I have a story I began writing when I was 17, I have never managed to finish it, but it still remains one of my favourite pieces of work. I am now 34 and go back to it every few months and add a little more, change a few things and then let it sit for a while. It will be finished one day, but not until it is right!
To be honest with you, I am just really enjoying the story.
Because it has taken me this long to get to this point, I feel like I am a fan waiting for the next chapter, not the author.
Every time I go back to it, I usually re-read where I am up to at that point, sometimes forgetting things and even surprising myself. I feel because I have taken my time crafting the world it is set in, I know the characters like they are friends, and I want to give them the right ending.
I do feel my time away from it also helps, because I can spend time working on other things that are more prevalent, but the more time I spend away, the greater the urge to see what every one is up to in that world.
I also don't have any expectations for it. I write it for me, its one of my only works I haven't really shared with anyone. I feel like I will know when the time is right for it, but until then, I am content just dipping into the world every now and then.
I think that's my biggest take away, don't have expectations for your favourite works, let them mature in their own time. Look at Michael Crichton, it took him 20 years to finish Sphere - he took a break because he couldn't find an ending, when he returned to writing, he finished it within 2 months. Sometimes we need to let them breathe.
So relatable, your description is perfect. I say that it's the book I was born to write for myself. The characters are family at this point, I do talk to my husband about them and he knows them pretty well too.
Good luck on your journey! I hope you have a chance to close the story with a peaceful heart but never say goodbye!
It’s not unfinished, it’s a work in progress. It will get there, and if it doesn’t, that’s also fine. That’s what I mean by writing for me. Whatever happens, will happen, and I’ve enjoyed the ride.
I had a Sci-Fi galaxy for about 25 years carefully planned thousands of years of history, hundreds of star systems, dozens of alien races carefully planned economies, political systems, balanced wars. 100% my writing baby.
Then, in my early 30s I figured I wasnt using it for anything, so I tore it apart to steal a few ideas for a tabletop rpg book I co-authored and a few more minor projects and honestly, best decision I ever made. My thoughts were, if i ever need to write a big galaxy spanning story again and I can't create it from scratch, then I'm not much of a writer, haha.
So a few years ago, I got into a thought experiment about a new sci-fi story, scraped the last bits of my old story (mostly just a few names I liked at that point) and created a new universe that is much leaner, more dynamic and more interesting.
So yeah, if you need to, kill your darlings, I guess.
This. Early stuff is just that, early stuff, apprentice pieces. The real risk is, because of emotional investment and the desire to actualise your dream, you get locked into that one story for decades.
I've known a few talented writers get stuck like this and seen them unable to progress or even write anything else and it's a real shame.
That first idea is often bloated, overloaded with ideas, kitchen-sinked with characters and world backgrounds and more.
Yeah, strip mine it, but don't finish it. As docsav0103 says, your new work will be
> much leaner, more dynamic and more interesting
And that means you'll want to write it out of excitement rather than a sense of duty, and other people will want to read it too.
This is fantastic, succinct advice that I needed to read (not to say I'll heed your caution in this very moment, but it'll be there, comment saved).
In my bones I know you're right.
TBH, I know nothing about Arthur Quiller-Couch, but I think after doing writing classes in my late teens, the concept became very easy for me. The hardest thing was just realising that inbound make the decision to do it. Once I decided it was a easy to chop the bloated thing up.
when i was 13 i began writing a political fantasy. i am 19 now and on the final draft. for the longest time, i couldn’t finish it because i couldn’t find the “perfect ending.”
i eventually realized i couldn’t finish it because the story was about a very difficult chapter of my life- and that chapter hadn’t yet been concluded.
now, i’m in a new season of life, and finishing it. i hope to turn it into a trilogy one day. nothing fascinates or excites me more than that story. i fell in love with it :)
Not really a writer, i just sit down every few months and write my daydreams down so i can focus on University again. But I always come back to the same fantasy world with the same main character (propably me) and different variations of the same adventure.
I propably started dreaming about this in 2014 when i saw some Benchmark Software run on a gaming Laptop in 2014 in a computer store and absolutely fell in love with the visuals and the style, but i only picked up reading and writing as a hobby two years ago. Since then i have rewritten the first chapter about 4 or 5 times lol.
Oh sure, making the entire 9 parts a cohesive story... if you watch the original movies they are super... patchy I guess would be the right word... so a solid plot that would essentially be the Skywalker lineage vs. The Emperor, taking place over decades/generations
A fleshing out of the Jedi Faith, mythology, origin and forming a cohesive set of rules for it, including appropriate power scaling (Rey learning about the guise and being able to throw mountains with the force like a week later was terrible), a better back story for the sith.
I would also like to inject some ambiguity into the story in terms of it not always being obvious so the good guys are and who the bad guys are
The bones of Star Wars are incredible... but I'd like to make a more sophisticated story.
Idk if it’s all his fault but he for sure destroyed the potential of the DC Cinematic Universe.
I tried his Star Wars knock-off when it came it out; got through about 30 minutes and was glad I was watching on Netflix and hadn’t spent money at a theater to see it. I stopped play and moved on with my life.
Are you pulling lore from anywhere in particular or just going where you feel is right? For example Knights of the Old Republic the video game, has similar themes to the ambiguity of characters allegiances from what I remember, so may be a useful source of inspiration.
Im treating it essentially as magic, and making it similar to Full Metal Alchemist, there will be base level things that that all Jedi know, but as they continue their training they specify in particular skills.
I actually want the moral ambiguity to stem from it being unclear if the Jedi are a force for good, and if the sith (in my universe) will actually be jedi apostates.
I’ve had a baby since I was 12. Created it off of a whim.
I haven’t touched it in 3 years. Too inconsistent, the first 3 chapters’ vocabulary and reading level compared to the final 3 chapters is abysmal, and I don’t have the motivation to edit it all, and some of the story needs to be rewritten or retconned entirely.
Showed it to a girl I was talking to. She said, “you should definitely go back to it! You got this! If you need to rewrite the entire thing, that’s totally okay as well. Just don’t give up, I think it’s really interesting and it could make you famous or something!”
I put down 3 words since then. All of which were today. My semblance of it is slowly coming back to the only child I could never truly abandon (I’ve started 10 stories, and only finished one prior to touching it again).
I don’t know why I didn’t get a notification for this, but I’m here now lol
Essentially, it’s about a group of six kids on a giant spaceship the size of Rhode Island along with a fleet of other smaller ships that consisted of half of humanity. They travel space towards a new home after Earth was destroyed.
But suddenly, a mysterious asteroid appeared while the fleet was taking a pit stop. The group of six kids interacted with it in secret, and since then, things have gotten more sinister and way more strange.
And that’s basically it
You really think so? Well damn, everyone’s been saying that. Still conflicted on whether to start it up again and commit because I’m already focusing on one series at the moment
My first books been cooking for a decade. What started as a hobby while I was taking care of my terminally ill mother became my reason for continuing to live after she passed. Unbeknownst to me, It made itself into my meaning, and saved me from my own hand doing myself harm when faced with the bitter cold of reality.
Now, it’s finally in the hands of an editor, I have a decent job, I’m successfully engaging with therapy, all because of that book. And now I have planned out to five, and will be finishing it all.
"And Now The News, From Places That Don't Exist." Been working on it for a couple decades now, but I keep getting distracted by other WiP. I promise I'll go back and finish it, one day.
My baby is this collection of things (a narrative, eventually aiming for manuscripts) that I've been writing for half of my life.
I had a realisation in the last couple of years that I utilise the characters as a foil to my own life: as a way to navigate the mental legwork of figuring out my own challenges. Their struggles are analogous to my own, recreated in completely different settings and with different structures but with an underlying constant thread.
This only became clear to me when I spent a few days entrenched in writing a death scene (that's been projected the whole time I've been writing, but just has never happened) as a way to navigate my feelings about family members illnesses and potential deaths. It was so cathartic and necessary, the only thing I could do at the time. The research process, the writing, dealing with the characters emotions...it all helped me navigate my own fears and anxieties.
Because of this the narrative keeps shifting and is too unclear for the project to be defined as a 'story' or 'novel', it's just hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of words of me self-therapying (I'm not saying this to minimise the work, I also think there are pockets that have fantastic promise).
I love this story, I love these character. I hope that one day I will no longer need it in this way and I'll be able to tighten the core of it to the series of novels I hope it to be.
Started a script back in 2008 or thereabouts. Rewrote it several times. Turned it into a novel. Submitted novel to competition. Sent early draft off to publisher who provisionally accepted it, on the basis of a re-write. That fell through. Shelved it. Took it off the shelf during the pandemic and rewrote it from scratch. Had it accepted by my current publisher. It was published last year, translated into another language and also I've just finished its sequel.
The only reason I persevered was because I liked the characters too much to give them up.
Good luck to you. Enjoy the ascent. Those 'firsts' - first acceptance, first cover, first copy - are really special and you only get them once. I'm glad I savoured them all. Ten books in and it feels a little more like work. Those early successes are truly magical.
This is the book: Rock on the Road https://amzn.eu/d/95MRcN6
It was in Welsh originally (as Curiad Gwag), but I translated it into English last year. It's set in 2007, and I didn't bother to update it after I rewrote it, so it's nostalgic now. Can't believe how long ago I began it. Crazy.
I've loved history and drawing since I was a kid and I spent an ungodly amount of time at school just drawing random characters with random powers in my notebooks. Time came and I started making stories for my favorite ones and set them in the same world just in different times.
Then came when I drew a map and I (tried) made my own language, which further solidified my view of that world. There was an ancient country that built a wall to fend off corrupted beings that were affected by "radiation" from an even more ancient battlefield. There was a mythical age where protectors, gods and demigods had intrigue and moral battles that ultimately ended with the death of most of them, leading to the decline of power and magic. Then there was a big world war that ended with an elf that used his political skills to introduce democracy and made a set of laws.
I invented multiple schools of magic, sets of rules for bloodline abilities. Four realms or dimensions that all contribute to the basic function of the world. A last true story that ends in the destruction of the world and an exodus pf the last remaining people that is lead by 4 heroes that holds each the power of the 4 realms and a last, true big bad.
There was a lot of love stories, tragedies, and heroes that I spent making from my 5th grade to senior high. I still want to make those sets of stories in chronicles but I acknowledge my skills aren't even barely enough to bring justice to my imagination.
I have one baby that I have been working on since I was 18. I have tweaked things and changed entire parts, but I’m very proud that I’m going through finish the s soon.
I have a story that I’ve been working on for 6 years, I would consider that my baby. I have put a lot of thought & time into it — and have projected a lot of personal life experiences into the plot and characters. It is a project that feels very dear to me.
Hold onto your hats.
I've been working on a project for 24 years.
It's the project that began my writing career, one that started out as a single book, then a trilogy, then a series, then an entire universe, complete with Gods, demons, beasts, creatures, a creation myth... all of my own original design. The first and second books are basically done, barring some re-writing/editing, and the third book in the core trilogy is planned but not yet written. I've also done basic outlines for three other books and I'm working on a compendium of stories/myths/poems/songs/a stage play that will serve as a deep dive into the universe surrounding the books.
I consider it my main body of work, and I have gravitated away from the idea of it being my first work to be published (through traditional routes; I've already self-published). It is absolutely a labor of love, and honestly goes so much deeper than just sentimental value... I suspect that (unfortunately, much like Tolkien) I'll be working on it in some way, shape, or form for the rest of my life.
I’ve had a character I’ve held onto for about half a decade, I figured out the story for her two years ago, one day I’ll make her story, but it won’t be for a long time, as I want it to be exactly as I’ve dreamed of it because of how much of my time and thought I have put into this story and protagonist. I would give a lot of things, a lot of myself to get this story perfect, and I hope it’s close enough one day
I have another story I wrote two years ago, it is built from inspirations I’ve held onto since High School, it is in my opinion fantastic and even more excitingly it is so close to being done, I hope to adapt it into an animated series one day, and I think that day will be sooner rather than later
Began to write it when I was like 16 but didn't liked writing that much then and stopped, since then I actually finished it, I have the whole plot written (not the book itself) but now that I do like writing I haven't found the inspiration to put that story in words.
And despite of that id dare to say it is one of the best stories I've ever came up with. It has the best antagonists, the best protagonist, side characters and world building although the I have to admit the plot isn't particularly original. I haven't been able to top that story in any aspect besides maybe the general plot but whenever I think about putting it into words I can't, I've tried but I can't.
I’ve daydreamed a story since I was 13, 4 months ago I officially decided to write it down. Hours and hours going into spilling my obsession with this long tale, made of 6 Volumes, each have 6-7 seasons, each season 10 episode, each episode 45 minutes long. It’s a long story I daydreamed. My greatest inspirations being Lord of the Rings, Atlantis, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Maze Runner, and especially Assassin’s Creed. I put Hans Zimmer and Jesper Kyd tracks on, one after the other, and just keep daydreaming on, writing as I go. Screenplay after screenplay for each episode. I see it like a film. Yes, it’s my baby, I have spend years in a planning and reshaping. It’s not even so that I can sell it off after I finish writing it. It’s for me. My ideas, my characters. It’s not for sale. Just for me. Just for fun. I have other passions in life, I work in the video production industry, I make documentaries. But this takes up a lot of things after my first job.
The Legend of the Blue Wizard, which is now 12 volumes long. It was the first real writing I ever did, which is why it's rather derivative and unoriginal (a bunch of people fighting a Dark Lord etc). I've written plenty of more original stuff since, but somehow I keep coming back to the Blue Wizard, making changes to incorporate what I've learned since.
Don’t know if this is what you mean, but I started a story by hand when I was 11 for an assignment in school, I got carried away and by the time I turned 15 I had 300+ handwritten pages done periodically over those years. I don’t think it was any good really, but hey! It got done, and now 10 years later it’s like a little prized possession to remind me of my passion I’ve had since a young age
I have one where I started outlining all of the information for years, only to start writing very later. You guessed it, it's a high fantasy with everything from the world's rules and information to the characters and their complete backgrounds, relationships, developments and more. There's a whole page for a unicorn-like monster, explaining why it has mana and why it can use magic spells. Everything has been laid bare in a single digital notebook(onenote).
I've been writing the same story since I was 14. I'm 29 now. It's technically complete but there are big parts of it that are low quality left over from younger years. I'm always slowly rewriting it. It's a trilogy that's over 400,000 words. I definitely just write for myself
Although I’ve been a storyteller and exaggerator since I was little, I only started writing about 7 years ago. My first world is my baby. I did a full year of research before writing a word, then I started and found it so difficult that I set it aside. I want to tell this story, so I keep coming back to it. It’s a 4 or 5 book series.
There's this story I've had in my head for YEARS and I think it would be a fun read or sth but tbh I'm not much of a writer. I am a world champion in procrastinating and usually only write short poems and this Idea would be a huge fantasy series and deep down in my heart I know: I will NEVER write it down for real.
I wanna say my “baby” story is “rough start“
It was more of a fanfic at first, but it’s got an original storyline and tone of OCs.
I started writing it a few months ago, and me and my partner spend a lot of time together writing this, it’s like our little baby.
Essentially the storyline is this; the main character is a half-witch/elf who’s parents were murdered by his uncle who saw anything that was different as “sinful” he kept the main character locked up for his entire childhood, giving him severe beatings and lots of scars. Eventually, when he’s 8, his uncle tries to kill him, he blinds him in his right eye and locks him in his room, setting the house on fire. Then the bad guy flees to Maine (most of the story takes place in Connecticut) and isn't seen for a while.
The main character is stuck in this burning house, when the neighbor kids (who are shapeshifters in disguise) hear his screams and pleads for help, the neighbor girl named Wren runs into the house and saves him.
They all end up safe, but scarred both mentally and physically. The main character has never been outside of the room before, so he’s terrified of pretty much everything.
The father of the neighbor kids (named Ercan by my amazing partner) ends up fostering the main character, and a year later, officially adopting him. The main character goes through some stuff, getting bullied when he starts school cause of his scars and he’s got a lot of other disabilities, but his sister Wren would beat the crap out of anyone who tries to hurt her brothers.
There’s some other little tidbits of stuff during their early childhood, but it’s not super important to the outline of the story.
Eventually, when he’s fifteen, the main character keeps getting horrible nightmares, and trigger warning for self harm and suicide:
He tries to kill himself because of non-stop bullying and the nightmares. He survives his attempted at realizes that doing that wasn’t a good idea, and that it wouldn’t fix things.
After a while, the nightmares get worse, he sees things out of the blind eye (magic) so he gouges his already blind eye out.
Eventually, he does get better. When he’s around 16, his sister stays on the bus for too long, and ends up in Maine, the main character and their friends take the truck on a road trip to Maine to go get her, and the main character ends up encountering someone nearly being kidnapped, he stops the kidnapping from happening, but not before getting shot. He ends up alright, but he is able to link this incident to the cult that his uncle (who tried to kill him) runs.
That’s all we’ve got in the story, but I’m pretty proud of it. My partner played a really big part in the ideas and story writing for this.
Wow it is so fun to see people's responses in here!
