Candor And Curiosity (A Slenderman Romance)

The Future Of Candor And Curiosity

Greetings all! I hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy new year. So, it's been a while since I've made any comments regarding updates or what I plan to do with Candor and Curiosity from here on out. As many of you have noticed, it's been about a year since the last update; and since we're in 2019, in a few months we could even call it two years.

I know I've made comments previously on why I hadn't been updating. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I moved across the country, but ended up moving back because my family and I were essentially tricked by a family member into moving there. The rest had to do with starting school, and then after that, it was just writer's block. 

I know that everyone gets writer's block from time to time, but the kind I had just wasn't normal. It completely destroyed my ability to write anything for an entire year. Trying to type words just felt like I was slicing myself open, and everything I wrote just came out sounding bad. During the entirety of that period, I let my inner critic keep me from writing. It was traumatizing to me that the thing I loved to do most in the world had become so terribly painful and impossible, but I knew that I couldn't force myself and cause further damage to my psyche. 

That being said, I am terribly sorry for not updating this book. Believe me, I wanted to, because there is just sooooooo much to this story and I wanted to be able to write it all. I know a lot of people were waiting for an update and I ended up letting them down, and by now I'm not sure how many people will be reading this. Either way, I just felt I needed to apologize for being absent and make a final decision on what I'll be doing with this book. 

After thinking about it for quite some time, I've finally come to terms with what needs to happen. While I haven't fully recovered from writer's limbo, I'm in a much better position to write than I was a year ago. I'm still taking great pains to train myself to write again, since not really writing anything for so long took its toll on my ability to write a cohesive story line. Since this is the case, I've decided I'm going to delay on Candor and Curiosity for a while, but it isn't because I don't feel like writing it. Quite the contrary. I love this book and this story so much that I want to bring it to its full potential. As it stands, Candor and Curiosity is not at its full potential. 

There are many critical details I should've included in the beginning, and there are certain foundations I should've set to make the story progress smoother. Also, since I haven't written on this book in a year, I've found that I've lost touch with Elizabeth's voice, which is why all my attempts at a Chapter 37 have been futile. I simply can't "hear" her voice anymore, as weird as that sounds, and if I tried to write without hearing it, the story would sound more like an essay than a narrative. 

So, I have decided that in due time, I am going to completely rewrite Candor and Curiosity. And when I do, it will be from start to finish. I won't abandon it early like I did last year. I'm going to write all of it if it's the last thing I do. 

The characters, setting, and plot will all remain the same. I won't be changing the ground concepts. The only big change I'll be making is shifting the time period. I originally wrote this book to be set in the late 90s, but after weighing out all my options, I've decided that a setting in the 21st century is sufficient. 

Perhaps another big change I anticipate happening is there being more groundwork. I'd already gotten comments in the past about the book "taking too long to reach a climax", but the setup can't be avoided. If everything works out as planned, the chapters will be longer and I'll begin to weave more intriguing elements into the beginning to keep the story going. What I'm really trying to achieve (call me ambitious) is a novel-like setup. I want to write Candor and Curiosity as if its a novel you would find on a bookshelf. I might not be capable of that right now, but that's why I've been practicing with smaller writing projects and trying to read as much as I can. I have really high hopes for this story, and because I love it so much and have put so much thought into it for four whole years, I want to see it be the very best it can possibly be. 

The fact that this idea has stuck with me for four years tells me that its a real gem. I've had other ideas that I just let go when I got bored of them, but truthfully I've never once been bored of this story. Almost everyday, a new part of the story, or some tiny detail just reveals itself to me and makes me want to write my heart out. 

Another thing that inspired me to rewrite this book is what I've learned about the news industry since then. I think its important for me to frame the newspaper companies more realistically in order to fully immerse the readers into Elizabeth's everyday job. Another important thing would be the wide spectrum of characters I have. Thus far, there have been a lot I haven't introduced yet, but there have also been some I introduced but never really expanded on. I want to change that. I want my heroes and anti-heroes to be believable, and I want my villains to be four dimensional. 

Of course, as with anything, I know that the rewrite won't exactly follow the same order as the original. I know that it will end up charting its own course, no matter how much I plan. That's one of the things I love about writing: there are times when you write the story, but there are those magical times when the story writes itself for you. 

To conclude (since I've dragged this on for a while), I will be rewriting Candor and Curiosity, and once it's done I'll write any supporting books it needs. I'm not sure if anyone will agree with my decision, but I think having a fresh start would help me go with the flow better. In the end, I really hope to get this book traditionally published. It would really mean a lot to me, so that's also a goal for the future. 

I hope that clears up any questions anyone may have had. It sort of kills me to restart because this book is already near 50, 000 reads. . . but I'll do what's best for the book. 

Thanks again :)