The Dumped Club

pop the champagne folks

So hi! I haven't been on here in forever and I just wanted to come back to where I started and update you on everything that's happened in the past year. I finished writing TDC exactly a year ago (27th November 2016) and boy, has it been quite the year ever since I wrote those last few words, posted two short stories centered around the characters and left the project off like that.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for 1K reads. Pop the champagne folks, it finally happened!

I never expected this book to do well, especially a few months ago when I read some of it over and cringed. But you guys seemed to like it and that's all that matters after all. I doubt anyone will read this note, and it's OK if they don't, but I just wanted to talk about my progress as a writer and what I plan to do.

About a week before Christmas 2016, I began writing my third novel "Infinity Is Beyond Us", which follows Kara (Faith's daughter) and another character called Theon. I finished the first draft with approximately 141K words under my belt in late April, spent a month reoutlining and working, and began writing the second draft in July. I'm currently just over 75% done with the second draft (I'm writing this instead of doing my NaNo writing oops) and honestly, I wouldn't be doing anything else. I'm really, really passionate about this book.

My writing has grown so much from the epilogue that went up last year to the chapter I posted last week. I've found so much love for exploring thoughts and emotions and sneaking in bits of symbolism, I'm properly editing my chapters (?!?!) and I'm writing characters that I am absolutely in love with. Looking back on this book now, I notice the cracks in my writing that I didn't see back then. Like for example, I don't see a lot of substance in characters like Love, Prudence and sometimes even Hope. I think I could've done so so much more with these characters; I could've given them a proper character voice, I could've given them more background and personality. When I read back to some of the character scenes, I feel like I told the characters what happened in their lives rather than them explaining their past to me. I feel like I built them from the problems I wanted to introduce, and that's a big mistake if you want realistic characters. 

This problem still occurs in my current draft with a character named Sawm, Kara's best friend; I feel like I based her background on being smart and experiencing a lot of racism and she's a pretty underdeveloped character. 

The only character I feel that is "decently" (this is a very loose term) written is Faith. Even while writing TDC, Faith was the one I could really connect to and it was something I didn't have with the other girls and I guess that's why I wanted to keep writing her story in "Infinity Is Beyond Us". 

I am currently in the same position as the girls in the book. I'm nearly fourteen, going to choose my GCSE's soon and I can feel the frustration the girls felt everyday. I think that's the good part with this book; even though I was like, twelve, while writing the book, I wrote it in a way that I can relate to it a year later. The plot is "meh"; there is no real structure, it's just a bunch of problems and how they're resolved or how the characters. It's the same thing with IIBU, so I really need to tighten up the plot in the third draft.

This book is still one of my babies. It allowed me to learn so much about writing and creating, it's taught me so much about how you and your writing can change over time and I still love the characters, despite some of them being kinda flat. I did actually think about writing a third draft of this book a few months ago, but I don't want to lose the love I had for this project last year. Besides, I would completely have to strip it from its origins and rewrite most of it, and I'm OK with having a book that is meh, but that I loved while writing. I'm not aiming to perfect all my writing/books, I just aim for progress.

So what does that mean for the next year?

My current main goal is to finish writing the second draft of IIBU by December/January, February at the latest. Then, I want to read everything over, make notes and write the third draft. Next year I'm pretty much going to be focusing on improving IIBU and hopefully getting out of my comfort zone and showing more people my writing. A little idea about a short story involving art, WW1 and two gay men is circulating, but I'll have to see if I'm up to write a short story. And I also want to outline a new book or two (lips sealed about this goal). All of this can change, but at least I have a vague idea about what I'm doing; a month ago I was stressing over not knowing what to write in 2018 XD

Once again, I would like to thank you all for your support ever since I branched off from fanfiction. Sharing my work with you has been a pleasure and I hope you guys will continue with me on my journey. If you liked this little chapter about writing, let me know what your current projects are and let's have a discussion in the comments. Please give IIBU a read; I'm trying to hit 1K reads by the end of the year and we're getting pretty close, but not quite there yet. And you can follow me on twitter if you want to follow my writing  (antoana_m).

stay strong, stay smart

Antoana xx