Welcome! This is the first of a five-part series about how my debut novel, The Other Side, came to be. From Conception to Publication. Today’s post is the origin, the beginning, the Conception.

Writing and publishing a debut novel was the very first step of my novelist career. I wanted to make a singleton story that would be the debut novel. Starting from scratch. I said “start from scratch” because at this point I already had about twenty or so already started novels, if not more. I also had another ten novels or so waiting to be started, each full of notes about characters and magic systems and cultures.

So for the first one, the first novel, I wanted to make a brand new story. So I needed to figure out what my debut novel will be. At the same time, I needed to pick a story and stick with it. That is because a big fault of mine while trying to start The Other Side was that I kept choosing a story then changed my mind, chose something else and then changed my mind again.

So basically writing “something else” meant there was always something else. I’d pick a story then pick something else. I’d write that for a while then decide to write something else. And it kept happening. My younger sister, who is a main supporter of mine, once lost her temper with me. Rather angrily, she told me that I needed to pick something and stick with it, to pick a story and just freaking writing something.

I said, okay, okay, and I decided to make an all-new story just for the purpose of debuting. That was The Other Side, in 2010.

Then four years later, I had still not finished it, and I had once more begun writing something else.

And during that time I wasn’t getting anything written, let alone finished. The longer I continued to hem and haw the longer nothing got finished and the longer nothing got finished then it meant I’d never realize my dream, the dream of being a successful novelist.

And realizing my dream has been the most important thing to me.

This vicious cycle of choosing new stories then abandoning them then choosing something new then abandoning it made me realize that my worst enemy was myself. There was no one holding me back or confusing me or derailing me. It was only me doing so and with no outside help required.

It’s my choices, it’s my poor decisions and my tendency to do what was fun and easy over rather than write my novel.

So then I thought, now what?

How can I stop my own self-defeating prophecy? How do I stop myself from standing in my own way? How do I stop from constantly undercutting my own attempts to succeed my goals? How do I stop being my own enemy?

I thought God. God is always the answer. God is always the one you turn to for help, He is always the one who will always be there. So I prayed. I prayed that I needed His help, and that I couldn’t do it by myself. I prayed for Him to bless me with the tools, ability, power and strength to write the novel.

So I started The Other Side in 2010 and then in September of 2018, The Other Side was up for purchase on Amazon.

The next post is about the progress of writing The Other Side, now that I’ve explained how the novel came about.

See you then!

And as always, while I write my cat Aomine keeps me company at my side.