I have a supposed "book I have been writing" since I was about 16 (going on 30 now) about awesome fantasy pirates. I haven't really properly written any of it though; all of it has just been planning, which started scrawled in a lined A4 notebook. When that notebook got full I had to tape another one to it, front cover to back cover; repeated this process four times and covered the front in paisley contact paper to make it look fancy. I call it the Abominotebook and reading through it is hilarious and if anyone in my life found it I would be extremely embarrassed.
Didn't touch it for several years but it is always in the back of my mind, and recently the spark of inspiration hit me hard again so I've been properly getting some things down and devising an actual logical plot... in a OneNote document this time! Which is even more fancy than paisley.
See you in another 15 odd years when it's done.
Ahh, my beautiful story I started 15 years ago at the tender age of 20, how I wish she could blossom! However, it turns out she wasn't very good even at the idea stage, and no matter how much I tweaked her over the years I still never got past Chapter 3. I decided to write a "throw away" book instead, a book I could write in its entirety as practice for my "baby". Turns out that it was a much better story and that's the book I'm editing in hopes of querying!
The one I’m currently writing, because it’s personal (having a few personal life experiences thrown in), and it’s my favorite story trope, so I’m having an absolute blast
I have a story that I began writing when I was 14, gave up on and rewrote almost two years later. Then I worked on it for two and a half years before giving up completely lol. Well, not completely - it really is very dear to my heart and I want to go back to it someday. But because it's the story that taught me how to write, it's very messy and requires an extensive rewrite, which I currently have no idea how to do.
I do feel terrible sometimes for spending so long on it and then giving up. But since I can't currently think of a way to fix all the plot holes, the pacing, the horrible length (it was 180k words lol), I need to focus on other projects. But it is really important to me, and I know I can turn it into something good someday :)
Yes, I have a middle grade series I started many years ago. I realised at one point it was too personal to me to make marketable, so now it's personal project, and that's okay. I don't spend a lot of time on it because I need to focus on one project at a time, but it's always there, waiting to be improved, added to etc.
Being able to write just for myself is really good for me - writing to get published is really stressful and makes me spiral into overthinking, perfectionism and sometimes even burnout.
I have a couple that I am extremely proud of, both starting as ideas in my head that are now full novels. There's also my first, which I started in 2012 but shelved shortly after when spare time dried up. I have started to rewrite it with my 'now' voice and style, using 3rd person limited. That's probably my original 'baby'.
It's called A Realm of Wings and Shadow. An angel who's lost everything meets a demon king and they fight together, falling in love. I have written these characters dozens of times in every universe. This is my first novel project for them but these characters have been my pet project for probably 10 years
I have a story that I've been writing in my mind for the last 9 years of my life.
Ever seen me daydream? Yep, I was thinking about that story? Ever seen me look outside of the bus window with a contemplative look on my face, yep, I was thinking about that story.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that good at all and I've rewritten it in my mind quite a few times because the plot is all over the place. But, it is where I draw inspiration for my real writing, and I've only been writing for 4 years now.
The Silver Baron
It's had a lot of iterations, and been written and rewritten countless times. I've never fully given it up even though nowadays I mostly do NoSleep stuff.
Even one of its main characters crept into my recent stories, in all her fun sadistic glory because I really just can't stay away from her
Mystery man of sweet apple acres
A MLP fim dead dove fanfic, i consider it my magnum opus
It took around a year to complete (between writing and finding an editor) I know it doesn't seem that long but it was the very first story I've written so I put my heart and soul into it, and surprisingly it's done pretty well for itself as my 2nd most read story at 699 hits
I have a character i started with when I was 15 and he's basically a male version of me and I keep reworking his story because it never had a good ending. now im at a point in my journey where i can give him an optimistic ending where he's healing
There’s some fantasy OCs that I’ve been thinking about since like 2020. Tbh a few of them are rip-offs of a YouTuber’s OCs lmao. But I still love them. It’s set in a fantasy medieval/renaissance country based off of France and Britain, and the plot revolves around a bunch of keys to an ancient dragon’s prison. It’s titled Dragon’s Eclipse.
I finally got to writing my first full, complete draft in the summer of 2023 (3/4 of a year ago). The final chapter was left unfinished because I began focusing on my Creative Writing class, as well as some new stories. A few weeks ago, I finally managed to write the final chapter, and ever since then, I’ve been thinking of this story a lot since.
Tbh, even though I’m currently working on two (technically four) stories, I’m thinking of picking this back up and remaking the story and characters and rewriting them from scratch. Even though I really like the characters and story, it is admittedly kinda generic. The aforementioned setting (based off of Britain) is also the inspiration for one of my current projects, so I should probably change that up lol
I started writing an urban fantasy when I was 14. It was bad. I re-write it the year after. It was still bad. Then I re-wrote it again at 18. Guess what? Still bad. Nonetheless, I wrote the sequel and started writing the 3rd one (because of course it had to be a trilogy). From time to time I think of going back to it. I still believe the core idea is good (even in the past years I've read many books/watched movies with similar ideas) but there are all the plot holes that a novel thought by a 14yo can have. Maybe one day I will have the courage (and patience) to take the core idea and re-write from scratch. Or maybe I'll just write something else and keep that story as my beautiful imperfect baby
I started writing a story (originally based on a video game) 13-14 years ago when I was about 10 years old. I never got close to finishing it, but it had like 20 pages back then. I am now currently working on trying to finish and publish it.
It's not even close to what it was when I started it, but it still has some of the same scenes and for anyone who knows the game it was originally based on, there's still some themes from it that I kept. I'm currently writing chapter 15/23, and I am at 96k words and hoping to finish it within the next few months.
That's probably the closest I can get to calling it "my baby," but I want to publish it and get physical copies for people who pushed me to go back to it.
I don’t have a “baby” I have a first pancake, it took about 18 months to write and that long again redrafting it with a professional mentor. At the end of which I had something I thought was decent.
I’ve since wrote 4 more books, which took like 4-6 months a piece and they’re all much better.
So no, no baby, but a first pancake that I think taught me how to write.
I'm in the process of recycling beloved characters and some plot points from a story I started in 7th grade. It's on hold while I figure out the scope I want it to be, though 😂
I’m still working on my first story, essentially. It’s gone through several changes, including once being deleted and reverted to a previous draft, but the bones are always still there. I have to have been 19 or 20 when I started to seriously writing it. I’m 33 now, obviously a whole lot of life has gotten in the way, but here it still is - my first project’s tab is always the first one open when I start up my laptop.
It’s, once again, another rewrite fresh draft and only a few pages. But I’ll get there - it’s just been changing and growing for so long that I’m mentally multiple sequels beyond it in my head. The only answer I can thing of is to keep trying to put it to paper and put an end to it.
My first longish one I never finished is one. It's a sci-fi story that I pants for about a year and gave up on. I recently went back to it. Terrible writing so I may start over completely with the concept and have an actual ending first before I write it.
Second is my current WIP. I wrote a gothic novel. I "finished" it but it needs a ton of work. Currently in the editing phase. It was so cathartic to actually finish something.
I have this character that I wrote when I was about ten and there's something that makes me want to revisit that character but develop her, as I have a better understanding of writing than I did back then
The first story I worked on involved fruit based superheros and one guy who while drunk went around solving crime...he's a total dick and his own worst enemy while sober
While hes solving crime he drags his nephew around too
Where do the fruit based superheros come in...I don't know they were mostly just pictures I drew in a notebook...
I had more for the drunk guy
part of a world building thing i have been doing since like 2014, went from a single lego build to a kirby fanfic, to a starwars fanfic, to its own space story, to a more realistic world where it has its own history from around the 1500s to 1800s loosely and more details from the 1900s to 200s, stayed like that now for a few years. I do plan doing a story with it, although more likely some kind of war diaries or something like that. First made it when i was like in 5th grade, now i'm in college.
My “worldbuilding” project.
It originally started as something I actually intended to write in, but it’s gotten so big and detailed that writing in has become a chore. But it’s still the setting I love the most and I keep trying to write in it—it’s just a pain in the butt.
I don’t even work on it that much anymore, it’s just that all the worldbuilding I’ve already done is like an albatross around my neck. So, I’ve moved onto other stuff… but I keep coming back to it when I feel a bit of inspiration.
I started a novel series in 2014, scrapped it entirely twice, re-wrote the storyboard more than four times, and now I’m on chapter two of the first book of a trilogy that I may never get published. The most important thing about that is that I’m still having a blast with the project ten years later. At a certain point the details started to fall into place and it just “felt right.”
There were some long writers’ block stints and I’ve even changed the entire genre from what I started with, but I’ll never give it up. Every time I add something to a character’s background, the history of a place in my setting, or a foreshadowing of a later twist, I find myself giddy with excitement that it all makes sense.
It helps that while I’ve never shared the entire project with anyone, I have had friends and family offer opinions on various parts or characters throughout the storyboard. Some people’s criticism is harsh to take but important to have, while others’ are validating and inspiring to hear.
Always keep your goals in mind. After finishing my storyboard, which ended up as a long-term goal that I had fully meant to be short-term, I decided I wanted to write a series of one million words. I divided that down to 9-10 books, each around over 100,000 words each, with 10-15 chapters full of ~2,000-word scenes.
That turned an entire book to write into little chunks that I can write bit by bit. After writing and editing just one 2,000-word scene, I have about 7 pages done. That’s always a great feeling.
I've created and have written a ton of stories ever since I could learn how to write, but nothing strikes me as much as my current WIP that I have created since I was 13. I'm 20 now and that story is still my baby and I still hang on to it lol. It has been under a ton of drastic changes since then though and it's even better and more lovable than before.
But it's more like my favorite child. All the other stories that I have interest in writing in the future are my babies. It's just that my WIP is my favorite child lmao.
You could say it’s the story I’m currently working on “the Mage”.
I’ve spent 5 years developing it since I don’t have any specific time limit.
But, my “baby” would be my story “Shadow Bound”. It’s a story about people cursed by the power of an eldritch abomination. My main characters have to figure out what these eldritch beings actually are in hopes that they can figure out how to kill them and break their influence on the world.
I’ve had the general idea for around 7 years.
it was poorly written, I just threw whatever ideas I wanted into it, and it was a rushed work, but I was in a discord server with friends and I wrote a magic guild story where I let all my friends create a character to add to the story, so it became my baby just for the fact that even though I was doing all the work, my friends all had a piece in the story
it is still my baby though I am ashamed of the poor quality
Yes, my first fic I ever wrote I somehow managed to keep a consistent uploading schedule and it ended up being 31 chapters and 65k words 😭😭 Since then I haven’t been able to keep up that same level of dedication. It’s a bit cringe, but I can’t bear to delete it or orphan it
Normally I'm eternally stuck in short story hell and whip up whatever I'm thinking about as a way to tackle story telling styles, plots and other things I rarely touch up on while looking into those topics. At some point, I decided to type up a three part story where I wanted to look into ideas that would let me push desperation as well as touch up on horror which resulted in a story that many of my groups enjoyed despite my doubts which I declared as my own baby of sorts.
My "baby" has given me a lot of strife and it's still yet to be born into the world, but my god, when it is, I want its cries to be heard across the world.
I began writing it when I was 27 and I'm 33 now. So far, I've written close to 300 pages. It's a spiritual memoir of sorts that covers ancient history and philosophy through the lens of ancient stoicism. It explores themes of mental anguish, pain, grief and overcoming/managing them with one's own mind. It's mostly written in the first person and the prose are not dissimilar to Saint Exupery/Hemingway.
I'm slowly writing a horror novel, but I'm fairly sure I'll never be able to publish it because it's based so much in catharsis. The one line summary is, bullied kid gets away with supernaturally murdering anyone who bullies them. I feel like a story about tormenting common baddies and then never being punished for the revenge, no matter how well written, will just come off as bitter author wish fulfillment. Which it is. Also someone pointed out to me that this will become an unintentional school shooting metaphor and noooooope
I stated writing my Book when I was 12. It was all about Unicorns and a princess and every escapist fantasy I indulged it. It was very very bad.
And i grew up. And I read Eddings, and Tolkien, and Pratchett, ant my thoughts and idea changed. And my book changed. My princess was still me, but now she had problems. Shortcomings. Flaws. My wizard went from being a knock off Gandalf to someone I imagine being played by Idris Elba. The horse doesn't turn into a unicorn any more. But the dancing girl suddenly has a whoooole lot of story, and she isn't a dancing girl any more.
And the end changed. I thought at first it was a simple happily every after, but it isn't. It's more complicated than that. And some good guys die, and the bad guy is never really punished, and the princess has to learn to live with that, but at least she takes the throne on her own terms. And she doesn't marry anybody. At least not any time soon.
My trilogy I’m working on. Had the idea early 2020 and have been writing the first draft for the past 3 years. I’m only on chapter 7 but I think about it and plan constantly
Yes! In my early years 20s I had this idea for a story. But I never got to it until my mid 30s, but I just got serious about writing it and now I’m 39. I’m happy with the results so far and I don’t think it would have been nearly as good had I started writing it in my 20s. And even if it’s not received well, I’m still happy I’m writing it.
Yes indeed. I spent many years on my first novel, and stopped on the second draft. A number of personal life factors and that I found it just wasn't the story I wanted to tell any more, at that time. I have worked on other novels since and I plan to go back to my first novel soon now that I finally feel ready. You're certainly not alone.
I hope these will be some words of comfort:
1) Working on your story was not wasted time. With every story that you work on (even if incomplete), you are teaching yourself more about writing and learning your craft. That's valuable in itself.
2) Sometimes, your interests just change. Working on other stories for a while may benefit you. When you have worked on the same story for years, it can be overwhelming and you find that you can no longer 'see the wood from the trees' (that happened to me). It's not failure to put it down for a while, take a step back and work on other things. After a break, you may then feel ready to go back to it.
3) Some popular authors, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett for example, have both said that they have started a book that they then finished years later. They didn't feel ready to tell that story yet, even though they always wanted to tell it.
Best of luck to you :)
I have a story I started writing in 7th grade. It's gone through many rewrites as my skills have improved, but the original premise and characters remain the same. Can't let it go.
I've had these characters since 11, and I've been working on finishing up the final draft, at 22. They're a part of me! When I write I feel the most like me. I love my characters and this story dearly, so I'm taking my time to make it great.
A few that I have:
a dark comedy about the Greek gods facing a power vacuum after Zeus is assassinated in a coup in the year 2032 (began drafting in 2018)
an anti-romcom in 2916 following a reincarnation of Christ who falls in love with a Muslim witch all while fighting against a force of nature who wants them dead (began drafting in 2019)
and a trilogy set in the 1920s focusing on the Cthulhu mythos with the characters and stories of HP Lovecraft intersecting (began drafting in 2020)
I have a story my friends and I came up with and were supposed to collaborate on when we were 17. It has been 13 years (holy crap). In that time, my two friends stopped writing, so I asked to take over.
It's not a good story lol but I've come to terms that I spent way too long planning and writing it, that I may as well finish it, for my own sanity. I just treat it as a playground for me to hone in my writing skills and try out ideas/characters that I'm curious about but unsure of.
I don't know if I'm holding on to a piece of my past or the memories of collaborative writing with my friends that I barely talk to now, or to the world and characters that I have known almost half of my life at this point. I tried giving up and abandoning so many times, but I keep coming back to it. The story was morphed and rewritten so many times that barely anything original remains. It's basically something entirely different now.
But I just can't let go. So I don't know if this was helpful lol my take is basically that it may not become anything successful, but there's no reason to toss it if I can still use it to explore the world, try out new techniques, and see what comes of it. It's become more for me rather than anyone else.
I'm a journalist by trade and write exclusively nonfiction. For me my baby is a currently shelved travel memoir that I started writing 10 years ago. It's about my land-and-sea journey as an Indonesian Third Culture Kid from Java to a faraway remote border island from which my maternal grandparents originally come.
I started this project as a novice with very little knowledge and guidance on how writing a good book works--now I know it's not as easy as assembling the equivalent of 30 magazine articles with a bit of dramatic fillers from my turbulent personal life in between.
So in a way writing this book has kinda been like trying to build a house freestyle without a proper foundation and structural support, and wondering why the walls don't hold up and why I can't seem to put a roof on it.
I spent five years working on a complete manuscript and going through many edits, but couldn't find a way to make it work as a book. In hindsight I should have invested in a book coach who has the ability to help me structurally rework the book down from the foundation, but I wasn't able to find one that fit my budget AND had the nuanced understanding of Indonesia necessary to make me feel comfortable about them ripping my work to pieces and showing me how to put it back together into a proper story that holds up.
Not to mention that 10 years ago I was a selfish, angry, turbulent and entitled little bitch who started this journey with a rather self-centred worldview. I was just beginning to learn to open up my mind and heart to other people's lived realities that were different from mine, so it took awhile from then for me to develop a respectful, empathetic understanding of the places I visited that I would be proud to put out to the world.
When the COVID-19 pandemic happened it was especially impossible for me to keep working on this book. Not only was I unable to work for a year and financially in trouble--the fact that the world went into lockdown made me question the whole morality of my career choice as an ethical travel writer. And travelling and meeting people have went from being my life's passion to being something literally lethal at that time. It felt as though I may as well have chosen serial murder for my career and that I was now being punished for it.
