Werewolf's Bane - Marked Complete - July 3, 2022

Werewolf's Bane

Like most in the Bound by the Moon contest, I finished up at the very last minute. Something I hate immensely. It reminded me of a time when I was in school. During the last two weeks of our courses, we were given twenty assignments to finish, as well as the finals. Many of the other students complained about the bulk of the course load, but I was grateful because the questions on the assignments provided a very focused way to study. Most of my classmates left their work till the very end. I've always been of the mindset to start early and finish early and that's just what I did.

However, with this book, I ended up starting later. The genre isn't my genre of choice, and I really hemmed and hawed about whether I even wanted to start writing such a story.

Cue the beginning of May when I decided I would try to write something, even if I didn't finish. So I could challenge myself in a genre I knew nothing of. As with everyone else, I have a chunk of responsibilities, many of which decided for me that I would need to take days off that I hadn't planned to. The last week was no different.

What's more, when I started looking through my finalized word document, I noticed that when I merged two different versions I had of my story (I always keep multiple copies in case something goes south, that way I can start from something instead of nothing) that the first chapter, which I split into three in order to not drown my readers in information, had magically reconstituted itself. I say magically when in truth it was the compare feature in Word and completely my own dang fault.

It was a real crap shoot, (an old-time game) because I ended up writing about 15,000 words at the very end of the story, and not all of them contained the fullness I imagined for Maddy and Hel.

I'm still very much a novice writer, so I also have to examine each sentence and say to myself 'Am I showing or telling here? Or is this as interesting to my reader as I find it?'

I think as my style as an author progresses, I am finding I favor both show and tell. For instance, in the chapter Arregaithel, I show Hel is being attacked by the wind. He pulls his garments close, as the wind rises and falls over the deck of the ship. However, I also needed to make it clear the wind wasn't of a natural source, but rather something far more sinister and it was also where I chose to introduce the concept of Saer, the evil one, and sprinkle in a bit of backstory in terms of Hel's own turning. 

As I kept writing, the story kept unfolding. In fact, it kept unfolding so much that I had to keep taking the ideas and throwing them off to the side. I literally could not use them all, because with them it would have been cumbersome, and I really don't know how I could have shown them in the correct way given the time constraints, etc. In the end, I'm glad I wrote the book because I learned more about what my style looks like, and that I really shouldn't worry about not having any ideas because they will come as I write and begin to explore my characters more fully. 

All this said I hope you give the book a read and become immersed in Maddy and Hel's story and it inspires you to write more of your own. 

S.