An Experiment in Fantasy Writing

 During the summer, I started writing a story. It's a fantasy story, but I've avoided doing something that I usually get into pretty early in the process - worldbuilding. I've chosen instead to stick to the character and really focus on his perspective.

Right now I don't really know where the story is going exactly, and I've written quite a lot in a segment that is ultimately going to be just a prologue - at this point in the story, the main character is just sixteen, and I expect the story is going to primarily focus on his adult life, though with a large emphasis on the events that shaped his upbringing.

I hesitate to put many details in here - sometimes the best way to kill your momentum is to start telling people about a project.

But I have a tendency to get deep into mythology and background in the worlds where my stories are set. Here, I sort of want the character to discover that world as the reader does, and I'm doing that by discovering it as I write the story.

I do wonder if I'm dragging my feet a bit on letting the story get where it needs to go - and nearly 20,000 words in, I still haven't made an actual chapter break, which could make readability suffer.

I'm not sure if this means I'm looking forward to an exercise in savage editing, or if the story I'm writing is a doorstopper.

I've always had the ambition to write some multi-volume fantasy epic, though with this I started from a less ambitious position. Yet, at this rate, the story seems like it's got an enormous length to go.

Still, I'm trying not to let my insecurities as a writer get in the way of actually putting words on the page. I've struggled to get works I'm passionate about completed because of second-guessing and fatigue brought on by perfectionism. My credo for this project has been to just let the characters act and let the story happen, and while I've got vague ideas of where it ultimately goes, I'm allowing the plot to unfold on its own time.

We'll see how it looks. I hope one day I can announce here a finished draft.