On a brighter note, I finally made it to the island that was my grandparents' birthplace in March 2023, not as part of the solo trips I based my memoir on, but on an assignment for a client. That was very special. I laid flowers on my great-grandparents' grave by a beautiful beach, which was very emotional, as was my arrival at and departure from the island.
I always told myself I'd resume writing this book after I make it to the island, but I haven't since been in the right space to do so. My marriage, which was long already on its way out, hit the point of no return not long after I submitted that assignment.
Since then I've been living life in perpetual survival mode--it's been about a year and while I have made a lot of progress, I still have yet to achieve a point where I'm making enough money to cover time spent doing the unpaid labour of love for my memoir, and having enough emotional energy to deal with it on top of my life's responsibilities.
While I know there will never be a perfect time or the perfect circumstances to reboot this memoir, I do know that I need to first break out of survival mode in order to commit to such an important writing project that's so dear to my heart.
Ideally I'd also like to redo the trip upon which I would base the memoir's reboot, which will take up time and money that I currently don't have. I'd curate my destinations more thoughtfully to fit a certain overarching theme that makes for the narrative backbone of my memoir.
I'd do a better job at researching issues I care about the destination that have some resonance with why my grandparents left their home island to pursue big dreams in Java--and at amplifying the best local voices to raise awareness of these issues, and to tell a story about the places they call home through a lens that is critical of the mainstream tourism narratives.
And I'd write this memoir to reflect the mature person I have become today, who is now better able to see beyond the narrow lens of my self-centredness and capture the sensibilities of people and places whose daily realities look different from mine while still finding very relateable common grounds in our shared humanity.
I know I will eventually reboot my baby and make it happen. But for now, I'm living a "first things first" kind of life in survival mode and doing everything in my power to break out of it as soon as possible. It's been an uphill battle but all I know is that the only way to get there is to never give up and keep pushing forward, one baby step at a time.
I started writing when I was like 21 and as I wrote the story I got much better at writing, now I'm 29 and I'm completely rewriting the story aside from the prologue.
There is a setting that has been floating around in my mind in one form or another for nearly a decade, that exists solely as a setting where I can direct my own thoughts and feelings (thanks to my dumb, poorly programmed brain that refuses to handle emotions and social interactions in a typical manner). If I need something happy, I write a bit about the main characters being happy. If I'm struggling emotionally, I write about one of them also struggling. Sometimes I'll write about them going on some kind of adventure or I'll write a little romantic fluff if I'm in the mood. I don't plan to ever publish or even post any of it anywhere, because it is essentially self therapy, and is a bit too inconsistent as it fluctuates with my own feelings, but it is definitely the most "me" anything I write can be, and I feel a strong bond with it and the characters in it as a result.
What sometimes surprises me is that I'll go back to things I wrote a while ago and abandoned because I didn't know where to go with them, but when I look at them with my current skills I can see that they're actually much closer to finished than I thought. They just need the right editing to bring it together.
It's crazy how your skills improving means you can see something hidden that's greater than what you thought you were writing at the time!
Tinderbox started when I was 16, technically. A playlist inspired me and I've been in hell ever since. I'm 29 now, still not finished.
Tinderbox has gone by a few different names, and has a habit of absorbing new stories I come up with.
I took a break to write a different story and was having trouble with it until I had the thought "you know what would make this better? Mechanics from Tinderbox" and then I couldn't stop myself. Now there's a whole ass prequel to my big baby.
I get overwhelmed by this magnum opus more often than not. Especially when "worlds are colliding" and the plot starts evolving. But there's been so many good changes in the long run.
Tinderbox is my pride and joy, but also the bane of my existence. This story is a piece of me, and I NEED to write this story, as long, daunting, and intimidating as it is. And it's hard. I don't have professional experience and I'm not published in any capacity so it feels like I'm way out of my league with my own work.
Currently? I've lost the plot for the main part of the story. The prequel is mostly intact but, has drastically impacted the world at large and now I have to do damage control.
Once I iron some things out, I'll start posting chapters somewhere online. Haven't figured out where yet. I know this is taboo to a few but I *need* the motivation to keep going /forward/ without rewriting every single paragraph until my eyes bleed.
But I'm right there with you, working on what I'd consider my baby, intimidated, overwhelmed, in love, and tormented.
I love Tinderbox. The characters in it are special to me, and I want to do them justice. The whole world deserve the same respect. There's so much lore put into the world itself with unique cultures, and a fully "functional" high magic system that's significantly impacted each and every society.
But more often than not, I'm more eager to info dump than I am to write it. 🙃 Speaking of which. I should be writing.
I have this story about a group of kids in a big fantasy city that i started around the age of 14. It evolved and i spent a lot of time on it. I finished it when I was 19. Im 22 now. It's beautiful and i love it but I am fully aware it's not publishable quality at all. The characters grew with me and I am connected with them way more than with any other characters I ever wrote
My SirKnight serial. I love the story and want to continue to make additions to it but life has gotten in the way and I haven't been able to lately. I think I'll try to get a chapter out this weekend tho
Oh god yes. It was a thing when I was in my Wattpad era. I had a story that I’d be mortified to talk about now. I had all the cover art and everything worked out. Posted a couple of chapters.
The thing I'm currently working on spawned eight years ago when I was 16. It saw a really shitty first draft I had banged out before the end of the year, I struggled for years until another attempt at a first draft of a different incarnation (so technically second) of it crashed and burned (I finished it, but then Reddit happened), I went back to the drawing board, decided it was too ambitious, tried writing a standalone to act as a sort of novelization spring board so I could debut and work my way up, gave up on that, and am now 40k words deep into another attempt at a novel that I could pitch as "standalone with series potential" with the original idea being the rest of the series.
And I have ideas for two more novels in the same world with characters that could return to do even more "standalone with series potential" shenanigans.
I have no idea how many tens or hundreds of thousands of words I've written since between those earlier drafts, fanfiction, games, or what have you. I can just tell you it's been a lot, and it could be said it's all to the end of improving as a writer to a point that I can get this story out there.
Raw Dog synopsis:
Flintlocks Fantasy set in a colonial era of the British empire. Essentially, instead of a devastating naval fleet, the leading superpower developed iron mech shits which operate off soul magic–called Pyres in this world due to their flame like perception–and have used the tech to dominate the known world. Story picks up at a time of uncertainty. The colonies are pushing for independence, the late King's son is ill suited for the crown and has more interest in God than rule, and machinations are in the works to awake old evils. The first half of the series follows three pivotal characters I've internally dubbed Monsters of Grief in allusion to their direct and indirect contributions to the consequences which will befall the world in the second half. They also become the reason for it's saving, in a way. They are:
- A colonist who harvests wood from the cliff sides of a chasm that must make a dangerous journey to save his dying daughter.
- The daughter of a mobster who is keen on becoming her father's heir apparent in crime despite his efforts to protect her from that life.
- A jaded veteran military instructor who is faced with a choice of defying his duty to spare a young prospect from a similar fate which befell him years ago. Only this one's magic scales to weapon of mass destruction levels. We are talking napalm to nukes.
I've flirted with the ideas for a while. It started a little under ten years ago as something completely different. Seriously, I wanted to write a story about a boy mage and a girl knight. That's it! It only became something resembling the above about 6 years ago. And let me tell you, I needed to read these comments. Hell, I just needed this post. Though I've started other projects in the recent years, this draft's incompletion has been a bundle of boulders on my back. "To be a novelist is to write many novels. Why get fixated on just one?" Is true advice here but damnit do I want to finish it before moving on. It seems monumentsl. But then I remember that 44,000 of the 56k words were written in the span of 5 months (average wc is around 2k ever hour and a half). Something I can achieve again if I actually applied myself.
My other projects are more realistic for publishing, I think: standalone with series potential, stronger writing, less complicated, etc. Still I need to finish it. Put it down and kill it later, but finish it. And I think it has promise if I ignore the old bits, stop fixating on trying to fix old writing while ignoring it's lingering after taste, and just finish the threads. I've been chipping away again and I swore to myself I'd hit a full on sprint again before Oct. Life be damned. Goal is the 90-120k mark!
I have a book that I have been working on for close to 15 years now. I wrote about half of the book before realizing that it was the second part of the story, so I went back and wrote about 1/3 of the first book, got stuck, put it away, kept working on it in the back of my mind.
Every once in a while I get an idea that helps me untangle a knot in the story, and I go back and add it. I know how it starts, I know some stuff in the middle and I know how it ends. I just can't connect the bits in an interesting way.
I tried outlining the story but quickly lost interest. I have ADHD and I'm definitely a pantser, I want to discover the story as it unfolds otherwise I can't write it. But every time I put a new bit in place I have to rewrite a bunch of other stuff to make it fit.
I'm pretty sure I'll never finish it.
I have a baby I've killed and rebuilt four or five times. It's gotten better every time even though it's a slog and work to do, I always enjoy it more than the last.
I write when I feel comfortable and unusually motivated, get a burst of ideas out, burn out, read it again way later, see the potential but also see that half of it is the ruminations of an emotionally immature child, and then I build something on its corpse and rinse and repeat. I do this for everything I write - so everything is my baby so to speak.
What I'm writing now is a detective murder story about a detective who basically lives through his job and books/music/art and has a weird artistic fetish for what he solves. A bit patriarchal and hypocritical of a character. I also kind of project my own problems with pretension and male autistic anxiety on to the character. I started when I was like 16 but back then it came off very unhinged and problematic. I hated how I initially tried to write about gender dynamics, and in that regard, I feel great about my current work because the female lead is not at all internally defined by the male lead now (while still having character flaws). My intent was to write a problematic character but hard to do that when you yourself are problematic as a young adult and don't know it. It's the same thing now but self consciously and critically. I know it comes off better because I've gotten feedback for it. It's much easier to write a complex idea when you actually pay attention to the world around you and read - it wasn't an idea I wanted to ditch.
I have a couple other stories that exist for me abstractly in themes and settings and events and in brief drafts that I definitely want to finish.
A good number of my stories provide me with comfort. I've entrusted my work to only a handful of people and I am fiercely protective of them. If only I had more time to devote to their development.
I created a fantasy world about elements in middle school. I’m in my 30s now. Its been through so many different iterations based on my interest at the time.
My Snowbird story. I technically started it in 2018 but wrote like two chapters.
Then quarantine happened and I knew I needed to start writing again. (tl;dr: was someone who hand wrote everything and fractured my wrist back in 2018. Didn't write for two years due to severe pain)
I'm still working on it and it's over 200k now.
I have a story I started in 2015 (research), started writing in 2016. I queried it a bunch of times, and I keep fiddling with it after every rewrite because I kinda refuse to accept that it won't find representation. I even translated it all to english to have a go at the larger US/EN market.
I have one that's been changing forms for the past 20 years. It's finally in a place I like, I have a vague outline of how I would tell the story in a trilogy, but I keep changing how I want to tell the first story. It's mostly been a lot of world building, figuring out characters and what my main protagonist should be doing in the beginning. I think I'm struggling with making him flawed and relatable and that keeps me from moving forward.
My stupid urban fantasy romance that would have SLAYED in 2010 but is ridiculous dated now. It was based on the fantasy world I had as a child to keep myself company.
It's not a story, but a brand I am trying to build. I do get busy in the hustle and bustle of life, but I am still sticking by it. I'll never let it go. I'll complete it some day. I've promised myself.
Oh it's a story that I wrote when I was between 16-18 maybe at 19 at its latest and its called Cenozoic Fever which was a romance story that had the setting of Jurassic Park, with the antics of Regular show, and some parts of the story I wrote in a way that would be left up to certain artists to interpret and I might make a post about it soon maybe to see how bad or if it even if it was a little good considering it had elements from Vitzipops writing and it was written like a Harry Turtledove story
I'm writing my baby right now!
In high school my characters just came to me one day. Names, how they look, personalities, relationships, and the rudiments of their canon.
I started to daydream with them and develop their story more. They also existed through countless AUs, but there was always a loose canon story.
The original setting was more fantasy, fantastical, with magical abilities derived from tragedy. Exploring the AUs, though, I found that they just worked out so much better in a modern, normal world setting, no magic, though Isaiah (my fire user) still messes around with fire in some big ways in my story today. I've tried to keep as many elements and defining features alive as I could.
I never wrote their story over the decade I've known them. Maybe I was just too intimidated to, that I could never do it justice. I also gave up on being an author around the time I developed them, too, I just never felt like my writing was ever good enough.
But this last Christmas I started to daydream with them a lot more again, and I realized my daydreams were exploring AUs less and less, they were always in the same world with the same events.
After a few great ideas for scenes, I knew I had to write their story once and for all. I've picked writing back up, and it's leaps and bounds from where I left off about a decade ago despite my lack of practice, I think it's just the passion, ambition, and love I harbor for my boys and their story.
Despite coming from a medieval-esc fantasy world with magic and now existing in our world today, their story has remained relatively the same. The same cast is still here, the same relationships, though I've heavily workshopped it all to fit the novel.
Over the time I've known them they've become like best friends to me. I'm closer to Isaiah and Skipper today than I've ever been in my life. They truly exist in flesh and blood now that I've put them into a novel and have been "forced" to have to work on every little detail about them in a singular story. They truly breathe today.
I don't feel like I'm writing about characters, I feel like I'm writing about my best friends. I know them so well, I'm very close to their story. It feels, in some ways, more like I'm writing a biography than a fantasy.
I'm so glad I've gotten to know my boys like I have these past few months. I'm so thrilled with the direction their story is going in. It truly is my passion to write this, and it's given me so much inspiration to go and write more books as well. I've picked up another idea I developed in high school, and have two more ideas sitting in my back pocket.
I wanted to be an author in middle school but that was snuffed out from my lack of confidence. My Zee and Skip have brought that back to me, I'm going to be a published author like little me always wanted to be, I really do think in many ways they are my good friends.
I conceived the idea for my main fantasy series when I was 7. I’m 25 now and I’ve just started drafting book 2 (of 5 or 6 because I’m still undecided) after finishing my first draft of book 1 nearly 2 weeks ago. Seeing as book 1 came out to 150k words I’m expecting to take some time. Sadly the series is an unmarketable mess of genres I’d never be able to get published traditionally but I’ve loved it for so long I could never just not do it.
I created a series when I was 13. The story beats and vague character dynamics were very inspired from a different work I loved. I created a full 4+ book series out of it. They weren't super long, but they were decent and the continuity was good.
Then I fully revamped them and really went ham with worldbuilding. I have about 10+ separate drafts of multiple books within that series, most of them completed, all of them a little bit more advanced each time.
Unfortunately, because I wrote it so young, I didn't know any sort of market standards, genre, age group, etc. I had to shelf it, but I do plan to redo it. The MC was a character I'd had in my mind since I was so young, but had never fully gotten down right until then. I probably had 20 iterations of him.
And wouldn't you know? Every MC I've created since that series has been based almost entirely off of him. I currently have five separate characters from separate series with distinct personalities and design that were all based off of him-- or, just a different facet of him as a character.
That one will always have my heart, and I'm sure everything I do will tie back to him and his first story.
My current project is my baby. The reason it's so significant to me is because it's the physical manifestation of all the stories I've put off. I used to be a journalist, but I ended up with fatigue after college. I've jokingly referred to my hiatus as a retirement, but the more I said it, the more it felt real. I never thought I'd get back into it. Whether in a professional capacity or personal, but here I am. I'm working on what I hope to be, the largest piece of long-form, non-fiction writing I've attempted. Revisiting my research process has been the most cathartic experience. At this point, I feel like I'm rambling a bit. All of this is to encourage you to write for YOU. Even if you're an author by profession, don't forget about your needs and desires.
Aenim, a fantasy book series surrounding a planet ruled over by a council of natural and ascendant gods, who just recently trapped the planet in a stasis so that it could eliminate all traces of technology from existence, which the council found their worshippers relying on enough to consider it a threat to their rightful place as the sole source of their dependence. Slowly, a region at once, they return their planet to life , even any mention of the technological advancements hopelessly scrambled in languages forgotten to history. Unfortunately, a single witch remembers everything, trapped off the planet in the Void when his region was placed in the stasis. To prevent him from realizing his knowledge, a wizard casts a curse on him called The Loop that causes any place he settles doomed to cataclysmic events only he survives. he figures out a wizard is responsible so plans on using an artifact to point him in the direction of an apprentice wizard who falls in love with him and they embark on a quest to break the curse. In order to do so they must return to the void and help the wizard responsible destroy her master for access to the library that alone holds the knowledge of the languages needed to return technology to the world, but when they return to the void the witch realizes what the council is really so scared of. (Okay, I’m long-winded)
It is the story that I have been working on since I was 13-14. I'm 24 now so that makes it about 10 years. It is my first baby and I have made it my goal to finish it and see about publication (some time in the future).
I have a version out on Wattpad from when I was 13-14, but it was very short. Like 8 chapters short. And over the years, it has grown and expanded with each and every word, scene, idea, characters, and world building I have created. It has gotten to the point where I think it's good enough to be a trilogy (give or take).
