I just finished up what will be part two of TWoS.
Just over 94,500 words for the whole story thus far.
Part three might end up being a bit shorter than the other two, though I’m not quite sure yet. Part two still needs some work as I go along and post it, but it’s a solid draft.
It feels really, really good to be making so much progress on this. I’m excited about this story, and how good it will (hopefully!) be once I’m all done.
~Ethelinda
So, it seems that I’ve gained quite a few followers over the last few weeks and months! Welcome! I don’t know how many of you are following my writing or not, but thanks for the interest. 🙂
For anyone who is interested in following my current story, The Wizard of Suomen, you can find links to all the chapters on the “Land of Winds: The Wizard of Suomen” page. The chapters are each linked to the previous and following chapters within each post as well.
Here’s a summary of the story:
The Wizard of Suomen follows Ilari Virtanen, a powerful magic-user in a land prejudiced against magic, as he attempts to defend his country from the aggression of a neighboring country with many strong magic-users. Throughout a long, cold Suomilen winter, faced with new and terrible magic from enemies getting ever closer to home, Ilari struggles to protect his land with few allies and opposition seemingly on all sides. With Suomen’s King making what seem to be an increasingly unwise series of decisions about the war, the soldiers, statesmen and courtiers around Ilari must make their own choices about where the real danger to Suomen lies. Can the Wizard of Suomen overcome misunderstanding, prejudice and treachery in time to save not only himself, but everything that he cares about?
Come find out which way the Winds will blow….
~Ethelinda
(Maybe I’ll do a monthly writing summary, just to further motivate myself.)
Written in August:
27,121 words – The Wizard of Suomen
I do sometimes work on my other stories/writing projects as well, which I’ll indicate in the future, but this past month I really focused on TWoS – obviously a productive choice! 🙂
~Ethelinda
Since I sat down to write last Saturday evening, I have written almost 15,000 words of The Wizard of Suomen; the total word count is now over 70,000. It’s unlikely I’ll have this good a week again for awhile, but it feels wonderful to have made such solid progress.
I’ve got the whole rest of the second part of the story well laid-out in my head now, so I should be able to write that pretty steadily, even if I don’t manage to be quite this prolific! Overall, the story breaks up into roughly three parts, at least in my head. (Chapter 14, as I post it here, will finish out what I think of as part one, in case anyone is wondering.)
Also, this week’s progress means I’ve got a much better “lead” between where I’m posting and where I’m writing, so the chance that I’ll have to switch to posting chapters every other week is greatly lessened.
I hope everyone who’s reading this is enjoying it, and excited about what’s coming up! I definitely am. 🙂
~Ethelinda
I’m grateful that the “step away from it for awhile” tactic works as a method for getting over tiredness or writer’s block for me. It has always felt to me as though I say to my brain, “Okay, just run this in the background for awhile, and let’s see what the results are later,” and then I can stop focusing consciously on whatever scene or section is giving me trouble. And my brain does that, it lets the ideas brew subconsciously, and I’ve found that often even just a day later, I suddenly feel much more like I know what I need to write, or like the words are coming to me again. Sometimes it takes longer than a day, of course, but it always works eventually.
Which is probably just a lot of rambling to say: Brains are cool. 🙂
I do think it helps me as a motivational tool as well, though. To not think about it as “I have writer’s block” or “I’m stuck on this scene,” but rather, “My brain just needs some time to work on this subconsciously,” or “Need to let this scene percolate for a bit.” It sounds much less daunting that way, much less negative, which in turn makes motivating myself to try again a day or two later much easier.
For other writers: do you have an experience like this? Or do you deal with feeling stuck in other ways? I’m curious to know how other people think about this issue.
Now, probably time to stop rambling (and mixing my computer and coffee metaphors).
