Back in the summer of 2000 I went on a language immersion trip for six weeks to St. Petersburg Russia. I had a copy of the Simarillion with me and also picked up a book of Russian fairy tales (in translation). After going through much of this recreational reading I got the notion that I could write a fairy tale. So I assemble a basic fairy tale plot; hero goes on a quest against evil to win the hand of the princess; filled in the blanks of who was who and gave a bit of thought on how to incorporate as much classic elements as I could. I thought it would be a one sitting read.
I finished the first, hand written draft in April 2001 at 92 pages. So much for it being a short story. The second draft took another year to retype. This finished at 60 pages double spaced. About a year after I finished the second draft and thought it was a good time to really start re hashing it, the computer it was on blew up. Literally, sparky sparky boom! I had no diskette backups, only hard copies. The lesson here is BACK UP THOSE FILES!
For a few years I stared at my many hard copies with notes written by classmates on them and though about the daunting task of typing it all back up again. It took ten years for me to actually get back on it. Though I procrastinated a full decade I have now finished the official third draft. 62 pages SINGLE spaced. I think that it came out to be much better with several more years of writing training under the belt as well as a few more inches of gut. Now begins the long task of clean up editing. Hopefully you may actually get to see it at a book store or on Amazon or the like some day, Or possibly on Throbbleserve where some of my shorter works may be seen.
So I say, Whoof! Got that part done! May 15th, 2012, "Allucdar the Thief" version 3.0 now finished. version 3.1 in production. Thanks for reading this post. Do you have a grueling tale of artistic effort? Share it here!
-Cuchulann
