In Today’s Journal
* An Exciting New Project!
An Exciting New Project!
I hope you might find a gem or two in this, but primarily I just wanted to share this great news with all of you….
On October 19, 2014, I sat down at my writing ‘puter and wrote
Wes Crowley leaned forward and poked at an ember that had popped out of the campfire a moment earlier. “Been a long trail this time, boys.”
Those were the first 26 words (and the first paragraph) of Leaving Amarillo, my first novel and the first book of what would eventually become the 22-volumes and over one million words of my personal magnum opus, The Wes Crowley Saga.
Yesterday, exactly twelve years later on October 19, 2026, I started cycling through and recasting that saga. The timing was strictly kismet, or maybe fate.
(Special thanks to my bride for reminding me—two days ago when I excitedly told her about the new massive project I was about to undertake—of that opening paragraph and the date I wrote it.)
Now, for any detractors out there, yes, like DWS I’ve long said you shouldn’t backtrack to “fix” stories you wrote earlier to bring them up to your current skill level. Instead, I recommend letting those stories stand as a testament to your skill level at the time you wrote them.
Then keep moving forward, keep putting new words on the page, and keep learning and honing your craft. I stand firmly by that advice, and that’s what I’ve always done.
But The Wes Crowley Saga isn’t a series of separate stories.
It’s one continuing story that I wrote in fits and starts over a period of several years, and the writing of it was a confusing mess. In fact (please forgive me if you’ve heard the story before), I wrote
- the original novel,
- then two more books to form an original trilogy that I thought ended the story,
- then three prequels,
- then a couple of sequels,
- then the “gap series” to fill a 16-year gap in the story,
- and then, finally, a few remaining sequels.
Significantly, I wrote all of those over a period of 7 years and at varying levels of skill as a fiction writer.
I’ve also either realized or learned dozens of writing craft lessons over the years since I wrote that first paragraph back in 2014, and all of them have mattered to a greater or lesser degree. Plus I’ve learned dozens more lessons after I published the last book in the saga, The Final Chapter, in 2021.
But the most important lesson I learned is Take Your Time.
Take your time during writing, and take your time during cycling.
Not to consciously think your way through the story, but to be sure you don’t omit anything the characters give you.
Don’t let anything the POV character puts into your mind go by without getting it on the page.
Why? Because you never know what might be ‘important’ to the story later on. That really isn’t your call, or the characters’ call for that matter. It’s just what happens and how the characters react, and all of that should make it onto the page.
Now, imagine how many events or reactions or setting descriptions I probably omitted from the overall saga because I was in too big a hurry and too focused on finishing each individual novel. Wow.
I distinctly remember feeling a slight tug (creative subconscious) to follow one particular character into a different situation while I was writing, but again I was in too big a hurry to follow along and see what happened. That was in one of the first three novels, and I’ve always regretted not following that character.
I probably shouldn’t feel a need to say this, but nothing about this cycling recast will be from the conscious, critical mind. I’ll cycle through as I always do, reading while allowing my fingers to rest on the keyboard, and when the characters add anything I’ll trust them and write into the dark just as I’ve done for the past 12 years.
Another good thing is that I have zero expectations about this project.
Like writing into the dark, having zero expectations creates space to play, and that’s a very freeing feeling. As I told a dear friend yesterday, “with that space and with me taking my time now plus whatever new stories arise along the way… well, all of that just adds to the excitement.”
In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the finished story contains at least a few hundred thousand words more than it does now.
The thing is, I can’t bear the thought of letting my magnum opus stand as-is and knowing it’s less than it should be. When it’s finished, I intend to call it The Wes Crowley Saga: The Author’s Cut. (A respectful nod to Robert Heinlein IM for his “author’s cut” of Stranger in a Strange Land, which a friend gave me several years ago.)
I also have no idea currently where the ‘breaks’ will be between novels, and I don’t really care.
I’m going to write the entire story first—all one-million-plus words of it—then go back through and break each novel where a situation or a segment of Wes’ life is resolved instead of ending each novel when he encounters a major new threshold as the original novels did.
I hope those of you who are fans of the Western, Romance, Action-Adventure, and Magic Realism genres will enjoy it because it will encompass all of those.
I wrote this post yesterday, then started my cycle-recast. One thing I’ve already learned is that I need to recast a completely new opening for The Rise of a Warrior, the first novel in the saga chronologically. See? That’s already a major win.
But now I’ve talked about it long enough. Time to get back to work. (grin)