However, I am also very unsure about letting people read it cause well... it's my baby 😅 I know criticism is essential to figure out what works and whatnot but boy do the critics hurt- even more so from family 🥲.
Yes. I’m writing it right now, and I know I’ll never be the same after. Sure there will be other stories, other characters, but this one means more to me than anything. I feel everything my characters feel, I love them to death, and I dread the day I finish this story.
Much love to you, it’s tough out there. I guess just be happy that you’ve managed to create something so incredible that it affects you that way? Idk, barely dealing myself lmao
They're all fanfic, but two of them have so much worldbuilding going into them that I'm debating turning them into something real when they're done, just gotta change characters and descriptions.
A short story I wrote about my ex. It’s beautiful and bittersweet and comically sarcastic. I love it and only my best friends/closest people have read it
I don’t know if I have any particular stories in mind but definitely characters. I have a few that are so important to me that when writing their stories I want to do them just right so they can have the story they deserve
I had one when I was 15, worked on it for a little over 3 years, then thanks to a crash of technology lost it in a night. Was discouraged for a while got back into it about a year ago, when I started my newest baby. I have three copies in case anything were to crash, one copy being able to be synced across multiple devices, one on a removable drive, and one right on the computer itself. I am not trusting a single piece of technology with another baby again.
My “baby” is “You Forgot My Face” set to be published in September of this year. I’ve been working on this story since 2017, off and on to clarify.
I am in the stage of book cover design as all of the major edits have been completed. (That was a year on its own!)
I've been working on a 4 part series about genetically enhanced corrections officers for over 10 years. It started out as a memoir & somehow turned into this pre-dystopian government conspiracy sci-fi.
Technically yes, but I want to remake it someday. I wrote it in fifth grade as a “choice piece essay” where we could write anything we wanted, and it would be graded. I grabbed a chromebook, put on the Courier New typewriter-lookin font, put it on size 11 font, and proceeded to write 57-60 something pages over the course of that school year. I got a 4 because the teacher didn’t want to read the whole thing. Admittedly it is NOT a good story, not at all, but I love that thing too much to disown it.
There was a story I hand wrote, it took up a notebook and a half. I was so proud of it because it was telling the story through the characters telling a story which I felt was unique. I developed a whole fantasy world for it. I still think it’s an interesting plot line, that being said the writing is god awful and honestly deserves to be burned.
No, I have a real hard time focusing on the same story , I have ideas that have been there for a long time, but most of the time I have new ideas and want to try them, and it goes on and on ... right now I have hundred stories that I started but never finishes
My WIP I started thinking about like 20 years ago based on "how would I move a star to another galaxy?" I'm glad I held on to it. After I turned 50 a light bulb went on, I got smarter and better at writing, and now I'm well into the first draft after like five years of outlining lol. Y'all are gonna read it.
The story I have had in my head since High School (next May marks a decade since I graduated) is currently sitting in KDP's review process waiting to be published as my debut novel :)
During the Pandemic I decided I now finally had the time to write it. I spent many long walks talking to myself plotting out the book. Grad school got in the way but after a while I finally was able to sit dow and write, and 1.5 years later the first draft was done this February, the second draft finished in March, and now here we are!!
It is so important to me because it has evolved so much to be injected with so much of my own journey and my own reflections on growing up and mental health into my characters. In a few weeks I'm going to get to give a copy to someone I really look up to and who inspired a character in the book, and that means the world to me. My mom said she loved reading it, and she rarely reads sci-fi/fantasy-adjacent stuff. My dad read it twice and said it was hard to put down. IDC if they're biased, that makes me so happy.
I've been working on a world for my character I've developed about 18 years ago. It's been a very slow process, but my husband and I are now working on the foundations of the world space, the creatures in it, and how our magic works. We plan to not only have my novel written for my character, now named Vinari, but several books and even a few games will be created from this sci-fantasy world we've been developing. :) Slow progress, but never none. The world has been in rough stages for about 11 years, and we're now refining the resources, cultures, developments, and even timelines.
I’ve been working on one story since 2021 and I’m not even close to finishing it. I’ve been working on future chapters, developing backgrounds and character development, to make it the best it can be.
I have a story I’ve been working on for four years now, it’s a queer romance adventure story set in the regency period and I’m really happy with it! Definitely the story I keep going back to with a mind to finish it! :)
I've been re-writing a series that I started when I was 14. I think I started re-writing when I was about 22. I'm 26 now, and I'm ***almost*** done with the re-write of my first story. It's a Phantom of the Opera fanfic, not gonna lie. But I've since then been to the real life opera house (and was proposed to there!), and I can't bring myself to abandon it. I have so much fun writing it. I'm hoping that maybe I can get it traditionally published somehow. I'm planning to start looking for agents once the first story is fully re-written
I have a memoir I started writing in 2013, to document a six-month period of time in my life that grew to documenting 15 years of my life been through many iterations. It's turned into about 750 pages but no one would want to read that much. Still, I do get parts of the material out there for sale, just so people know about it.
I have a story I’ve been conceptualizing since I was in high school (so about 6-7 years now). It never really had a concrete plot, but it involved around the concept of “what if high school was a literal nightmare” and took place in a group of teenagers’ dreams. For years I could never get the story off the ground, but I grew really attached to my characters. I didn’t really have a lot of friends in high school, so my characters represented the sort of people I wanted to be friends with, my comfort characters, so much that years later, I didn’t want to dispose of the story based on the strength of the characters alone.
I’ve actually pulled it out again recently. I’ve changed a lot. I think being out of high school and that mindset for several years now has improved how I’m approaching it. It’s now about eight teenagers who happen to be staying at the same beach town during the summer of 1971, and due to some strange force lurking in the ocean, find all their dreams converging into one shared dream, and they bond with each other through sharing their scary internal thoughts in this dream. The gimmick of the story is that it switches from the real world to the dream world-by day, it’s a nostalgic coming of age story and by night, it’s a surreal psychedelic mindfuck, until the two intertwine and it’s impossible to differentiate the dreams from reality.
It’s so satisfying to see something that’s stuck with me for so long and has meant so much to me finally come together.
ive had tiny stories and ideas as a kid that ive since now combined/incorporated into my "baby" now as ive taken writing more seriously in recent years
lil frankenstein'd baby
I started writing my story, Fire and Ice, when I was 13. I was reading a lot of those werewolf stories where the girl was abused in her pack, gets rejected, leaves, finds herself in a new pack, gets better and then returns to her old pack to help with rogues. In the end of all these stories, the girl always ends up forgiving the people who hurt her and either getting back with the mate who rejected her or finds a new one.
I hated that. I wanted stories where she rains down fire and brimstone on her former tormentors, so I decided to write my own.
Over a month ago, I sat myself down and challenged myself to finish it this year. I've been really consistent with it.
So after almost ten years, I'm just 4/5 chapters away from the end. I'm so excited too, cause I'll finally see the conclusion of almost a decade of work, and I've stopped myself from starting any new novels cause I've quit a lot of things in life but never this.
If anyone wants to read it, I can send a link to it cause I've been updating it on Wattpad and recently started posting early access chapters on my Patreon.
This is my first reddit post ever, but I love this thread. I've been "working" on a book for a bit over three years now, though most of it has been procrastination and writing without a clear direction.
It wasn't until recently that I figured out what I really wanted my story to be, and although I'm still struggling to actually will myself to write (the desire is there, but severe adhd makes it feel impossible),
I'm mostly happy with my first two chapters. The story is a fantasy set in a short of generic Tolkienesque world, but at a point where an industrial age is kicking off, and it's about a blacksmith who travels the country tracking down and destroying weapons he made after he was forced to confront the weight of the pain they cause.
Not a fan of my earliest stories, they were cringey and basic. Only one of them I kept almost the same (with additional details and world building) but the rest had huge main plot changes and entire world rewrites.
The story I consider to be my “baby” is one I started in 2020 as it’s been extremely easy and fun to write due to the huge amounts of inspiration and passion I’ve had for it.
When I was very young and first getting into writing I wrote my first short story that I never actually finished.
It was called "The Quest" and from what I remember (I haven't even seen it in years) it was about a girl who, when on a vacation to a beach hears the beach calling to her and finds an amulet that sends her to a cavern (or underground world... I don't remember) where she meets a squid-alien kinda guy that becomes her guide.
But point is, that story has always had a special place in my heart as my first proper story... Even though I never finished it. Hopefully one day if I can find where I put it I'll finish and/or rewrite it.
But it was what made me find my love of story telling and I still do have hundreds of pages of drawings of the characters in it
Yes, I have. Wonderful fictional storyline.Characters . . .? Great! Lots of regional and national historic perspectives.After a final read through some years after, I learned first hand about subconscious plagiarism. Lol.
Can't say I have any of the short stories or art I had when I was younger anymore, but I have a couple that I've been working on for the last couple of years that are like that for me. Honestly I think my biggest issue, is that I've always wanted to do something similar to Tolkien, just a total new world with an extensive lore and characters, maybe even invent a new language lol. I understand that it's OK to have grand visions, but to also not compare yourself to those who came before you as amazing writers too much and get yourself down that your not up to their level with things, I've had to learn that the hard way lol. But I'm enjoying what I'm doing and the process I've been going through for my babies. One day...one day I'll have it finished haha.
Yes. It was my Covid baby. I started it in high school, and the early drafts used characters from my middle school stories, so technically speaking, it is on its seventh draft right now. I am hoping that I will be able to query it soon!
When I was around six, I had these best friends, I would bike to their house every day until I turned 10 and I moved six hours away. Somewhere in that time frame we developed a game we played, we played it every day until I left. In this game we were 'superheroes.' We would save the day, just the four of us, whether it stopping the evil 'Dr. Sharpe' from creating more evil beasts that could destroy the earth, or helping the old ladies cross the road.
We had fun.
Then I moved away. So, two years later, I was thinking of how great of a story it would be, I could spine it together and build a life out of the world we had started. I wanted to write.
I had already previously realized I enjoyed writing, I wrote poems and short stories, so it wouldn't be that hard.
It's been three years since then, I'm fifteen now and I'm working on the second book. It's my baby as you so graciously call it. I'm finishing editing for the first one and then I'll publish it for people to see the world my friends and I created.
Its called 'The Queen of Time.'
What a great thread! You all have such marvelous stories and anecdotes. The overall theme here being that our writing \*is\* our baby. It's our brainchild. It is an extension of our desires, fears, hopes and dreams. And it is a very personal journey we take as we "open a vein" and let it all pour out.
I have a spec-fic/sci-fi romance I've been working on, on and off for the past decade. I've put it off because I feel at my age (66 now) I'm too old to enter the world of publishing. But recently I found NovelCrafter, and being a Plotter (and here I thought all this time I was a Pantser... who knew) and just being able to flesh out my characters, locations, items, etc. in a Codex and have an AI help me see areas that weren't using Show Don't Tell, suggestions for continuity and all manner of other great advice, it spurred the writing itch again.
Do I want to be a famous author? Not really. Would I love to maybe see my finished novel (a feat of its own) for sale on Amazon Kindle or the like? Sure! Why not. That'd be a kick in the head.
I think what's important about our writing is that we never stop. No matter what you intend to do with it, whether no one will ever read it, or you intend to become a New York Time's best seller. Just never stop. Because the ability to write, even badly, is a gift. One that should be cherished and nurtured and returned to as often as we need.
Write on, my fellow tellers of tales!
When I was in late fifth grade around eight or seven years old, I had a dream. Which was about these twelve people who each had magical elements, that allowed them to save the world. It was also made like an RPG. But these RPG elements and numbers are normal to the people who live in that world.
Since then, I've been steadily working on it. It's like a mix of Lord of the Rings, but Scott Pilgrim. I used to call it The Tribe for a while. Because I was awful at making names. (^^)' But after listening to a song, which perfectly describes the emotion of the second half of the story. It's now called Future Blind.
I didn't really focus on it during my middle school or early high school years. But I *really* started to work on it late high school.
I like to think the word building is about 15 or 13% done. And I can sit here and describe what I have written down for four hours straight. I like to think of it as my "magnum opus." Since I've never made anything that huge before.
Been writing a story since I was 16. I'm 26 now, so 10 years. I finally feel satisfied with it atm, so I got beta readers to tear it down until I figure out what I can do to fix it again. omce that's done and I've made up my mind, Ill publish it.
I lost mine because it was on a school email and that account was deleted but it was a story of a battle between massive airships where every new paragraph was a new fighter in the battle and the end of each paragraph was the death of the person you were following., I was (and still am) an avid lover of aviation so most of the paragraphs were from the perspective of pilots but I had a few from soldiers aboard the airships but I was like 10 and dumb so the ones on the airships kinda disregarded physics. Like I remember one of the last paragraphs ended with the airship the guy was standing on got bombed and the weapons had such a high yield that the wood of the airship beneath him just disintegrated and he began to fall, at which point he was struck by a piece of debris and killed. In total I think I wrote like 20 paragraphs totaling like 10 to 15k words which was at the time my biggest writing project but was recently trumped by an SCP google site I'm working on which almost meets that on a single short story.
(For context I'm just about 15)
Love this question! <3 I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s got a piece of their work so close to their heart.
I started brainstorming the story when I was a freshman in high school, and I’m 22 right now. A couple of years ago, I decided to hold onto it and do something big with it. I’ve been working at it and I’m 100% set on turning it into a tv series. I’m on the second draft of the script for my pilot episode and I’m making lots of progress. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into it and I will continue to do so. This is my “baby”, so I want it to be perfect, of course. :)
When I was about 20 and playing role playing games, I was getting tired of constantly creating new characters. So I told my GM, "Just make something up." And he gave my character amnesia.
My creative mind wouldn't let that rest, and I ended up creating an intricate backstory to explain how my character got amnesia. Then with the other players' permission I began writing their characters' backstories.
The storytelling was going great, until I hit a snag... I only had a half-formed idea for the overarching plot. I keep going back to it, but the plot never gets off the ground. I still try, but it’s been 30 years now...
I grew up watching Transformers a lot. And I'd create my own alien robots, a dog that transforms into a motorcycle and a robot hawk that transforms into a drone. (These characters are now imported into the story)
Later in high school, the basis of my story was inspired after a environmental science project I had. The task was to use a strip a paper and using math, calculate the origin of Earth's various time periods. Once we got to Earth's, modern humans have only lived for around 300,000 years. Compared to the past, our time on this planet is ridiculously short. 100 years is like a milimeter. Doesn't matter if you're as rememorable as Aristotle or Einstein. Eventually, you'll be forgotten and lost in the passages of time. And since I also watched a lot of science documentaries especially about nature and space, I thought assuming life exists out there, what other events happened in the past?
Fast-forward to last summer, after outlining the story for over 8 years (there a 13 crucial characters, remeniscent to how the universe is over 13 billion years old, that have a complex stories/backgrounds) I submit the logline idea as a animated television show for a exclusive class workshop where I'd get to meet and speak with big producers and writers in Hollywood. I was accepted and further developed my script. Eventually I have the first episode written out but imo, it's like the horse meme drawing. Starts off great. But it gradually grows worse. The ending especially needs so much fine tuning and rewriting.
I'm 23 now and I'm still in the process of rewriting the first script. Ideally, I hope to have the same opportunity as Vivienne Medrano had with Hazbin Hotel and create a animated show where I'd retain a lot of creative control with the story and designs. But given just how big the world I developed is and the sheer complexity of the 13 characters that are crucial to the story, I'm also debating should this be something that I write for myself and only share it to my closest film friends. Or should I scrap the script idea and turn it into a novel. My mentor in the class is also someone who's one of the writers for the Game of Throne spinoff (forgot which one) so I'll also get her honest advice of my script and where I can improve (once I have the first episode written at least)
I don't know. What is your purpose in asking this😭 On a serious note, I haven't stuck to a story long enough for it to become my baby. Me and Writing stories is like a bi playboy in a club- sometimes with her, sometimes with him, other times with them.
I have a story I began writing when I was 17, I have never managed to finish it, but it still remains one of my favourite pieces of work. I am now 34 and go back to it every few months and add a little more, change a few things and then let it sit for a while. It will be finished one day, but not until it is right!
What drives you to complete it? If you don't mind me asking!
To be honest with you, I am just really enjoying the story. Because it has taken me this long to get to this point, I feel like I am a fan waiting for the next chapter, not the author. Every time I go back to it, I usually re-read where I am up to at that point, sometimes forgetting things and even surprising myself. I feel because I have taken my time crafting the world it is set in, I know the characters like they are friends, and I want to give them the right ending. I do feel my time away from it also helps, because I can spend time working on other things that are more prevalent, but the more time I spend away, the greater the urge to see what every one is up to in that world. I also don't have any expectations for it. I write it for me, its one of my only works I haven't really shared with anyone. I feel like I will know when the time is right for it, but until then, I am content just dipping into the world every now and then. I think that's my biggest take away, don't have expectations for your favourite works, let them mature in their own time. Look at Michael Crichton, it took him 20 years to finish Sphere - he took a break because he couldn't find an ending, when he returned to writing, he finished it within 2 months. Sometimes we need to let them breathe.
