Well, I decided to take a break from editing and start the new novel, Archi Pelago. The idea for this novel excites me. It's about Cas Marinus who was named after Prince Caspian because when he was abandoned at the San Francisco orphanage with nothing but Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. One day he goes out sailing and his sailboat is caught in storm winds, and the ocean takes him to this place called Archi Pelago (which means ancient sea in Greek). He meets a girl named Rosemary Nevaeh from 1888 and they have to go on this dangerous adventure to return to the 21st century.
But the thing I understand most about them is that they're both loners. Cas calls a mime who never talks and has never bothered to tell him his name (well, he's a mime dear) his only friend. On the island where Rosemary lives, there aren't any people her age who understand her. The people her age think she needs to get her head out of the clouds and get back to earth, quite literally. They think she needs to work in the fields instead of daydreaming most of the time and playing the violin. Cas is dying to live, working at a beach rental shack during the day, playing guitar in the park in the evening until nearly eleven, and then staying up late to search for his parents or write poetry or draw. He's barely getting by on loose change from strangers and his weekly wage, but his landlady doesn't yell at him or anything like that. She just wants Cas to move on from searching for his parents.
And then back to Rosemary. She knows that there's something more to life than being stranded in a land out of time, where new people wash ashore from time periods ranging from Ancient Greece to modern day. But she doesn't admit to anyone that she wants more than a routine life of farming and trading and being ordinary. She doesn't want to hurt her adopted family's feelings, especially since her old friend, her adopted father, had come to Archi Pelago when she came. When Cas comes along, she jumps on the chance to see the land he speaks of, the modern day 21st century. She knows it'll be a dangerous journey and people who have tried to leave Archi Pelago were never heard from again, but she also knows she'll never see her family again. She'll be alone, but she'll be with Cas, and they'll be alone together.
See, Rosemary and Cas came out of my loneliness. That's why I was fascinated by this novel. My plan, originally, was to write one chapter of Archi Pelago and then edit the next chapter of TDRH, but of course that didn't happen. I was more interested in writing Archi Pelago. It was like writing close to bedtime and then having someone say it was time to go to bed or get off the computer and then going, "Aww, I just got to the good part!"
Part of me wants to regret starting Archi Pelago because I put off editing TDRH. The other part of me is happy I started it because I'm no longer torn between editing and starting something new. The idea is out of my head and in a document. I don't have to struggle with it bouncing around in my head anymore. Now I just have to struggle with deciding which to do: write Archi Pelago or edit TDRH. Well, I had a crappy weekend. I'll just say that. It was really, really crappy. Out of this, out of these problems I had, I realized that TDRH wants to be read. It's never been read by anyone but me. It's an overprotected teenager that wants to go into the world with big wide eyes and experience what it feels like to be loved by someone, not it's parent (me), and get the love it's seen others receiving. Being the writer, I want that for my novel.
I'm ready for my novel to be read. Ever since I've finished it friends at church have been saying that they want to read it and I just kind of brushed them off and said "it needs to be edited first! I'll let you know when I'm finished editing it!" But then I kept getting stuck. I kept saying "I'm tired of fixing things" or "I just need a break and I'll come back to it" even though leaving it go made it even harder to come back. Saturday was a bad day with drama that flowed into this afternoon, but this drama has made me decide one thing: I'm going to put all other projects aside and nothing's going to stop me until my book is published, one way or another.
I'm worrying that I may not be able to keep this promise, but in November, I had this same determination to finish Lee's story in TDRH. I was going to write from the start to the end. And I did. I loved TDRH so much that I was able to complete it. It's been my problem child during the editing phase, like the Terrible Twos, but I'm going to get past that and I'm going to get this thing edited. I found that determination to edit that I found when I was writing it.
I love my novel, and I love these characters, and, well, I want people to know why I do. I want it to be read. I'm ready for it to be read. And I think TDRH wants to be read as well. It wants new people to love it as well. It's been tucked away safely beneath it's security blanket, but now it's time for it to step out of it's comfort zone. It's time for my novel to see the world. And I hope that someday, it will see the world. I just need to edit it first, and now I think I finally will.
--Dragonwell
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