June 27, 2025 - rewriting my story and leaving the country

I’ve always heard that writers have to destroy their story in order to finish their story. That they have to “kill” everything they’ve created in order to free the story that’s meant to be written. I knew this was something that would eventually happen to me for reasons I can’t really explain, just that I know myself. I know how I cling to ideas despite the challenges the ideas bring, and that at some point I always come to terms with the fact that I need to start over. That day was June 1. 

One of the skills I’ve had to develop in my writing is how to identify a good idea from a bad idea. I find this skill especially difficult when writing fantasy because I have the power to create anything I can imagine. Over the years I’ve realized that the good idea are the ones I can immediately elaborate on. The ones that make me think, “yeah obviously.” These ideas link subplots and fill plot holes and elevate the levels of depth to the storyline. So when I sat down on June 1 to write for my one hour a day, I ended the session with a really good idea - to rewrite my story. 

The book I’ve been working on for nearly four years has centred around my main character and her internal emotional arch, but I always struggled with her plot because she’s somewhat passive in the grand scheme of my fantasy world. I’m not a plot heavy writer to begin with, and the tension and conflict I created for the story ends with my main character, but it starts in the past.

I’ve contemplated adding a duel timeline to include the past storyline but ultimately decided I didn’t want to write duel timeline. My writing group has asked me many times if there will be a sequel, and I’ve always said no, my main character’s story ends when the book ends, but I think there’s potential for a prequel. This prequel has always been the past storyline, until this month when I realized that it’s in fact book one of a duology. 

Committing to writing a different story took me a while to come to terms with. I felt like I was abandoning the world I’d created and the characters I’d developed, and although the two books exist in the same world, I felt like I was giving up. The push I needed came from a friend in my writing group who texted me after I told her my new idea. She said, “I think the book you’ve been working on was part of your world building for THIS book.” So, I wrote out the plot in detail, gave these new characters an Enneagram Type, and just when I was going to start hand writing their life histories I had to take an unexpected trip to Portugal.

I lived in Portugal for a year back in 2022 to 2023, partially because it was post-Covid and the idea of jumping right into a 9-5 career was the last thing I wanted to do, and also because I wanted to write my book. I think anyone living abroad can confirm that there are plenty of little challenges that amount into bigger challenges, so it took me a while to get into my new routine and after a few months I decided to spend my year travelling as much as possible. So my book barely got written, but instead I returned home with a connection to Portugal that I didn’t want to let go of. 

Portugal has influenced so much of my world building, from the beaches to the culture to the food to the architecture. I incorporated details from the small coastal towns to the old Roman temples which allowed my main character to live a life I had also lived. It felt serendipitous to return to Portugal this month, the same month I decided to start writing a new book. This spontaneous trip was the final stamp of approval I needed to commit to my new idea and start writing a different book. Maybe by the time I return to Portugal again this new book will be complete.