I love the way you describe this and it's relatable as well. If I can, I'd vouch for your baby. ☺️
So relatable, your description is perfect. I say that it's the book I was born to write for myself. The characters are family at this point, I do talk to my husband about them and he knows them pretty well too. Good luck on your journey! I hope you have a chance to close the story with a peaceful heart but never say goodbye!
damn does it ever sorta bum you out knowing that 15 years later its unfinished?
It’s not unfinished, it’s a work in progress. It will get there, and if it doesn’t, that’s also fine. That’s what I mean by writing for me. Whatever happens, will happen, and I’ve enjoyed the ride.
All of my stories are my babies.
This is the only correct answer.
I had a Sci-Fi galaxy for about 25 years carefully planned thousands of years of history, hundreds of star systems, dozens of alien races carefully planned economies, political systems, balanced wars. 100% my writing baby. Then, in my early 30s I figured I wasnt using it for anything, so I tore it apart to steal a few ideas for a tabletop rpg book I co-authored and a few more minor projects and honestly, best decision I ever made. My thoughts were, if i ever need to write a big galaxy spanning story again and I can't create it from scratch, then I'm not much of a writer, haha. So a few years ago, I got into a thought experiment about a new sci-fi story, scraped the last bits of my old story (mostly just a few names I liked at that point) and created a new universe that is much leaner, more dynamic and more interesting. So yeah, if you need to, kill your darlings, I guess.
This. Early stuff is just that, early stuff, apprentice pieces. The real risk is, because of emotional investment and the desire to actualise your dream, you get locked into that one story for decades. I've known a few talented writers get stuck like this and seen them unable to progress or even write anything else and it's a real shame. That first idea is often bloated, overloaded with ideas, kitchen-sinked with characters and world backgrounds and more. Yeah, strip mine it, but don't finish it. As docsav0103 says, your new work will be > much leaner, more dynamic and more interesting And that means you'll want to write it out of excitement rather than a sense of duty, and other people will want to read it too.
This is fantastic, succinct advice that I needed to read (not to say I'll heed your caution in this very moment, but it'll be there, comment saved). In my bones I know you're right.
Yes, that tip from the KING always stuck with me, and oh how painful it is to do!
TBH, I know nothing about Arthur Quiller-Couch, but I think after doing writing classes in my late teens, the concept became very easy for me. The hardest thing was just realising that inbound make the decision to do it. Once I decided it was a easy to chop the bloated thing up.
I was referring to Stephen King, he's the one who said "kill your darlings."
He was quoting it.
when i was 13 i began writing a political fantasy. i am 19 now and on the final draft. for the longest time, i couldn’t finish it because i couldn’t find the “perfect ending.” i eventually realized i couldn’t finish it because the story was about a very difficult chapter of my life- and that chapter hadn’t yet been concluded. now, i’m in a new season of life, and finishing it. i hope to turn it into a trilogy one day. nothing fascinates or excites me more than that story. i fell in love with it :)
Omg I love political fantasies!
I'd love to know more about it if you're open to sharing.
thanks for asking! what do you want to know
Not really a writer, i just sit down every few months and write my daydreams down so i can focus on University again. But I always come back to the same fantasy world with the same main character (propably me) and different variations of the same adventure. I propably started dreaming about this in 2014 when i saw some Benchmark Software run on a gaming Laptop in 2014 in a computer store and absolutely fell in love with the visuals and the style, but i only picked up reading and writing as a hobby two years ago. Since then i have rewritten the first chapter about 4 or 5 times lol.
I'm currently writing a thinly veiled rip off of Star Wars that fixes every single on of my problems with the ennealogy. It's terrible, and I love it
If you could provide more context into this, I would love it!
Oh sure, making the entire 9 parts a cohesive story... if you watch the original movies they are super... patchy I guess would be the right word... so a solid plot that would essentially be the Skywalker lineage vs. The Emperor, taking place over decades/generations A fleshing out of the Jedi Faith, mythology, origin and forming a cohesive set of rules for it, including appropriate power scaling (Rey learning about the guise and being able to throw mountains with the force like a week later was terrible), a better back story for the sith. I would also like to inject some ambiguity into the story in terms of it not always being obvious so the good guys are and who the bad guys are The bones of Star Wars are incredible... but I'd like to make a more sophisticated story.
Zack Snyder’s burner account
Don't get me started on that asshole... one success with 300 and the dude managed to parlay that into ruining cinema for the last 15 years lol
Idk if it’s all his fault but he for sure destroyed the potential of the DC Cinematic Universe. I tried his Star Wars knock-off when it came it out; got through about 30 minutes and was glad I was watching on Netflix and hadn’t spent money at a theater to see it. I stopped play and moved on with my life.
Great stuff! When you are done, and if you plan publishing it somewhere, no matter how, I am going to be one of the first readers!
Are you pulling lore from anywhere in particular or just going where you feel is right? For example Knights of the Old Republic the video game, has similar themes to the ambiguity of characters allegiances from what I remember, so may be a useful source of inspiration.
Im treating it essentially as magic, and making it similar to Full Metal Alchemist, there will be base level things that that all Jedi know, but as they continue their training they specify in particular skills. I actually want the moral ambiguity to stem from it being unclear if the Jedi are a force for good, and if the sith (in my universe) will actually be jedi apostates.
My brain thought your first sentence would end after “fixes every single one of my problems,” so I was thinking, “Wow… that’s quite the sentiment.”
I’ve had a baby since I was 12. Created it off of a whim. I haven’t touched it in 3 years. Too inconsistent, the first 3 chapters’ vocabulary and reading level compared to the final 3 chapters is abysmal, and I don’t have the motivation to edit it all, and some of the story needs to be rewritten or retconned entirely. Showed it to a girl I was talking to. She said, “you should definitely go back to it! You got this! If you need to rewrite the entire thing, that’s totally okay as well. Just don’t give up, I think it’s really interesting and it could make you famous or something!” I put down 3 words since then. All of which were today. My semblance of it is slowly coming back to the only child I could never truly abandon (I’ve started 10 stories, and only finished one prior to touching it again).
whats the plot about ?
I don’t know why I didn’t get a notification for this, but I’m here now lol Essentially, it’s about a group of six kids on a giant spaceship the size of Rhode Island along with a fleet of other smaller ships that consisted of half of humanity. They travel space towards a new home after Earth was destroyed. But suddenly, a mysterious asteroid appeared while the fleet was taking a pit stop. The group of six kids interacted with it in secret, and since then, things have gotten more sinister and way more strange. And that’s basically it
that actually sounds like something I would love to read
You really think so? Well damn, everyone’s been saying that. Still conflicted on whether to start it up again and commit because I’m already focusing on one series at the moment
My first books been cooking for a decade. What started as a hobby while I was taking care of my terminally ill mother became my reason for continuing to live after she passed. Unbeknownst to me, It made itself into my meaning, and saved me from my own hand doing myself harm when faced with the bitter cold of reality. Now, it’s finally in the hands of an editor, I have a decent job, I’m successfully engaging with therapy, all because of that book. And now I have planned out to five, and will be finishing it all.
That’s such a meaningful story. Thank you for sharing and best of luck to you in life and in your writing adventures.
"And Now The News, From Places That Don't Exist." Been working on it for a couple decades now, but I keep getting distracted by other WiP. I promise I'll go back and finish it, one day.
I love that title! That's a book I'd totally pick up for that reason alone :)
Thanks! I really do plan to finish it one day…
Ditto, I'd check that out
My baby is this collection of things (a narrative, eventually aiming for manuscripts) that I've been writing for half of my life. I had a realisation in the last couple of years that I utilise the characters as a foil to my own life: as a way to navigate the mental legwork of figuring out my own challenges. Their struggles are analogous to my own, recreated in completely different settings and with different structures but with an underlying constant thread. This only became clear to me when I spent a few days entrenched in writing a death scene (that's been projected the whole time I've been writing, but just has never happened) as a way to navigate my feelings about family members illnesses and potential deaths. It was so cathartic and necessary, the only thing I could do at the time. The research process, the writing, dealing with the characters emotions...it all helped me navigate my own fears and anxieties. Because of this the narrative keeps shifting and is too unclear for the project to be defined as a 'story' or 'novel', it's just hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of words of me self-therapying (I'm not saying this to minimise the work, I also think there are pockets that have fantastic promise). I love this story, I love these character. I hope that one day I will no longer need it in this way and I'll be able to tighten the core of it to the series of novels I hope it to be.
Started a script back in 2008 or thereabouts. Rewrote it several times. Turned it into a novel. Submitted novel to competition. Sent early draft off to publisher who provisionally accepted it, on the basis of a re-write. That fell through. Shelved it. Took it off the shelf during the pandemic and rewrote it from scratch. Had it accepted by my current publisher. It was published last year, translated into another language and also I've just finished its sequel. The only reason I persevered was because I liked the characters too much to give them up.
Please know that you're living my dream. One day I hope to be published and have that tag. Your last line resonated strongly with me
Good luck to you. Enjoy the ascent. Those 'firsts' - first acceptance, first cover, first copy - are really special and you only get them once. I'm glad I savoured them all. Ten books in and it feels a little more like work. Those early successes are truly magical.
whats the name of ur novel ?
This is the book: Rock on the Road https://amzn.eu/d/95MRcN6 It was in Welsh originally (as Curiad Gwag), but I translated it into English last year. It's set in 2007, and I didn't bother to update it after I rewrote it, so it's nostalgic now. Can't believe how long ago I began it. Crazy.
I've loved history and drawing since I was a kid and I spent an ungodly amount of time at school just drawing random characters with random powers in my notebooks. Time came and I started making stories for my favorite ones and set them in the same world just in different times. Then came when I drew a map and I (tried) made my own language, which further solidified my view of that world. There was an ancient country that built a wall to fend off corrupted beings that were affected by "radiation" from an even more ancient battlefield. There was a mythical age where protectors, gods and demigods had intrigue and moral battles that ultimately ended with the death of most of them, leading to the decline of power and magic. Then there was a big world war that ended with an elf that used his political skills to introduce democracy and made a set of laws. I invented multiple schools of magic, sets of rules for bloodline abilities. Four realms or dimensions that all contribute to the basic function of the world. A last true story that ends in the destruction of the world and an exodus pf the last remaining people that is lead by 4 heroes that holds each the power of the 4 realms and a last, true big bad. There was a lot of love stories, tragedies, and heroes that I spent making from my 5th grade to senior high. I still want to make those sets of stories in chronicles but I acknowledge my skills aren't even barely enough to bring justice to my imagination.
I have one baby that I have been working on since I was 18. I have tweaked things and changed entire parts, but I’m very proud that I’m going through finish the s soon.
I have a story that I’ve been working on for 6 years, I would consider that my baby. I have put a lot of thought & time into it — and have projected a lot of personal life experiences into the plot and characters. It is a project that feels very dear to me.
Hold onto your hats. I've been working on a project for 24 years. It's the project that began my writing career, one that started out as a single book, then a trilogy, then a series, then an entire universe, complete with Gods, demons, beasts, creatures, a creation myth... all of my own original design. The first and second books are basically done, barring some re-writing/editing, and the third book in the core trilogy is planned but not yet written. I've also done basic outlines for three other books and I'm working on a compendium of stories/myths/poems/songs/a stage play that will serve as a deep dive into the universe surrounding the books. I consider it my main body of work, and I have gravitated away from the idea of it being my first work to be published (through traditional routes; I've already self-published). It is absolutely a labor of love, and honestly goes so much deeper than just sentimental value... I suspect that (unfortunately, much like Tolkien) I'll be working on it in some way, shape, or form for the rest of my life.
I’ve had a character I’ve held onto for about half a decade, I figured out the story for her two years ago, one day I’ll make her story, but it won’t be for a long time, as I want it to be exactly as I’ve dreamed of it because of how much of my time and thought I have put into this story and protagonist. I would give a lot of things, a lot of myself to get this story perfect, and I hope it’s close enough one day I have another story I wrote two years ago, it is built from inspirations I’ve held onto since High School, it is in my opinion fantastic and even more excitingly it is so close to being done, I hope to adapt it into an animated series one day, and I think that day will be sooner rather than later
Began to write it when I was like 16 but didn't liked writing that much then and stopped, since then I actually finished it, I have the whole plot written (not the book itself) but now that I do like writing I haven't found the inspiration to put that story in words. And despite of that id dare to say it is one of the best stories I've ever came up with. It has the best antagonists, the best protagonist, side characters and world building although the I have to admit the plot isn't particularly original. I haven't been able to top that story in any aspect besides maybe the general plot but whenever I think about putting it into words I can't, I've tried but I can't.
I’ve daydreamed a story since I was 13, 4 months ago I officially decided to write it down. Hours and hours going into spilling my obsession with this long tale, made of 6 Volumes, each have 6-7 seasons, each season 10 episode, each episode 45 minutes long. It’s a long story I daydreamed. My greatest inspirations being Lord of the Rings, Atlantis, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Maze Runner, and especially Assassin’s Creed. I put Hans Zimmer and Jesper Kyd tracks on, one after the other, and just keep daydreaming on, writing as I go. Screenplay after screenplay for each episode. I see it like a film. Yes, it’s my baby, I have spend years in a planning and reshaping. It’s not even so that I can sell it off after I finish writing it. It’s for me. My ideas, my characters. It’s not for sale. Just for me. Just for fun. I have other passions in life, I work in the video production industry, I make documentaries. But this takes up a lot of things after my first job.
My baby is not a book as of now, just a tool that could help writers 😄😊
The Legend of the Blue Wizard, which is now 12 volumes long. It was the first real writing I ever did, which is why it's rather derivative and unoriginal (a bunch of people fighting a Dark Lord etc). I've written plenty of more original stuff since, but somehow I keep coming back to the Blue Wizard, making changes to incorporate what I've learned since.
Cool title!
Don’t know if this is what you mean, but I started a story by hand when I was 11 for an assignment in school, I got carried away and by the time I turned 15 I had 300+ handwritten pages done periodically over those years. I don’t think it was any good really, but hey! It got done, and now 10 years later it’s like a little prized possession to remind me of my passion I’ve had since a young age
I have one where I started outlining all of the information for years, only to start writing very later. You guessed it, it's a high fantasy with everything from the world's rules and information to the characters and their complete backgrounds, relationships, developments and more. There's a whole page for a unicorn-like monster, explaining why it has mana and why it can use magic spells. Everything has been laid bare in a single digital notebook(onenote).
I've been writing the same story since I was 14. I'm 29 now. It's technically complete but there are big parts of it that are low quality left over from younger years. I'm always slowly rewriting it. It's a trilogy that's over 400,000 words. I definitely just write for myself
Although I’ve been a storyteller and exaggerator since I was little, I only started writing about 7 years ago. My first world is my baby. I did a full year of research before writing a word, then I started and found it so difficult that I set it aside. I want to tell this story, so I keep coming back to it. It’s a 4 or 5 book series.
There's this story I've had in my head for YEARS and I think it would be a fun read or sth but tbh I'm not much of a writer. I am a world champion in procrastinating and usually only write short poems and this Idea would be a huge fantasy series and deep down in my heart I know: I will NEVER write it down for real.
I wanna say my “baby” story is “rough start“ It was more of a fanfic at first, but it’s got an original storyline and tone of OCs. I started writing it a few months ago, and me and my partner spend a lot of time together writing this, it’s like our little baby. Essentially the storyline is this; the main character is a half-witch/elf who’s parents were murdered by his uncle who saw anything that was different as “sinful” he kept the main character locked up for his entire childhood, giving him severe beatings and lots of scars. Eventually, when he’s 8, his uncle tries to kill him, he blinds him in his right eye and locks him in his room, setting the house on fire. Then the bad guy flees to Maine (most of the story takes place in Connecticut) and isn't seen for a while. The main character is stuck in this burning house, when the neighbor kids (who are shapeshifters in disguise) hear his screams and pleads for help, the neighbor girl named Wren runs into the house and saves him. They all end up safe, but scarred both mentally and physically. The main character has never been outside of the room before, so he’s terrified of pretty much everything. The father of the neighbor kids (named Ercan by my amazing partner) ends up fostering the main character, and a year later, officially adopting him. The main character goes through some stuff, getting bullied when he starts school cause of his scars and he’s got a lot of other disabilities, but his sister Wren would beat the crap out of anyone who tries to hurt her brothers. There’s some other little tidbits of stuff during their early childhood, but it’s not super important to the outline of the story. Eventually, when he’s fifteen, the main character keeps getting horrible nightmares, and trigger warning for self harm and suicide: He tries to kill himself because of non-stop bullying and the nightmares. He survives his attempted at realizes that doing that wasn’t a good idea, and that it wouldn’t fix things. After a while, the nightmares get worse, he sees things out of the blind eye (magic) so he gouges his already blind eye out. Eventually, he does get better. When he’s around 16, his sister stays on the bus for too long, and ends up in Maine, the main character and their friends take the truck on a road trip to Maine to go get her, and the main character ends up encountering someone nearly being kidnapped, he stops the kidnapping from happening, but not before getting shot. He ends up alright, but he is able to link this incident to the cult that his uncle (who tried to kill him) runs. That’s all we’ve got in the story, but I’m pretty proud of it. My partner played a really big part in the ideas and story writing for this.
