In the beginning, Ule the Unfurled was supposed to be a free online serial novella to help regain creative writing skills I hadn’t used in a while. Nothing too big of a story, something somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 – 75,000 words in length. When it blossosmed into a novel, I put a word goal of 85,000 words, a recommended length for first time novelists. As of this week, while re-writing, expanding and revising, the novel has officially exceeded 96,000 words and is making a mad dash for the 100,000 word finish line. Watching the evolution of wordcount with this story has me looking back to its origins.
* * *
Recently a friend asked where I get my ideas? From reading interviews with other writers and artists, this is by far the most common question people ask. I told my friend that ideas come from all around, from interacting with the outer world, through experience or observation, and asking questions; and the best ideas are the kind that just simmer beneath the surface of the sub-conscious, not yet molded into a construct by the conscious mind. As an example, I’ll get an image in my mind, of a young girl sitting in a dark room and I’ll start to ask questions and my sub-conscious will offer clues:
Who is the young girl?
She doesn’t know.
Why is she in the room?
She’s being punished.
What’s she being punished for?
Something really bad. They even took away her memory.
What’s she doing?
Creating.
Why is it so dark in the room?
Is it? Look closer.
With this information, I did what probably a lot of writers do: entertained the idea. I wrote a description of the image in my mind, incorporating the details my subconscious answered to my questions, played with it a little and then promptly filed the two pages of text away in a folder on my desktop, forgetting about it for nearly two years.
* * *
About a year and a half ago, I was Skyping with my best friend, who lives in North Carolina. We talked about writing and she mentioned that not only did she keep every chapbook or zine I made specifically for her as gifts, she took them with her whenever she went away on business trips. When I asked why, she said it made her feel good. And like many people, myself included, we hit emotional lows in our lives and my bestfriend was no exception at this time. I decided to write a story for her reflecting a theme of how we all tend to lose ourselves as life treks on, and when we are most furthest from our true nature, we begin to hurt and we don’t know why.
* * *
All the above is meant to indicate how Ule the Unfurled came into existance: Three separate intentions came together to create a powerful driving force for writing this story.
- To write a free story for general consumption so that I could strengthen my writing skills.
- To explore an image that popped up into my mind many years ago and which I had rediscovered while cleaning up files.
- To make a friend feel good by telling the story of a girl who loses her sense of self and rediscovers it.
It doesn’t matter what form a story takes, whether it is a short story, novella, or novel, and it doesn’t matter whether there are one or more more driving forces urging it to be written. What is important is you understand why you want to tell these stories. Any answer is valid, but I think it’s important to have one.
Who knows, maybe one day a reader of your work will ask, “So how did you come up with the story for your latest book?” And having a reason will add a new dimension of interest to your work.
