Oh, man. Today, I wrote a chapter that I have thought about for over three years. It completes a major arc for Sariel, and shows so much maturity for him, as a character. And it also is a coming of age and understanding for Kisha Agalal. I got really emotional, sitting here on the couch, typing away and letting the characters just take me through the scene.
I’m afraid to reread the chapter right now. First drafts are always so flawed. You type so much, so fast, in an emotional chapter like this that there are going to be typos and mistakes. The first reading will drag me down and I’ll revisit my old misgivings about completing this series: namely, that no one is going to read it and that all the time and money I’ll invest into it will be wasted on what is obviously just a vanity for me–a need to complete this series in a way that will bring some finality to the few readers who have trudged through Lucifer’s Odyssey with me.
But in truth, I love the characters, and I love the message of this book. There is no real ambiguity in Shadows of Our Fathers. The shadows being cast here are both literal and figurative and obvious (I hope), and there are so many meanings conveyed here. I hope readers read this one more deeply than they seem to have done in Lucifer’s Odyssey. When the series is all done, I hope to just lay out what I was doing/thinking and why. I wish I could say more, but I don’t want to spoil anything for those readers who do plan on reading the final novel.
Anyway, to any other authors out there, I hope you feel this same sense of elation sometimes. When emotion and thoughts pour out of your fingers or pens and into the story in front of you, it’s just so euphoric. It’s such a relief to have storytelling as an outlet. The creativity. The personal rewards for persistence and even the frustrations of those days where you have to walk away to get a clearer point of view. I’m sure this story will find its way into the rubbish bin of history, but that simply doesn’t matter to me right now. All that matters is I’m about of a three fourths of the way through with the first draft, and I feel great about almost every chapter I’ve revised and drafted since I’ve picked Shadows of Our Fathers back up.