Hopefully you’ve noticed and read my weekly updated continuing story. If not go read it, I’ll wait for you. The Internet so rocks.
I started The Chrysalis Project for a bunch of reasons. I was inspired by some other authors who had done similar things. I had also been posting what ever I had written on Wednesdays over on Tumblr. But I had two main reasons for writing it beyond something to cleanse my writing palette as I secretly wrote other things:
- The first thing relates to you dear reader. While I was toiling away writing, you had no idea if I wasted or alive. Yes, I could hand out on social media (not that I don’t), but that eats into writing time. I thought if I could craft an original ongoing story that would appear at the same time each week, it would be hard to come to the conclusion I was dead or worse–GASP–had stopped writing. I’m always writing but it might take months (possibly years) before I present a new book. Great when that new book appears, not so great while waiting for it. So, it’s both a sign of my continued writing and a thank you for coming by.
- The second thing is a bit more selfish. I found when I gave myself deadlines, I was more prolific writing. Every Wednesday the next story has to go up. And for the most part save for a few publishing hiccups that’s been true. I also wanted to write something that wasn’t the book I was writing, because author ADD. Writing TCP actually helps me write the books you haven’t seen, not just in a sharpening your knives way, but in an expanding my creativity way. And I apologize for some of the spelling or typing/autocorrect errors. This is meant to be a readable, but quick exercise to produce immediate satisfaction now for both of us.
In the future though, I will take what I have and re-edit (read: rewrite) the story for a proper book. Nothing major will change storywise, and I’ll keep the original stuff up here as long as I can. Which I think brings me to a reason why I chose to publish such raw writing: to show readers/writers my first draft (sometimes with original typos) and then point you towards the finished product. If you’re just a reader then it’s like a behind the scenes special feature. If you are a writer then maybe it can give you insight into the process of taking raw writing and (magically) turning it into a book. I think I’d like to revisit this when I start editing a bunch of blog posts into a real book.
Hope you are enjoying it so far and see you next Wednesday!