~Ethelinda
I was getting close and wanted to break 45,000 words for The Wizard of Suomen tonight. I actually made it to just over 46,000 words. It feels really good to be making such progress on this draft! 😀
Using a blog as motivation for working on this story more consistently has been an interesting process. It’s clearly helping, even though I’ve only been doing it for a short while. My life is somewhat uncertain and unsettled in a lot of ways right now (some good, some not so good), and in the past I’ve found it difficult to work on my fiction in those circumstances. It feels very good to be able to work on this story consistently despite that uncertainty, though, so I’m glad that this seems to be working as a motivational tool. Concrete goals and progress are definitely helpful.
~Ethelinda
Hello everyone,
Just wanted to let you know that I won’t be updating The Wizard of Suomen today. Things are a bit hectic at home and I’ve had very little sleep. I’ll try and get the new chapter up before the end of the weekend.
~Ethelinda
I have for some time been writing a more extensive backstory for one of the characters in The Wizard of Suomen, partly because I like the character and partly because it helps to flesh out some things about several characters and the world itself that I’m not sure will fit well into the main story. Snippets of this backstory will be in the main story at a certain point as flashbacks, but there will definitely be a lot more than that, and I am planning on posting the whole thing at some point after the main story is finished. Working on part of it tonight, I wrote almost 2000 words in just an hour, none of which will show up in the main story at all, so it seems that my muses are definitely interested. 🙂 (I’m using this backstory as a way to make sure I have a really good grasp of the character in question, since in the main story I’m working on a section where this character’s motivations and actions are central, and I want to be sure they fit and make sense. Hence, I’m writing some things that won’t be posted until I put up this backstory as a whole after the main story.)
This is definitely another balancing area for a writer (something I have noticed as a reader of fiction), the issue of what to include to make a new world intelligible and interesting for readers, without overwhelming them with facts that they won’t remember and don’t need to care about. I hope I’m striking that balance so far, introducing new information as it’s needed, but not so much at a time that it’s overwhelming or hard to remember. This is another reason that I wanted to have a website, actually; in addition to posting and getting feedback on the story itself, this website will give me a place to eventually post this backstory, plus other notes and background information that I have made as I do world-building, but that might not fit neatly into the story itself. Hopefully some readers will enjoy those things as well!
~Ethelinda
This story, The Wizard of Suomen, is going to be my main project for the time being, though I’ll be posting some other things as well. This is definitely a work-in-progress, though I have a good chunk of the beginning done, and my plan is to be writing more steadily so that I can keep posting steadily. I have a few notes that I wanted to put up ahead of time, though, and I’ll probably post the first chapter tomorrow.
Firstly, I just want to note that I am borrowing heavily from Finnish for certain aspects of this story, but I do not speak that language myself. Please feel free to point errors out to me! However, as this is a fantasy story, then there is a chance that it is a deliberate change on my part (this applies mostly to character names, which I have borrowed and changed liberally from a variety of Scandinavian and Eastern European backgrounds). If it is something I’ve deliberately changed, then I may not “fix” it to be more accurate to the real world, since that is not always my goal. 🙂
Secondly, the main Finnish words that I use with regularity are some military titles, listed here with translations:
soldat – common foot soldier, equivalent of a private (this one is actually Swedish, all others are Finnish.)
kersantti – sergeant
luutnantti – lieutenant
kapteeni – captain
majuri – major
eversti – colonel
kenraali – general
tuundae – a variation I made up from the Finnish tündér, which means fairy
There may be a few other things as the story goes on, which I’ll note in those chapters, and/or here.
Thirdly, you will see that I have this tagged as being part of a series. It is my intention to (hopefully) write this novel so that it will stand alone, but there is an idea for a second story that could follow it, so it might possibly (probably) someday have a sequel.
Acknowledgments
Last but certainly not least, I would like to acknowledge Lydia, for inspiring me with the idea for the very earliest version of this story (though it has now changed quite significantly since then), and Cat, for supporting me through writing and then helping to edit that earliest version. Thank you both very much!
ethelinda writes 