The Trials of One Who Wields The Pen

Well, no, this unfortunately isn’t the first chapter of The Legend of Charezahn.

I have to admit I sort of underestimated the amount of work that the whole thing needed before I began. Well, really, totally underestimated it. Sure I had the general idea and the first few chapters already penned down, but one thing I hadn’t factored in was… myself.

So there I was, with the blank screen in front of me and my fingers doing the salsa on the keys when I suddenly stop and have one of my moments. I decide that I needed a new backstory.

I hold off on the first chapter, and started thinking up new events that lead to this point. I’m writing down random points when I realize that I needed more backstory to the facts I was writing. Believe it or not, halfway through that, I realized I needed a new history for the new history that I was already thinking. And then, well, you can guess how it went from there.

Pretty soon, I realized that maybe this wouldn’t take just a week, as I had thought. I had counted on me making a few changes, tweak it a bit here and there, but hey, this was just the first chapter, so no biggie. Goes to show how wrong you can be. It kept dragging on and on and even now, I honestly don’t know how long it will take.

I realized what my first mistake was… I started out doing this with pretty much of a deadline of sorts in the back of my mind. And my mind making me the rebel that I am, simply shut off my “Let’s get to work” valve and told my fingers to take a hike. Some things are just plain involuntary, like breathing, ageing, and freezing for a whole minute before looking for the nearest shoe when a roach saunters by. Other things, like the reason for a blank Word document titled Charezahn… they’re sure not voluntary, but they happen, all the same.

Writing, to me, has always been more than just expressing myself… honestly, it was how I used to have fun. I know how nerdy that sounds, but hey, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. Writing is one of the best pastimes there is. It’s rewarding, enlightening, well, basically the whole platinum package. True, you do get depressed at times, frustrated by stuff like writers block, go on for days looking for the perfect name (cursing your luck that Aragorn and Legolas were already taken). From my personal experience, I can even vouch for the rumor about you banging your head on the wall from time to time. (This apparently applies to all writers, beginners to advanced)

But everyone who has tried it probably agrees; few things are as entertaining as writing your own thoughts into words, opening new worlds and making new friends in them. It’s fun. You enjoy it.

But the moment something gets a deadline, or someone asks you to do it for them, it becomes a chore. And chore is pretty much equal to work.  And work almost always has an inverse relationship with fun. Unless of course you work as a game tester, or at Marvel or DC.

So, when I told myself I’d have the first chapter of Charezahn done by the 2^nd of February (which would have been totally possible under different circumstances, like if I was already halfway through), I unwittingly yet officially upgraded (or rather, downgraded) this project from “Fun” to “Work”.

But it wasn’t just that I wasn’t able to sit down and start writing since I wasn’t in the mood. To be totally honest, that was only partly the reason. The other excuse was that my imagination went into overdrive, and started spouting information by the second. That would have been fine, but every so often it would change gears and start giving me ideas that were way better than the originals.

And even now, I’m flooded with new plots, schemes, and characters, and this timeline I’m drawing is covered in so many pencil marks that I’m literally reading from memory rather than what I have scribbled. I’m realizing that the whole basis for Charezahn that I had seen and written before… well, that’s gone. Blown away.

For better or worse, what is slowly growing now in random scrap books and countless sheets of paper is something that even I have no idea how will turn out. Maybe what I have written right now will be what finally, eventually, makes it to that empty, patiently waiting Word document. Maybe I might even be forced to cross out the entire thing and start over from scratch.

Only time will tell. But once I’m done with the fine tuning, well, then, it’s going to flow. But first comes the fine tuning. Oh well.

But one thing at least to take away from all this; maybe to Tony Stark it’s better to run before being able to walk. Easy for him. But for us normal, non-Avenger types without the fancy red and gold armor, most of the time you’ll have to crawl around for a bit first.

 Here’s hoping for some order in this chaos