Zafiil, Introduction: A Novelist is Born (Patreon)

This is the first in a short series of posts introducing the serialization of Zafiil, Jaguar’s first novel, and a story of the Faulfenza.

It may entertain y’all to learn that once upon a time, I worried that I would never have a novel-length story idea; that I’d never be able to write something that long; that even if I had an idea for a novel, I wouldn’t be able to finish it. My notebooks and hard drive were littered with the beginnings of stories I thought promising, but the only things I managed to finish were short stories, and they did not delight me. Junior High Jaguar had managed to finish an entire (handwritten!) book, mostly by stringing episodes inspired by video games and other books into a rambling adventure, barely held together by a framing conceit about being exiled and needing to find a home. This, I felt, did not count. I wanted to write a novel-length book as an adult (this said from my lofty old age of 17-20ish).

Looking back on this issue now, I think a large part of my writers’ block was that I was trying to brainstorm ideas that looked like the novels written by other people, because I wanted it my future book to be ‘worthy’ of publication. Lots of them were hard- or near-science fiction, which is a subgenre I barely like to read, much less write. Many foundered for lack of experience; many of my plots relied on understanding adult life, and I was still too young to understand what that looked like, much less felt like. There’s an old writing saw that goes ‘the first novel you write is about you’, and while I think that’s arguable, the kernel of truth in it is that your first sustained and completed writing effort is going to reflect what you’re most passionate about, and what you’re most familiar with. And I’m not just adding caveats because (it turns out) the first full-length novel I completed as an adult was the story of an alien messiah, from early childhood until her death-in-triumph.

I finished Zafiil in college, only a few years after exiting high school, and it was ambitious. I had found a story worthy of a novel, born out of the mishmash of my love for “all alien” stories… and religion. Oh yes, it is a religious story, so very religious. Re-reading it decades later, I am fascinated to watch my internal struggles and doubts with faith so nakedly portrayed. Did I think that clothing those questions in alien bodies would mask them? I must have, God help me, because how else could I have been brave enough to be this honest about them?

It was obviously a topic of urgency and interest to me, enough to power me through over a thousand pages. And when I was done, I had a book, and I’d broken forever my “writer’s block” about novel-length ideas. I have yet to struggle to find an idea long enough for a book. Writing a plot that requires a thousand pages makes brainstorming one that needs 400 seem like cake.

In retrospect, I’m relieved I plowed through that barrier when I did. When else would I have thought ‘let’s write a saga of Biblical proportions, but for ALIENS!’ and actually done it? At some point you lose the impetuousness of youth, the voice that says ‘this risk sounds like a great idea!’ when it’s patently a ridiculous one. I had all the self-consciousness of an adolescent who wanted to fit in, but none of the voices that adulthood entrenches in older heads: ‘It needs to be a GOOD idea’ and ‘I just know this is trite, or inappropriate’ and ‘This has been done a billion times by better people, who am I to think I could equal them.’ Freshly-Colleged-Jaguar had plenty of doubts and anguishes about faith, but second-guessing her artistic ambitions wasn’t on her radar… it was, in fact, so off her radar it was in some other galaxy. She was on fire about this idea, and she was going to run with it, and other people’s assessment of how good an idea it was never entered her head.

Decades-Later-Adult Jaguar, thinking about telling a similar story, would have chosen an everyman (everyFaulfenzair?) as a viewpoint character, and told a much quieter, possibly more relatable story about being a normal person dealing with massive social upheaval. College Me went straight for the most dramatic protagonist in the whole saga, and dared to tell her story from birth to death. And… I’m glad she did. Sometimes an excess of humility is actually a form of pride, and insisting over and over that you’re only interested in—and capable of—writing small stories about normal people when you love epic stories just as much… well, let’s just say it strikes me as the bad kind of denial. There’s a little bit of epic in all of us.

I guess if I had to turn this anecdote into advice, I’d say ‘if you want to write a novel and can’t figure out how, go at it like a teenager and pick the thing that you feel strongest about, no matter how ridiculous you think it looks like to other people.’ Maybe that’ll work for you. *grin*

So that’s a little context about how I came to write this book. Next post I’ll talk a little about how it fits into the Peltedverse, and some of its history. And then, a quick note about its structure and we’ll be good to start!