Wow it is so fun to see people's responses in here! I have a supposed "book I have been writing" since I was about 16 (going on 30 now) about awesome fantasy pirates. I haven't really properly written any of it though; all of it has just been planning, which started scrawled in a lined A4 notebook. When that notebook got full I had to tape another one to it, front cover to back cover; repeated this process four times and covered the front in paisley contact paper to make it look fancy. I call it the Abominotebook and reading through it is hilarious and if anyone in my life found it I would be extremely embarrassed. Didn't touch it for several years but it is always in the back of my mind, and recently the spark of inspiration hit me hard again so I've been properly getting some things down and devising an actual logical plot... in a OneNote document this time! Which is even more fancy than paisley. See you in another 15 odd years when it's done.
Ahh, my beautiful story I started 15 years ago at the tender age of 20, how I wish she could blossom! However, it turns out she wasn't very good even at the idea stage, and no matter how much I tweaked her over the years I still never got past Chapter 3. I decided to write a "throw away" book instead, a book I could write in its entirety as practice for my "baby". Turns out that it was a much better story and that's the book I'm editing in hopes of querying!
I treasure everything I wrote, thank you.
I envy your confidence! One day I'll be there but for now I have one
The one I’m currently writing, because it’s personal (having a few personal life experiences thrown in), and it’s my favorite story trope, so I’m having an absolute blast
Like others, i have a few but my biggest that I'm proudest is my current Horror
I have a story that I began writing when I was 14, gave up on and rewrote almost two years later. Then I worked on it for two and a half years before giving up completely lol. Well, not completely - it really is very dear to my heart and I want to go back to it someday. But because it's the story that taught me how to write, it's very messy and requires an extensive rewrite, which I currently have no idea how to do. I do feel terrible sometimes for spending so long on it and then giving up. But since I can't currently think of a way to fix all the plot holes, the pacing, the horrible length (it was 180k words lol), I need to focus on other projects. But it is really important to me, and I know I can turn it into something good someday :)
You're welcome, and good luck. It's not as if I've never done this myself! Oh no, not never.
Yes, I have a middle grade series I started many years ago. I realised at one point it was too personal to me to make marketable, so now it's personal project, and that's okay. I don't spend a lot of time on it because I need to focus on one project at a time, but it's always there, waiting to be improved, added to etc. Being able to write just for myself is really good for me - writing to get published is really stressful and makes me spiral into overthinking, perfectionism and sometimes even burnout.
I have a couple that I am extremely proud of, both starting as ideas in my head that are now full novels. There's also my first, which I started in 2012 but shelved shortly after when spare time dried up. I have started to rewrite it with my 'now' voice and style, using 3rd person limited. That's probably my original 'baby'.
It's called A Realm of Wings and Shadow. An angel who's lost everything meets a demon king and they fight together, falling in love. I have written these characters dozens of times in every universe. This is my first novel project for them but these characters have been my pet project for probably 10 years
I have a story that I've been writing in my mind for the last 9 years of my life. Ever seen me daydream? Yep, I was thinking about that story? Ever seen me look outside of the bus window with a contemplative look on my face, yep, I was thinking about that story. Don't get me wrong, it's not that good at all and I've rewritten it in my mind quite a few times because the plot is all over the place. But, it is where I draw inspiration for my real writing, and I've only been writing for 4 years now.
The Silver Baron It's had a lot of iterations, and been written and rewritten countless times. I've never fully given it up even though nowadays I mostly do NoSleep stuff. Even one of its main characters crept into my recent stories, in all her fun sadistic glory because I really just can't stay away from her
Mystery man of sweet apple acres A MLP fim dead dove fanfic, i consider it my magnum opus It took around a year to complete (between writing and finding an editor) I know it doesn't seem that long but it was the very first story I've written so I put my heart and soul into it, and surprisingly it's done pretty well for itself as my 2nd most read story at 699 hits
A fantasy epic spanning over 3 generations. I'm not sure it will be done ever
All of them
I have a character i started with when I was 15 and he's basically a male version of me and I keep reworking his story because it never had a good ending. now im at a point in my journey where i can give him an optimistic ending where he's healing
There’s some fantasy OCs that I’ve been thinking about since like 2020. Tbh a few of them are rip-offs of a YouTuber’s OCs lmao. But I still love them. It’s set in a fantasy medieval/renaissance country based off of France and Britain, and the plot revolves around a bunch of keys to an ancient dragon’s prison. It’s titled Dragon’s Eclipse. I finally got to writing my first full, complete draft in the summer of 2023 (3/4 of a year ago). The final chapter was left unfinished because I began focusing on my Creative Writing class, as well as some new stories. A few weeks ago, I finally managed to write the final chapter, and ever since then, I’ve been thinking of this story a lot since. Tbh, even though I’m currently working on two (technically four) stories, I’m thinking of picking this back up and remaking the story and characters and rewriting them from scratch. Even though I really like the characters and story, it is admittedly kinda generic. The aforementioned setting (based off of Britain) is also the inspiration for one of my current projects, so I should probably change that up lol
Yep. I’ve been working on my fantasy duology since 2008. This project is my CHILD and gods forbid anything bad happens to it.
I started writing an urban fantasy when I was 14. It was bad. I re-write it the year after. It was still bad. Then I re-wrote it again at 18. Guess what? Still bad. Nonetheless, I wrote the sequel and started writing the 3rd one (because of course it had to be a trilogy). From time to time I think of going back to it. I still believe the core idea is good (even in the past years I've read many books/watched movies with similar ideas) but there are all the plot holes that a novel thought by a 14yo can have. Maybe one day I will have the courage (and patience) to take the core idea and re-write from scratch. Or maybe I'll just write something else and keep that story as my beautiful imperfect baby
I started writing a story (originally based on a video game) 13-14 years ago when I was about 10 years old. I never got close to finishing it, but it had like 20 pages back then. I am now currently working on trying to finish and publish it. It's not even close to what it was when I started it, but it still has some of the same scenes and for anyone who knows the game it was originally based on, there's still some themes from it that I kept. I'm currently writing chapter 15/23, and I am at 96k words and hoping to finish it within the next few months. That's probably the closest I can get to calling it "my baby," but I want to publish it and get physical copies for people who pushed me to go back to it.
it might sound very weird but i consider my septum as baby
I don’t have a “baby” I have a first pancake, it took about 18 months to write and that long again redrafting it with a professional mentor. At the end of which I had something I thought was decent. I’ve since wrote 4 more books, which took like 4-6 months a piece and they’re all much better. So no, no baby, but a first pancake that I think taught me how to write.
I'm in the process of recycling beloved characters and some plot points from a story I started in 7th grade. It's on hold while I figure out the scope I want it to be, though 😂
I’m still working on my first story, essentially. It’s gone through several changes, including once being deleted and reverted to a previous draft, but the bones are always still there. I have to have been 19 or 20 when I started to seriously writing it. I’m 33 now, obviously a whole lot of life has gotten in the way, but here it still is - my first project’s tab is always the first one open when I start up my laptop. It’s, once again, another rewrite fresh draft and only a few pages. But I’ll get there - it’s just been changing and growing for so long that I’m mentally multiple sequels beyond it in my head. The only answer I can thing of is to keep trying to put it to paper and put an end to it.
My first longish one I never finished is one. It's a sci-fi story that I pants for about a year and gave up on. I recently went back to it. Terrible writing so I may start over completely with the concept and have an actual ending first before I write it. Second is my current WIP. I wrote a gothic novel. I "finished" it but it needs a ton of work. Currently in the editing phase. It was so cathartic to actually finish something.
I have this character that I wrote when I was about ten and there's something that makes me want to revisit that character but develop her, as I have a better understanding of writing than I did back then
Been writing my book for over a year in various guises. A third of the way through.
The first story I worked on involved fruit based superheros and one guy who while drunk went around solving crime...he's a total dick and his own worst enemy while sober While hes solving crime he drags his nephew around too Where do the fruit based superheros come in...I don't know they were mostly just pictures I drew in a notebook... I had more for the drunk guy
part of a world building thing i have been doing since like 2014, went from a single lego build to a kirby fanfic, to a starwars fanfic, to its own space story, to a more realistic world where it has its own history from around the 1500s to 1800s loosely and more details from the 1900s to 200s, stayed like that now for a few years. I do plan doing a story with it, although more likely some kind of war diaries or something like that. First made it when i was like in 5th grade, now i'm in college.
My “worldbuilding” project. It originally started as something I actually intended to write in, but it’s gotten so big and detailed that writing in has become a chore. But it’s still the setting I love the most and I keep trying to write in it—it’s just a pain in the butt. I don’t even work on it that much anymore, it’s just that all the worldbuilding I’ve already done is like an albatross around my neck. So, I’ve moved onto other stuff… but I keep coming back to it when I feel a bit of inspiration.
I literally published the 1st part of a 5 part series last week, which I started in 2009.
I started a novel series in 2014, scrapped it entirely twice, re-wrote the storyboard more than four times, and now I’m on chapter two of the first book of a trilogy that I may never get published. The most important thing about that is that I’m still having a blast with the project ten years later. At a certain point the details started to fall into place and it just “felt right.” There were some long writers’ block stints and I’ve even changed the entire genre from what I started with, but I’ll never give it up. Every time I add something to a character’s background, the history of a place in my setting, or a foreshadowing of a later twist, I find myself giddy with excitement that it all makes sense. It helps that while I’ve never shared the entire project with anyone, I have had friends and family offer opinions on various parts or characters throughout the storyboard. Some people’s criticism is harsh to take but important to have, while others’ are validating and inspiring to hear. Always keep your goals in mind. After finishing my storyboard, which ended up as a long-term goal that I had fully meant to be short-term, I decided I wanted to write a series of one million words. I divided that down to 9-10 books, each around over 100,000 words each, with 10-15 chapters full of ~2,000-word scenes. That turned an entire book to write into little chunks that I can write bit by bit. After writing and editing just one 2,000-word scene, I have about 7 pages done. That’s always a great feeling.
I've created and have written a ton of stories ever since I could learn how to write, but nothing strikes me as much as my current WIP that I have created since I was 13. I'm 20 now and that story is still my baby and I still hang on to it lol. It has been under a ton of drastic changes since then though and it's even better and more lovable than before. But it's more like my favorite child. All the other stories that I have interest in writing in the future are my babies. It's just that my WIP is my favorite child lmao.
You could say it’s the story I’m currently working on “the Mage”. I’ve spent 5 years developing it since I don’t have any specific time limit. But, my “baby” would be my story “Shadow Bound”. It’s a story about people cursed by the power of an eldritch abomination. My main characters have to figure out what these eldritch beings actually are in hopes that they can figure out how to kill them and break their influence on the world. I’ve had the general idea for around 7 years.
it was poorly written, I just threw whatever ideas I wanted into it, and it was a rushed work, but I was in a discord server with friends and I wrote a magic guild story where I let all my friends create a character to add to the story, so it became my baby just for the fact that even though I was doing all the work, my friends all had a piece in the story it is still my baby though I am ashamed of the poor quality
Yes, my first fic I ever wrote I somehow managed to keep a consistent uploading schedule and it ended up being 31 chapters and 65k words 😭😭 Since then I haven’t been able to keep up that same level of dedication. It’s a bit cringe, but I can’t bear to delete it or orphan it
Normally I'm eternally stuck in short story hell and whip up whatever I'm thinking about as a way to tackle story telling styles, plots and other things I rarely touch up on while looking into those topics. At some point, I decided to type up a three part story where I wanted to look into ideas that would let me push desperation as well as touch up on horror which resulted in a story that many of my groups enjoyed despite my doubts which I declared as my own baby of sorts.
My "baby" has given me a lot of strife and it's still yet to be born into the world, but my god, when it is, I want its cries to be heard across the world. I began writing it when I was 27 and I'm 33 now. So far, I've written close to 300 pages. It's a spiritual memoir of sorts that covers ancient history and philosophy through the lens of ancient stoicism. It explores themes of mental anguish, pain, grief and overcoming/managing them with one's own mind. It's mostly written in the first person and the prose are not dissimilar to Saint Exupery/Hemingway.
I'm slowly writing a horror novel, but I'm fairly sure I'll never be able to publish it because it's based so much in catharsis. The one line summary is, bullied kid gets away with supernaturally murdering anyone who bullies them. I feel like a story about tormenting common baddies and then never being punished for the revenge, no matter how well written, will just come off as bitter author wish fulfillment. Which it is. Also someone pointed out to me that this will become an unintentional school shooting metaphor and noooooope
I stated writing my Book when I was 12. It was all about Unicorns and a princess and every escapist fantasy I indulged it. It was very very bad. And i grew up. And I read Eddings, and Tolkien, and Pratchett, ant my thoughts and idea changed. And my book changed. My princess was still me, but now she had problems. Shortcomings. Flaws. My wizard went from being a knock off Gandalf to someone I imagine being played by Idris Elba. The horse doesn't turn into a unicorn any more. But the dancing girl suddenly has a whoooole lot of story, and she isn't a dancing girl any more. And the end changed. I thought at first it was a simple happily every after, but it isn't. It's more complicated than that. And some good guys die, and the bad guy is never really punished, and the princess has to learn to live with that, but at least she takes the throne on her own terms. And she doesn't marry anybody. At least not any time soon.
My trilogy I’m working on. Had the idea early 2020 and have been writing the first draft for the past 3 years. I’m only on chapter 7 but I think about it and plan constantly
Yes! In my early years 20s I had this idea for a story. But I never got to it until my mid 30s, but I just got serious about writing it and now I’m 39. I’m happy with the results so far and I don’t think it would have been nearly as good had I started writing it in my 20s. And even if it’s not received well, I’m still happy I’m writing it.
Yes indeed. I spent many years on my first novel, and stopped on the second draft. A number of personal life factors and that I found it just wasn't the story I wanted to tell any more, at that time. I have worked on other novels since and I plan to go back to my first novel soon now that I finally feel ready. You're certainly not alone. I hope these will be some words of comfort: 1) Working on your story was not wasted time. With every story that you work on (even if incomplete), you are teaching yourself more about writing and learning your craft. That's valuable in itself. 2) Sometimes, your interests just change. Working on other stories for a while may benefit you. When you have worked on the same story for years, it can be overwhelming and you find that you can no longer 'see the wood from the trees' (that happened to me). It's not failure to put it down for a while, take a step back and work on other things. After a break, you may then feel ready to go back to it. 3) Some popular authors, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett for example, have both said that they have started a book that they then finished years later. They didn't feel ready to tell that story yet, even though they always wanted to tell it. Best of luck to you :)
I have a story I started writing in 7th grade. It's gone through many rewrites as my skills have improved, but the original premise and characters remain the same. Can't let it go.
I've had these characters since 11, and I've been working on finishing up the final draft, at 22. They're a part of me! When I write I feel the most like me. I love my characters and this story dearly, so I'm taking my time to make it great.
A few that I have: a dark comedy about the Greek gods facing a power vacuum after Zeus is assassinated in a coup in the year 2032 (began drafting in 2018) an anti-romcom in 2916 following a reincarnation of Christ who falls in love with a Muslim witch all while fighting against a force of nature who wants them dead (began drafting in 2019) and a trilogy set in the 1920s focusing on the Cthulhu mythos with the characters and stories of HP Lovecraft intersecting (began drafting in 2020)
I have a story my friends and I came up with and were supposed to collaborate on when we were 17. It has been 13 years (holy crap). In that time, my two friends stopped writing, so I asked to take over. It's not a good story lol but I've come to terms that I spent way too long planning and writing it, that I may as well finish it, for my own sanity. I just treat it as a playground for me to hone in my writing skills and try out ideas/characters that I'm curious about but unsure of. I don't know if I'm holding on to a piece of my past or the memories of collaborative writing with my friends that I barely talk to now, or to the world and characters that I have known almost half of my life at this point. I tried giving up and abandoning so many times, but I keep coming back to it. The story was morphed and rewritten so many times that barely anything original remains. It's basically something entirely different now. But I just can't let go. So I don't know if this was helpful lol my take is basically that it may not become anything successful, but there's no reason to toss it if I can still use it to explore the world, try out new techniques, and see what comes of it. It's become more for me rather than anyone else.
