Over the next three years, Enslaved went through two more drafts. In early 2010, after the third rewrite was finished, I entered it in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. My dad (who's an editor and writer as well) and I slaved over the pitch together, and finally submitted everything in to Amazon. I was absolutely crushed when it didn't make even the preliminary cuts. Looking back, that book not making it any farther is one of the best things that could have happened. There's no way I want the public to read that novel. *shivers* But I was glad for the experience.
That fall, when I was 14, I decided to try Nanowrimo for the first time. I worked up inspiration for months to write a Greek-mythology inspired novel. That was undoubtedly the most difficult thing I've ever written. While I don't think the writing itself was bad, the characters were dry with no emotions and no arcs, the plot was predictable, and most days I had to force myself to write. With one day to go, I reached 50k, and at 11PM on the last day of Nano, I finished "The Labyrinth." I swore that I'd never do Nanowrimo again.
And, well, here we are, of course.
During Nano '10, I got the faintest, barest ideas of a plot for a novel called...Pictures of You. ;) I had nothing except a character named Erika, the North Carolina coast, a guy named Leo, and a love story. I don't remember when exactly I came up with PoY's real plot, but sometime that winter/early spring, on an afternoon when I was probably bored, I suddenly started thinking about the Witness Protection Program. I really don't have any idea how that happened (maybe because of the WITSEC episode of Psych? Probably.) And I decided that my novel would be about WITSEC.
I started writing PoY that spring, and I had never before fallen in love with characters so quickly. They were the first bunch that I felt like I know immediately and didn't have to force myself to get acquianted with. It was a fantastic experience. But probably sometime in the early summer, I got inexplicably stuck with PoY. I was at almost 60,000 words, more than I'd ever written in one project, and I could not get any further. Of course, now I realize that this is because the plot was meandering, the characters barely knew each other, and there was--wait for it--NO romantic connection between Erika and Beck.
Yeah, that needed to be changed.
Pictures of You sat for a few months, relatively untouched and shoved to the back of my mind. I was planning to participate in Nano '11, with PoY, but the night before, I changed my mind. For some reason, I just knew that I wasn't going to do it. I was on to other things. For a year, I barely wrote. I thought I had lost the desire for it. My novel was abandoned for a twelve months, as was nearly every writing project.
However, I still loved the story, so I made up my mind a while before Nano '12 that I was going to do it this time. Before Nano started, I wrote about 12,000 words, and fell back in love with this novel. I had an incredible Nano this time around--writing PoY was an absolute breeze compared to The Labyrinth. I finished about a week early with a lot more story to go, even though I didn't know it at the time. I don't think I could have predicted just how much this story would affect me. So many things were changed from the first time around and a lot of new stuff added (for instance, Beck became a COMPLETELY different person between the two drafts. I liked him before, but during Nano, he suddenly gained 10x more depth and became my favorite character that I've ever written.) PoY is a lot darker than anything else I've written before, but I think that may be one of the reasons I love it; it's a new experience for me. It went from having no set message to becoming a story about brokenness and troubled minds and recovery and love and saving people, and at times, for me, it was heartbreaking to write.
Before Pictures of You, I had three other serious projects, but none of them, for me, rose to the level of obsession/love that I have with this one. I realized that modern day/contemporary is what I need to be writing (as opposed to fantasy and historical before; PoY was my first modern day novel.)
So, anyways, that's just a little part of my journey with writing and with Pictures of You. We've got a long ways to go, but I can't wait to see where else it takes me. I honestly never imagined that it would teach me this much.
And, to give credit where it's due, I seriously doubt that my novel and I would be where we are if not for the Tea-Spitters. You ladies seriously made my second Nano experience 892163247 times better than the first, and I can't thank you enough for all of the support, encouragement, and talking me out of sad endings. I owe a lot to y'all. ;)
Lots of love and apologies for the length,
Caroline xx
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