It took longer than I originally planned, in part because the novel became longer than I originally planned, but I finally finished Impressions.  Or, to be more precise, I finished the first draft of Impressions, which is now with my writing group and other beta readers for feedback before I start my cycle of revisions, solicit more feedback, and finally begin sending it out to possible literary agents.  That the whole revision process lies ahead makes the “I’m finished” a bit less satisfying, but this is still significant.  While I’ve finished novels before, this is the first novel draft I’ve written since I began really taking my writing seriously (around the time of IGC Publishing’s launch).  It was a more intensive, dedicated effort than those previous novel drafts, and I learned a great deal about my process over the project’s course.  This post will explore some of those lessons, as well as share reflections on the process overall and specifically for part three, since I don’t need to subject you to two separate posts for part three and the novel overall.

Beginning with part three, my greatest concern would be that it would struggle to live up to part two.  Part two is really an arc of Raven learning to take initiative for himself, and he has an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that at the end, before we roll into part three where he must struggle with the consequences of making those decisions.  It can feel like something of a step backward, and the plot in part three turns more outwardly focused, with its explorations of Soferand.  I don’t worry that part three isn’t interesting, but that it will have a hard time comparing to part two (update: after receiving some initial feedback from readers, I may have been needlessly concerned on this count).

I had a more detailed outline for part three, breaking it out chapter by chapter, than for any other part of the book (parts one and two just had a few paragraphs to summarize the part, instead of a sentence-long chapter breakdown).  This was an improvement to my writing process, and something I intend to do going forward (I already have such an outline for Rogue Planet), but it did not make my progress on part three much faster.  Some authors talk about the ending being the easiest part to write, because they just have to follow through on what they’ve already written, but not for me.  I find endings consistently the more difficult and slowest part for me to write, because I must hold the most information and components in my head while I write it, and because I still struggle generally with endings.  From about chapter thirty-eight on, I really slowed down in my progress because of the amount of thought I was putting into sticking the landing in an effective and satisfying way.  We’ll see what my readers have to say about how I did.

The climax of part three is both tied to Raven as an individual and to his goals, and to the magic system of Impressions.  In a way, the very ending of the book has the steepest learning curve of the entire novel, because this is where both we as the readers and Raven learn a revolutionary amount about the speculative element of the book, the titular impressions which have cropped up and been slowly investigated over the preceding chapters.  Coming to understand impressions is a core goal throughout the book, but the amount of intricate explanation necessary to bring that to fruition in the last few chapters may undermine the reader experience of fulfilling that goal.  Especially since it involves meditation, metaphor, and existential philosophy, not learning how to cast magic spells and run up walls.

Yes, I chose to write Impressions at this juncture because it was an “easy” book to write, in the sense that it lacks the complexity of some of my larger projects.  It has only one POV, one major plotline, and its magic system is well-defined, even if it can be difficult to communicate adequately.  Plus, much of its worldbuilding is rooted in real history.  These things are true, but they disguise the complexity inherent in writing a fantasy book that does not conform to a standard fantasy story arc.  There is a reason that, when I try to come up with comparison titles for Impressions to explain what the story is like to people, I will often say it’s something like “Laurus, but as adventure fantasy.”  Another decent comparison is Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, but for all its historical trappings, that series hews closer to standard fantasy conventions. So much of writing is about managing reader expectations, and I do worry with Impressions that I might be too far from what people expect when they pick up a fantasy novel.

Then again, I’ve always said that I’m going to write the stories that I want to write and that I would want to read, and I am satisfied with how Impressions turned out in this first draft.  This is not to say that I’m not already aware of numerous and extensive revisions I need to make, but I can know that and still be satisfied with what I came up with for the first draft.  In the end, I suppose that’s the important part.  Knowing the revisions are coming, and that I will assuredly have excellent and helpful feedback from my beta readers and my writing group, make it far easier to accept that the first draft may not fully capture in words the vision for the story that I have in my head. As with all my stories, the underlying ideas have been tumbling around in my head for a long time; it’s deeply satisfying to see them come to life on the page.