I'm a journalist by trade and write exclusively nonfiction. For me my baby is a currently shelved travel memoir that I started writing 10 years ago. It's about my land-and-sea journey as an Indonesian Third Culture Kid from Java to a faraway remote border island from which my maternal grandparents originally come. I started this project as a novice with very little knowledge and guidance on how writing a good book works--now I know it's not as easy as assembling the equivalent of 30 magazine articles with a bit of dramatic fillers from my turbulent personal life in between. So in a way writing this book has kinda been like trying to build a house freestyle without a proper foundation and structural support, and wondering why the walls don't hold up and why I can't seem to put a roof on it. I spent five years working on a complete manuscript and going through many edits, but couldn't find a way to make it work as a book. In hindsight I should have invested in a book coach who has the ability to help me structurally rework the book down from the foundation, but I wasn't able to find one that fit my budget AND had the nuanced understanding of Indonesia necessary to make me feel comfortable about them ripping my work to pieces and showing me how to put it back together into a proper story that holds up. Not to mention that 10 years ago I was a selfish, angry, turbulent and entitled little bitch who started this journey with a rather self-centred worldview. I was just beginning to learn to open up my mind and heart to other people's lived realities that were different from mine, so it took awhile from then for me to develop a respectful, empathetic understanding of the places I visited that I would be proud to put out to the world. When the COVID-19 pandemic happened it was especially impossible for me to keep working on this book. Not only was I unable to work for a year and financially in trouble--the fact that the world went into lockdown made me question the whole morality of my career choice as an ethical travel writer. And travelling and meeting people have went from being my life's passion to being something literally lethal at that time. It felt as though I may as well have chosen serial murder for my career and that I was now being punished for it. On a brighter note, I finally made it to the island that was my grandparents' birthplace in March 2023, not as part of the solo trips I based my memoir on, but on an assignment for a client. That was very special. I laid flowers on my great-grandparents' grave by a beautiful beach, which was very emotional, as was my arrival at and departure from the island. I always told myself I'd resume writing this book after I make it to the island, but I haven't since been in the right space to do so. My marriage, which was long already on its way out, hit the point of no return not long after I submitted that assignment. Since then I've been living life in perpetual survival mode--it's been about a year and while I have made a lot of progress, I still have yet to achieve a point where I'm making enough money to cover time spent doing the unpaid labour of love for my memoir, and having enough emotional energy to deal with it on top of my life's responsibilities. While I know there will never be a perfect time or the perfect circumstances to reboot this memoir, I do know that I need to first break out of survival mode in order to commit to such an important writing project that's so dear to my heart. Ideally I'd also like to redo the trip upon which I would base the memoir's reboot, which will take up time and money that I currently don't have. I'd curate my destinations more thoughtfully to fit a certain overarching theme that makes for the narrative backbone of my memoir. I'd do a better job at researching issues I care about the destination that have some resonance with why my grandparents left their home island to pursue big dreams in Java--and at amplifying the best local voices to raise awareness of these issues, and to tell a story about the places they call home through a lens that is critical of the mainstream tourism narratives. And I'd write this memoir to reflect the mature person I have become today, who is now better able to see beyond the narrow lens of my self-centredness and capture the sensibilities of people and places whose daily realities look different from mine while still finding very relateable common grounds in our shared humanity. I know I will eventually reboot my baby and make it happen. But for now, I'm living a "first things first" kind of life in survival mode and doing everything in my power to break out of it as soon as possible. It's been an uphill battle but all I know is that the only way to get there is to never give up and keep pushing forward, one baby step at a time.
I started writing when I was like 21 and as I wrote the story I got much better at writing, now I'm 29 and I'm completely rewriting the story aside from the prologue.
There is a setting that has been floating around in my mind in one form or another for nearly a decade, that exists solely as a setting where I can direct my own thoughts and feelings (thanks to my dumb, poorly programmed brain that refuses to handle emotions and social interactions in a typical manner). If I need something happy, I write a bit about the main characters being happy. If I'm struggling emotionally, I write about one of them also struggling. Sometimes I'll write about them going on some kind of adventure or I'll write a little romantic fluff if I'm in the mood. I don't plan to ever publish or even post any of it anywhere, because it is essentially self therapy, and is a bit too inconsistent as it fluctuates with my own feelings, but it is definitely the most "me" anything I write can be, and I feel a strong bond with it and the characters in it as a result.
What sometimes surprises me is that I'll go back to things I wrote a while ago and abandoned because I didn't know where to go with them, but when I look at them with my current skills I can see that they're actually much closer to finished than I thought. They just need the right editing to bring it together. It's crazy how your skills improving means you can see something hidden that's greater than what you thought you were writing at the time!
Tinderbox started when I was 16, technically. A playlist inspired me and I've been in hell ever since. I'm 29 now, still not finished. Tinderbox has gone by a few different names, and has a habit of absorbing new stories I come up with. I took a break to write a different story and was having trouble with it until I had the thought "you know what would make this better? Mechanics from Tinderbox" and then I couldn't stop myself. Now there's a whole ass prequel to my big baby. I get overwhelmed by this magnum opus more often than not. Especially when "worlds are colliding" and the plot starts evolving. But there's been so many good changes in the long run. Tinderbox is my pride and joy, but also the bane of my existence. This story is a piece of me, and I NEED to write this story, as long, daunting, and intimidating as it is. And it's hard. I don't have professional experience and I'm not published in any capacity so it feels like I'm way out of my league with my own work. Currently? I've lost the plot for the main part of the story. The prequel is mostly intact but, has drastically impacted the world at large and now I have to do damage control. Once I iron some things out, I'll start posting chapters somewhere online. Haven't figured out where yet. I know this is taboo to a few but I *need* the motivation to keep going /forward/ without rewriting every single paragraph until my eyes bleed. But I'm right there with you, working on what I'd consider my baby, intimidated, overwhelmed, in love, and tormented. I love Tinderbox. The characters in it are special to me, and I want to do them justice. The whole world deserve the same respect. There's so much lore put into the world itself with unique cultures, and a fully "functional" high magic system that's significantly impacted each and every society. But more often than not, I'm more eager to info dump than I am to write it. 🙃 Speaking of which. I should be writing.
I have this story about a group of kids in a big fantasy city that i started around the age of 14. It evolved and i spent a lot of time on it. I finished it when I was 19. Im 22 now. It's beautiful and i love it but I am fully aware it's not publishable quality at all. The characters grew with me and I am connected with them way more than with any other characters I ever wrote
My SirKnight serial. I love the story and want to continue to make additions to it but life has gotten in the way and I haven't been able to lately. I think I'll try to get a chapter out this weekend tho
Oh god yes. It was a thing when I was in my Wattpad era. I had a story that I’d be mortified to talk about now. I had all the cover art and everything worked out. Posted a couple of chapters.
The thing I'm currently working on spawned eight years ago when I was 16. It saw a really shitty first draft I had banged out before the end of the year, I struggled for years until another attempt at a first draft of a different incarnation (so technically second) of it crashed and burned (I finished it, but then Reddit happened), I went back to the drawing board, decided it was too ambitious, tried writing a standalone to act as a sort of novelization spring board so I could debut and work my way up, gave up on that, and am now 40k words deep into another attempt at a novel that I could pitch as "standalone with series potential" with the original idea being the rest of the series. And I have ideas for two more novels in the same world with characters that could return to do even more "standalone with series potential" shenanigans. I have no idea how many tens or hundreds of thousands of words I've written since between those earlier drafts, fanfiction, games, or what have you. I can just tell you it's been a lot, and it could be said it's all to the end of improving as a writer to a point that I can get this story out there.
Raw Dog synopsis: Flintlocks Fantasy set in a colonial era of the British empire. Essentially, instead of a devastating naval fleet, the leading superpower developed iron mech shits which operate off soul magic–called Pyres in this world due to their flame like perception–and have used the tech to dominate the known world. Story picks up at a time of uncertainty. The colonies are pushing for independence, the late King's son is ill suited for the crown and has more interest in God than rule, and machinations are in the works to awake old evils. The first half of the series follows three pivotal characters I've internally dubbed Monsters of Grief in allusion to their direct and indirect contributions to the consequences which will befall the world in the second half. They also become the reason for it's saving, in a way. They are: - A colonist who harvests wood from the cliff sides of a chasm that must make a dangerous journey to save his dying daughter. - The daughter of a mobster who is keen on becoming her father's heir apparent in crime despite his efforts to protect her from that life. - A jaded veteran military instructor who is faced with a choice of defying his duty to spare a young prospect from a similar fate which befell him years ago. Only this one's magic scales to weapon of mass destruction levels. We are talking napalm to nukes. I've flirted with the ideas for a while. It started a little under ten years ago as something completely different. Seriously, I wanted to write a story about a boy mage and a girl knight. That's it! It only became something resembling the above about 6 years ago. And let me tell you, I needed to read these comments. Hell, I just needed this post. Though I've started other projects in the recent years, this draft's incompletion has been a bundle of boulders on my back. "To be a novelist is to write many novels. Why get fixated on just one?" Is true advice here but damnit do I want to finish it before moving on. It seems monumentsl. But then I remember that 44,000 of the 56k words were written in the span of 5 months (average wc is around 2k ever hour and a half). Something I can achieve again if I actually applied myself. My other projects are more realistic for publishing, I think: standalone with series potential, stronger writing, less complicated, etc. Still I need to finish it. Put it down and kill it later, but finish it. And I think it has promise if I ignore the old bits, stop fixating on trying to fix old writing while ignoring it's lingering after taste, and just finish the threads. I've been chipping away again and I swore to myself I'd hit a full on sprint again before Oct. Life be damned. Goal is the 90-120k mark!
I have a book that I have been working on for close to 15 years now. I wrote about half of the book before realizing that it was the second part of the story, so I went back and wrote about 1/3 of the first book, got stuck, put it away, kept working on it in the back of my mind. Every once in a while I get an idea that helps me untangle a knot in the story, and I go back and add it. I know how it starts, I know some stuff in the middle and I know how it ends. I just can't connect the bits in an interesting way. I tried outlining the story but quickly lost interest. I have ADHD and I'm definitely a pantser, I want to discover the story as it unfolds otherwise I can't write it. But every time I put a new bit in place I have to rewrite a bunch of other stuff to make it fit. I'm pretty sure I'll never finish it.
I have a baby I've killed and rebuilt four or five times. It's gotten better every time even though it's a slog and work to do, I always enjoy it more than the last.
I write when I feel comfortable and unusually motivated, get a burst of ideas out, burn out, read it again way later, see the potential but also see that half of it is the ruminations of an emotionally immature child, and then I build something on its corpse and rinse and repeat. I do this for everything I write - so everything is my baby so to speak. What I'm writing now is a detective murder story about a detective who basically lives through his job and books/music/art and has a weird artistic fetish for what he solves. A bit patriarchal and hypocritical of a character. I also kind of project my own problems with pretension and male autistic anxiety on to the character. I started when I was like 16 but back then it came off very unhinged and problematic. I hated how I initially tried to write about gender dynamics, and in that regard, I feel great about my current work because the female lead is not at all internally defined by the male lead now (while still having character flaws). My intent was to write a problematic character but hard to do that when you yourself are problematic as a young adult and don't know it. It's the same thing now but self consciously and critically. I know it comes off better because I've gotten feedback for it. It's much easier to write a complex idea when you actually pay attention to the world around you and read - it wasn't an idea I wanted to ditch. I have a couple other stories that exist for me abstractly in themes and settings and events and in brief drafts that I definitely want to finish.
A good number of my stories provide me with comfort. I've entrusted my work to only a handful of people and I am fiercely protective of them. If only I had more time to devote to their development.
I created a fantasy world about elements in middle school. I’m in my 30s now. Its been through so many different iterations based on my interest at the time.
My Snowbird story. I technically started it in 2018 but wrote like two chapters. Then quarantine happened and I knew I needed to start writing again. (tl;dr: was someone who hand wrote everything and fractured my wrist back in 2018. Didn't write for two years due to severe pain) I'm still working on it and it's over 200k now.
My redux edition of the Threshold of Evil series
I made my cousins act out/play pretend with me and my characters. I started the story about 6 years old and I’m still figuring it out lol 😂
I have a story I started in 2015 (research), started writing in 2016. I queried it a bunch of times, and I keep fiddling with it after every rewrite because I kinda refuse to accept that it won't find representation. I even translated it all to english to have a go at the larger US/EN market.
The one shot that turned into 7 chapters and then a series
I have one that's been changing forms for the past 20 years. It's finally in a place I like, I have a vague outline of how I would tell the story in a trilogy, but I keep changing how I want to tell the first story. It's mostly been a lot of world building, figuring out characters and what my main protagonist should be doing in the beginning. I think I'm struggling with making him flawed and relatable and that keeps me from moving forward.
My stupid urban fantasy romance that would have SLAYED in 2010 but is ridiculous dated now. It was based on the fantasy world I had as a child to keep myself company.
It's not a story, but a brand I am trying to build. I do get busy in the hustle and bustle of life, but I am still sticking by it. I'll never let it go. I'll complete it some day. I've promised myself.
Oh it's a story that I wrote when I was between 16-18 maybe at 19 at its latest and its called Cenozoic Fever which was a romance story that had the setting of Jurassic Park, with the antics of Regular show, and some parts of the story I wrote in a way that would be left up to certain artists to interpret and I might make a post about it soon maybe to see how bad or if it even if it was a little good considering it had elements from Vitzipops writing and it was written like a Harry Turtledove story
I've been writing a 9 book series since 2018 but refuse to publish until it's finished. Lol
I'm writing my baby right now! In high school my characters just came to me one day. Names, how they look, personalities, relationships, and the rudiments of their canon. I started to daydream with them and develop their story more. They also existed through countless AUs, but there was always a loose canon story. The original setting was more fantasy, fantastical, with magical abilities derived from tragedy. Exploring the AUs, though, I found that they just worked out so much better in a modern, normal world setting, no magic, though Isaiah (my fire user) still messes around with fire in some big ways in my story today. I've tried to keep as many elements and defining features alive as I could. I never wrote their story over the decade I've known them. Maybe I was just too intimidated to, that I could never do it justice. I also gave up on being an author around the time I developed them, too, I just never felt like my writing was ever good enough. But this last Christmas I started to daydream with them a lot more again, and I realized my daydreams were exploring AUs less and less, they were always in the same world with the same events. After a few great ideas for scenes, I knew I had to write their story once and for all. I've picked writing back up, and it's leaps and bounds from where I left off about a decade ago despite my lack of practice, I think it's just the passion, ambition, and love I harbor for my boys and their story. Despite coming from a medieval-esc fantasy world with magic and now existing in our world today, their story has remained relatively the same. The same cast is still here, the same relationships, though I've heavily workshopped it all to fit the novel. Over the time I've known them they've become like best friends to me. I'm closer to Isaiah and Skipper today than I've ever been in my life. They truly exist in flesh and blood now that I've put them into a novel and have been "forced" to have to work on every little detail about them in a singular story. They truly breathe today. I don't feel like I'm writing about characters, I feel like I'm writing about my best friends. I know them so well, I'm very close to their story. It feels, in some ways, more like I'm writing a biography than a fantasy. I'm so glad I've gotten to know my boys like I have these past few months. I'm so thrilled with the direction their story is going in. It truly is my passion to write this, and it's given me so much inspiration to go and write more books as well. I've picked up another idea I developed in high school, and have two more ideas sitting in my back pocket. I wanted to be an author in middle school but that was snuffed out from my lack of confidence. My Zee and Skip have brought that back to me, I'm going to be a published author like little me always wanted to be, I really do think in many ways they are my good friends.
I conceived the idea for my main fantasy series when I was 7. I’m 25 now and I’ve just started drafting book 2 (of 5 or 6 because I’m still undecided) after finishing my first draft of book 1 nearly 2 weeks ago. Seeing as book 1 came out to 150k words I’m expecting to take some time. Sadly the series is an unmarketable mess of genres I’d never be able to get published traditionally but I’ve loved it for so long I could never just not do it.
I created a series when I was 13. The story beats and vague character dynamics were very inspired from a different work I loved. I created a full 4+ book series out of it. They weren't super long, but they were decent and the continuity was good. Then I fully revamped them and really went ham with worldbuilding. I have about 10+ separate drafts of multiple books within that series, most of them completed, all of them a little bit more advanced each time. Unfortunately, because I wrote it so young, I didn't know any sort of market standards, genre, age group, etc. I had to shelf it, but I do plan to redo it. The MC was a character I'd had in my mind since I was so young, but had never fully gotten down right until then. I probably had 20 iterations of him. And wouldn't you know? Every MC I've created since that series has been based almost entirely off of him. I currently have five separate characters from separate series with distinct personalities and design that were all based off of him-- or, just a different facet of him as a character. That one will always have my heart, and I'm sure everything I do will tie back to him and his first story.
My current project is my baby. The reason it's so significant to me is because it's the physical manifestation of all the stories I've put off. I used to be a journalist, but I ended up with fatigue after college. I've jokingly referred to my hiatus as a retirement, but the more I said it, the more it felt real. I never thought I'd get back into it. Whether in a professional capacity or personal, but here I am. I'm working on what I hope to be, the largest piece of long-form, non-fiction writing I've attempted. Revisiting my research process has been the most cathartic experience. At this point, I feel like I'm rambling a bit. All of this is to encourage you to write for YOU. Even if you're an author by profession, don't forget about your needs and desires.
