A Change of Heart

NaNoWriMo is less than 1 week away and after weeks of me saying, tweeting and even doing an interview on the fact that my NaNo project will be a "Glitter and Trauma" spin-off, I'm having a change of heart.

Today, while chilling in my favourite pub in the world, some metal track blaring over the sound system, I realised something.  I freaking miss writing fantasy.

The day after I turned 16 (yes, I can be that specific), while helping my mum at a craft fair, I started writing a sprawling fantasy epic.  It told the story of a hero, a fair maiden, an angst-ridden youth and an evil queen.  Yes, I know it sounds shite, but it was my shite.  It went on for near 300 pages and was written across 2 years.  I was obsessed with it.  The characters filled my every waking moment, and often my dreams.  They possessed me and haunted me and whispered sweet, beautiful, terrifying things in my ears.  I filled mixed CDs with an "Original Soundtrack" and listening to songs that inspired me, or provided cues for key scenes, or gave my characters a theme to live to.  Fantasy art spilled from my printer before being glued into various scrapbooks and notepads.  All in all, I loved this project.

Until life happened.  University took over, I made friends, I got a new job, I suffered and survived.  My real world dramatically altered and my fantasy world fell away.  Horror took precedent in my reading, writing and cultural pastimes and fantasy...well, it became a dream world that I wasn't keen on going back to for a while.

It reached a point when I couldn't even bring myself to look at the chapters I had written.  The characters seemed flat and stereotypical.  Dialogue seemed clunky and pretentious and bloody stupid.  The playlists got boring.  My prose seemed so juvenile.  The file with the so-called "final draft" was stored away in a folder and left on an old laptop, while the notepads I had once poured over were left at my parents' house while I moved out on my own.

5 years have passed since I last looked at this story and these characters.  I've grown, I've changed, and my world has altered even more.  And now, after being so sure that I wanted to continue down the dark fantasy/horror route, the idea just hit me today that I should go back to my roots.

So, while chomping down on some damn fine Cajun chicken and sipping on a Pepsi, my characters returned.  They whispered in my ears again, promising that they can be better.  I've read a lot more now, my writing skills have been honed over the years, and my iPod is bursting with songs, desperate to inspire me.  This will not be a revisit to old material but, rather, a total rewrite.  No original text.  Just brand new prose with the same characters and general structure.  This is a brand new project with old ideas.  Once again, I am excited.

Therefore, I have decided that this NaNoWriMo, I am going back to the very beginning.  I am awakening the "Heart of the Dragon".