building. And I did everything without an outline or even notes. I never finished the project, because after two third of the novel, nothing fit together anymore. I didn’t know, how to solve all the loose plot strings, or how to find an end at all. I tried to re-write the first draft in June Camp NaNo the following year and gave up after 20.000 words.

During NaNo 2015 I wrote Space Opera and loved my story, but got bored again after two thirds of the novel. Again the same issue: I didn’t know how to write an exciting climax and an satisfying ending.

I loved to watch Brandon Sandersons creative writing lessons on YouTube, listening to writing podcasts and reading books about how to write in this time. Eventually I figured out, that “the not finishing novels” was an issue which came along with being a pantser. It was now time to start something new.

Step 9: Time to change to an architect

In September and October 2016 I wrote an outline for the first time in my life. And for the first time in years I didn’t want to write a story to please some future readers, but only to please myself. So I planned a YA high fantasy novel about winged horses, a school, animal companions and an important political horse race.

I initially wanted to write this novel during NaNoWriMo 2016 – but I lost my job and everything changed. Being clinically depressed and severely unhappy in my marriage I needed something else for November this year.

So I wrote a Christmas themed novella about a young woman coming to a small town to check after an abandoned boy and falling in love with one member of the foster family. It hardly hit 50.000 words, but I wrote it without an outline. Just for the sake of being entertaining and feeling warm and fuzzy while writing the story. I finished it with a cheesy happy end and ended up winning the NaNo.

Two years later – not being married anymore – I finally started to write the YA novel in November 2018 and thanks to the outline, my new writing group (I found in the NaNo forum) and the writing game 4thewords, I made it through the complete first draft and eventually finished it in January 2019. It was a huge success for me.

(I also started to write a novel in 2017 – some adult fantasy about dragons but did not win NaNo.)

Step 10: NaNoWriMo 2019 (My Project)

Although I won’t have much time to write during the second half of Novemver 2019 I still plan on participating in the National Novel Writing Month this year. I wrote an complete outline, including many notes for the second part of my YA fantasy series and I can’t wait to write the novel. For several month, I didn’t know how to continue my story – I only knew THAT I wanted to continue it. Some night a few weeks ago, I laid in bed, still awake – I suddenly knew what to do with the second part.

So now it is going to be a companion novel series because book 2 takes place a few years later and has a different main character. So far it will have an open ending and I plan on writing another part in this world as well. But first: National Novel Writing Month 2019!

And I’m so excited for the 4thewords NaNo event. Last year it was brilliant and so much fun, and this year it promises to get even better.