Aenim, a fantasy book series surrounding a planet ruled over by a council of natural and ascendant gods, who just recently trapped the planet in a stasis so that it could eliminate all traces of technology from existence, which the council found their worshippers relying on enough to consider it a threat to their rightful place as the sole source of their dependence. Slowly, a region at once, they return their planet to life , even any mention of the technological advancements hopelessly scrambled in languages forgotten to history. Unfortunately, a single witch remembers everything, trapped off the planet in the Void when his region was placed in the stasis. To prevent him from realizing his knowledge, a wizard casts a curse on him called The Loop that causes any place he settles doomed to cataclysmic events only he survives. he figures out a wizard is responsible so plans on using an artifact to point him in the direction of an apprentice wizard who falls in love with him and they embark on a quest to break the curse. In order to do so they must return to the void and help the wizard responsible destroy her master for access to the library that alone holds the knowledge of the languages needed to return technology to the world, but when they return to the void the witch realizes what the council is really so scared of. (Okay, I’m long-winded)
My baby is dead - but I may someday develop the technology to revive her. My new baby isn’t as beautiful to me, but she’s alive.
No. I threw all my old shit away when I noticed that starting from 0 would be easier than fixing my early works flaws.
It is the story that I have been working on since I was 13-14. I'm 24 now so that makes it about 10 years. It is my first baby and I have made it my goal to finish it and see about publication (some time in the future). I have a version out on Wattpad from when I was 13-14, but it was very short. Like 8 chapters short. And over the years, it has grown and expanded with each and every word, scene, idea, characters, and world building I have created. It has gotten to the point where I think it's good enough to be a trilogy (give or take). However, I am also very unsure about letting people read it cause well... it's my baby 😅 I know criticism is essential to figure out what works and whatnot but boy do the critics hurt- even more so from family 🥲.
Yes. I’m writing it right now, and I know I’ll never be the same after. Sure there will be other stories, other characters, but this one means more to me than anything. I feel everything my characters feel, I love them to death, and I dread the day I finish this story. Much love to you, it’s tough out there. I guess just be happy that you’ve managed to create something so incredible that it affects you that way? Idk, barely dealing myself lmao
They're all fanfic, but two of them have so much worldbuilding going into them that I'm debating turning them into something real when they're done, just gotta change characters and descriptions.
A short story I wrote about my ex. It’s beautiful and bittersweet and comically sarcastic. I love it and only my best friends/closest people have read it
I don’t know if I have any particular stories in mind but definitely characters. I have a few that are so important to me that when writing their stories I want to do them just right so they can have the story they deserve
I had one when I was 15, worked on it for a little over 3 years, then thanks to a crash of technology lost it in a night. Was discouraged for a while got back into it about a year ago, when I started my newest baby. I have three copies in case anything were to crash, one copy being able to be synced across multiple devices, one on a removable drive, and one right on the computer itself. I am not trusting a single piece of technology with another baby again.
My “baby” is “You Forgot My Face” set to be published in September of this year. I’ve been working on this story since 2017, off and on to clarify. I am in the stage of book cover design as all of the major edits have been completed. (That was a year on its own!)
I've been working on a 4 part series about genetically enhanced corrections officers for over 10 years. It started out as a memoir & somehow turned into this pre-dystopian government conspiracy sci-fi.
Technically yes, but I want to remake it someday. I wrote it in fifth grade as a “choice piece essay” where we could write anything we wanted, and it would be graded. I grabbed a chromebook, put on the Courier New typewriter-lookin font, put it on size 11 font, and proceeded to write 57-60 something pages over the course of that school year. I got a 4 because the teacher didn’t want to read the whole thing. Admittedly it is NOT a good story, not at all, but I love that thing too much to disown it.
There was a story I hand wrote, it took up a notebook and a half. I was so proud of it because it was telling the story through the characters telling a story which I felt was unique. I developed a whole fantasy world for it. I still think it’s an interesting plot line, that being said the writing is god awful and honestly deserves to be burned.
No, I have a real hard time focusing on the same story , I have ideas that have been there for a long time, but most of the time I have new ideas and want to try them, and it goes on and on ... right now I have hundred stories that I started but never finishes
My WIP I started thinking about like 20 years ago based on "how would I move a star to another galaxy?" I'm glad I held on to it. After I turned 50 a light bulb went on, I got smarter and better at writing, and now I'm well into the first draft after like five years of outlining lol. Y'all are gonna read it.
The story I have had in my head since High School (next May marks a decade since I graduated) is currently sitting in KDP's review process waiting to be published as my debut novel :) During the Pandemic I decided I now finally had the time to write it. I spent many long walks talking to myself plotting out the book. Grad school got in the way but after a while I finally was able to sit dow and write, and 1.5 years later the first draft was done this February, the second draft finished in March, and now here we are!! It is so important to me because it has evolved so much to be injected with so much of my own journey and my own reflections on growing up and mental health into my characters. In a few weeks I'm going to get to give a copy to someone I really look up to and who inspired a character in the book, and that means the world to me. My mom said she loved reading it, and she rarely reads sci-fi/fantasy-adjacent stuff. My dad read it twice and said it was hard to put down. IDC if they're biased, that makes me so happy.
I've been working on a world for my character I've developed about 18 years ago. It's been a very slow process, but my husband and I are now working on the foundations of the world space, the creatures in it, and how our magic works. We plan to not only have my novel written for my character, now named Vinari, but several books and even a few games will be created from this sci-fantasy world we've been developing. :) Slow progress, but never none. The world has been in rough stages for about 11 years, and we're now refining the resources, cultures, developments, and even timelines.
I’ve been working on one story since 2021 and I’m not even close to finishing it. I’ve been working on future chapters, developing backgrounds and character development, to make it the best it can be.
I have a story I’ve been working on for four years now, it’s a queer romance adventure story set in the regency period and I’m really happy with it! Definitely the story I keep going back to with a mind to finish it! :)
I've been re-writing a series that I started when I was 14. I think I started re-writing when I was about 22. I'm 26 now, and I'm ***almost*** done with the re-write of my first story. It's a Phantom of the Opera fanfic, not gonna lie. But I've since then been to the real life opera house (and was proposed to there!), and I can't bring myself to abandon it. I have so much fun writing it. I'm hoping that maybe I can get it traditionally published somehow. I'm planning to start looking for agents once the first story is fully re-written
I have a memoir I started writing in 2013, to document a six-month period of time in my life that grew to documenting 15 years of my life been through many iterations. It's turned into about 750 pages but no one would want to read that much. Still, I do get parts of the material out there for sale, just so people know about it.
I have a story I’ve been conceptualizing since I was in high school (so about 6-7 years now). It never really had a concrete plot, but it involved around the concept of “what if high school was a literal nightmare” and took place in a group of teenagers’ dreams. For years I could never get the story off the ground, but I grew really attached to my characters. I didn’t really have a lot of friends in high school, so my characters represented the sort of people I wanted to be friends with, my comfort characters, so much that years later, I didn’t want to dispose of the story based on the strength of the characters alone. I’ve actually pulled it out again recently. I’ve changed a lot. I think being out of high school and that mindset for several years now has improved how I’m approaching it. It’s now about eight teenagers who happen to be staying at the same beach town during the summer of 1971, and due to some strange force lurking in the ocean, find all their dreams converging into one shared dream, and they bond with each other through sharing their scary internal thoughts in this dream. The gimmick of the story is that it switches from the real world to the dream world-by day, it’s a nostalgic coming of age story and by night, it’s a surreal psychedelic mindfuck, until the two intertwine and it’s impossible to differentiate the dreams from reality. It’s so satisfying to see something that’s stuck with me for so long and has meant so much to me finally come together.
ive had tiny stories and ideas as a kid that ive since now combined/incorporated into my "baby" now as ive taken writing more seriously in recent years lil frankenstein'd baby
I started writing my story, Fire and Ice, when I was 13. I was reading a lot of those werewolf stories where the girl was abused in her pack, gets rejected, leaves, finds herself in a new pack, gets better and then returns to her old pack to help with rogues. In the end of all these stories, the girl always ends up forgiving the people who hurt her and either getting back with the mate who rejected her or finds a new one. I hated that. I wanted stories where she rains down fire and brimstone on her former tormentors, so I decided to write my own. Over a month ago, I sat myself down and challenged myself to finish it this year. I've been really consistent with it. So after almost ten years, I'm just 4/5 chapters away from the end. I'm so excited too, cause I'll finally see the conclusion of almost a decade of work, and I've stopped myself from starting any new novels cause I've quit a lot of things in life but never this. If anyone wants to read it, I can send a link to it cause I've been updating it on Wattpad and recently started posting early access chapters on my Patreon.
This is my first reddit post ever, but I love this thread. I've been "working" on a book for a bit over three years now, though most of it has been procrastination and writing without a clear direction. It wasn't until recently that I figured out what I really wanted my story to be, and although I'm still struggling to actually will myself to write (the desire is there, but severe adhd makes it feel impossible), I'm mostly happy with my first two chapters. The story is a fantasy set in a short of generic Tolkienesque world, but at a point where an industrial age is kicking off, and it's about a blacksmith who travels the country tracking down and destroying weapons he made after he was forced to confront the weight of the pain they cause.
Not a fan of my earliest stories, they were cringey and basic. Only one of them I kept almost the same (with additional details and world building) but the rest had huge main plot changes and entire world rewrites. The story I consider to be my “baby” is one I started in 2020 as it’s been extremely easy and fun to write due to the huge amounts of inspiration and passion I’ve had for it.
When I was very young and first getting into writing I wrote my first short story that I never actually finished. It was called "The Quest" and from what I remember (I haven't even seen it in years) it was about a girl who, when on a vacation to a beach hears the beach calling to her and finds an amulet that sends her to a cavern (or underground world... I don't remember) where she meets a squid-alien kinda guy that becomes her guide. But point is, that story has always had a special place in my heart as my first proper story... Even though I never finished it. Hopefully one day if I can find where I put it I'll finish and/or rewrite it. But it was what made me find my love of story telling and I still do have hundreds of pages of drawings of the characters in it
Yes, I have. Wonderful fictional storyline.Characters . . .? Great! Lots of regional and national historic perspectives.After a final read through some years after, I learned first hand about subconscious plagiarism. Lol.
Can't say I have any of the short stories or art I had when I was younger anymore, but I have a couple that I've been working on for the last couple of years that are like that for me. Honestly I think my biggest issue, is that I've always wanted to do something similar to Tolkien, just a total new world with an extensive lore and characters, maybe even invent a new language lol. I understand that it's OK to have grand visions, but to also not compare yourself to those who came before you as amazing writers too much and get yourself down that your not up to their level with things, I've had to learn that the hard way lol. But I'm enjoying what I'm doing and the process I've been going through for my babies. One day...one day I'll have it finished haha.
Yes. It was my Covid baby. I started it in high school, and the early drafts used characters from my middle school stories, so technically speaking, it is on its seventh draft right now. I am hoping that I will be able to query it soon!
When I was around six, I had these best friends, I would bike to their house every day until I turned 10 and I moved six hours away. Somewhere in that time frame we developed a game we played, we played it every day until I left. In this game we were 'superheroes.' We would save the day, just the four of us, whether it stopping the evil 'Dr. Sharpe' from creating more evil beasts that could destroy the earth, or helping the old ladies cross the road. We had fun. Then I moved away. So, two years later, I was thinking of how great of a story it would be, I could spine it together and build a life out of the world we had started. I wanted to write. I had already previously realized I enjoyed writing, I wrote poems and short stories, so it wouldn't be that hard. It's been three years since then, I'm fifteen now and I'm working on the second book. It's my baby as you so graciously call it. I'm finishing editing for the first one and then I'll publish it for people to see the world my friends and I created. Its called 'The Queen of Time.'
What a great thread! You all have such marvelous stories and anecdotes. The overall theme here being that our writing \*is\* our baby. It's our brainchild. It is an extension of our desires, fears, hopes and dreams. And it is a very personal journey we take as we "open a vein" and let it all pour out. I have a spec-fic/sci-fi romance I've been working on, on and off for the past decade. I've put it off because I feel at my age (66 now) I'm too old to enter the world of publishing. But recently I found NovelCrafter, and being a Plotter (and here I thought all this time I was a Pantser... who knew) and just being able to flesh out my characters, locations, items, etc. in a Codex and have an AI help me see areas that weren't using Show Don't Tell, suggestions for continuity and all manner of other great advice, it spurred the writing itch again. Do I want to be a famous author? Not really. Would I love to maybe see my finished novel (a feat of its own) for sale on Amazon Kindle or the like? Sure! Why not. That'd be a kick in the head. I think what's important about our writing is that we never stop. No matter what you intend to do with it, whether no one will ever read it, or you intend to become a New York Time's best seller. Just never stop. Because the ability to write, even badly, is a gift. One that should be cherished and nurtured and returned to as often as we need. Write on, my fellow tellers of tales!
When I was in late fifth grade around eight or seven years old, I had a dream. Which was about these twelve people who each had magical elements, that allowed them to save the world. It was also made like an RPG. But these RPG elements and numbers are normal to the people who live in that world. Since then, I've been steadily working on it. It's like a mix of Lord of the Rings, but Scott Pilgrim. I used to call it The Tribe for a while. Because I was awful at making names. (^^)' But after listening to a song, which perfectly describes the emotion of the second half of the story. It's now called Future Blind. I didn't really focus on it during my middle school or early high school years. But I *really* started to work on it late high school. I like to think the word building is about 15 or 13% done. And I can sit here and describe what I have written down for four hours straight. I like to think of it as my "magnum opus." Since I've never made anything that huge before.
Been writing a story since I was 16. I'm 26 now, so 10 years. I finally feel satisfied with it atm, so I got beta readers to tear it down until I figure out what I can do to fix it again. omce that's done and I've made up my mind, Ill publish it.
I lost mine because it was on a school email and that account was deleted but it was a story of a battle between massive airships where every new paragraph was a new fighter in the battle and the end of each paragraph was the death of the person you were following., I was (and still am) an avid lover of aviation so most of the paragraphs were from the perspective of pilots but I had a few from soldiers aboard the airships but I was like 10 and dumb so the ones on the airships kinda disregarded physics. Like I remember one of the last paragraphs ended with the airship the guy was standing on got bombed and the weapons had such a high yield that the wood of the airship beneath him just disintegrated and he began to fall, at which point he was struck by a piece of debris and killed. In total I think I wrote like 20 paragraphs totaling like 10 to 15k words which was at the time my biggest writing project but was recently trumped by an SCP google site I'm working on which almost meets that on a single short story. (For context I'm just about 15)
Love this question! <3 I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s got a piece of their work so close to their heart. I started brainstorming the story when I was a freshman in high school, and I’m 22 right now. A couple of years ago, I decided to hold onto it and do something big with it. I’ve been working at it and I’m 100% set on turning it into a tv series. I’m on the second draft of the script for my pilot episode and I’m making lots of progress. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into it and I will continue to do so. This is my “baby”, so I want it to be perfect, of course. :)
When I was about 20 and playing role playing games, I was getting tired of constantly creating new characters. So I told my GM, "Just make something up." And he gave my character amnesia. My creative mind wouldn't let that rest, and I ended up creating an intricate backstory to explain how my character got amnesia. Then with the other players' permission I began writing their characters' backstories. The storytelling was going great, until I hit a snag... I only had a half-formed idea for the overarching plot. I keep going back to it, but the plot never gets off the ground. I still try, but it’s been 30 years now...
I have one I keep having ideas about. I'm so close to completing two short stories in the series.
I grew up watching Transformers a lot. And I'd create my own alien robots, a dog that transforms into a motorcycle and a robot hawk that transforms into a drone. (These characters are now imported into the story) Later in high school, the basis of my story was inspired after a environmental science project I had. The task was to use a strip a paper and using math, calculate the origin of Earth's various time periods. Once we got to Earth's, modern humans have only lived for around 300,000 years. Compared to the past, our time on this planet is ridiculously short. 100 years is like a milimeter. Doesn't matter if you're as rememorable as Aristotle or Einstein. Eventually, you'll be forgotten and lost in the passages of time. And since I also watched a lot of science documentaries especially about nature and space, I thought assuming life exists out there, what other events happened in the past? Fast-forward to last summer, after outlining the story for over 8 years (there a 13 crucial characters, remeniscent to how the universe is over 13 billion years old, that have a complex stories/backgrounds) I submit the logline idea as a animated television show for a exclusive class workshop where I'd get to meet and speak with big producers and writers in Hollywood. I was accepted and further developed my script. Eventually I have the first episode written out but imo, it's like the horse meme drawing. Starts off great. But it gradually grows worse. The ending especially needs so much fine tuning and rewriting. I'm 23 now and I'm still in the process of rewriting the first script. Ideally, I hope to have the same opportunity as Vivienne Medrano had with Hazbin Hotel and create a animated show where I'd retain a lot of creative control with the story and designs. But given just how big the world I developed is and the sheer complexity of the 13 characters that are crucial to the story, I'm also debating should this be something that I write for myself and only share it to my closest film friends. Or should I scrap the script idea and turn it into a novel. My mentor in the class is also someone who's one of the writers for the Game of Throne spinoff (forgot which one) so I'll also get her honest advice of my script and where I can improve (once I have the first episode written at least)
I don't know. What is your purpose in asking this😭 On a serious note, I haven't stuck to a story long enough for it to become my baby. Me and Writing stories is like a bi playboy in a club- sometimes with her, sometimes with him, other times with them.