I Haven't Talked About Halfer in a While

This blog got started because of something very specific, and that thing was not Korea.

Obviously, this year went a little off-course. Back in January I had very much thought that my chosen path through the next twelve months looked a little like this:

• Write Halfer
• Work at Starbucks
• Quit Starbucks
• Write Halfer
• Write the next two installments in my Steampunk tryptich (I decided on using this fancy word because it's fancy and I'm a writer, I get to use fancy things.)
• Write Halfer some more
• Play Pokemon
• Get a publishing internship in NYC
• Finish Halfer - or at least, get a second draft in passable enough shape to ship out to editors.

Guess what wasn't on there?

Go on, I'll give you a second to guess.

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If you guessed a guy deciding to randomly text me at 1AM on April Fool's Day to tell me they decided to teach in Korea for a year, you guessed right. I'm sure you can imagine that conversation. As Morrissey so gentlemanly put it, "That joke isn't funny anymore, Dan, you're making me cry, now drop it."

Also not appearing on that list was the confrontation six hours later, with me crying in the back room at work because he had finally made it clear that it actually WASN'T the world's worst April Fools Day joke, and he was actually bailing. Not on the list was the moment my phone went off, the moment I opened the text message that read, "why don't you come with me?"

And not on the list, of course, was my next thought.

"Why not?"

And suddenly, twelve days before my birthday, four months after my New Year's Resolutions to finish my novel and get the ball rolling on my career, I found my entire life veering so hard off the carefully idealized road that it almost overturned and left me spinning upside down with a broken watch.

If you had told me one year ago, while I was working a shitty six-hour shift instead of being at home with my family for Thanksgiving Dinner that I would again be missing out on some turkey - not because of a high-stress, low-pay 'job' where the only thing keeping me sane was about 45% of my coworkers, but because I'd be on the other side of the globe where I'm not sure most of them even know what turkeys are - I probably would've blinked once and gone back to steaming milk.

Needless to say, Halfer kind of took a back seat.

I did lose more weight, so I guess I got one resolution down.

My point is, I'm struggling with this, you guys. This is my second draft - I'm a whole draft further than I was eleven months ago I suppose - but I feel like George R.R. Martin wrestling with his Meereenese Knot, only it's less of a clusterfuck of "how do I employ genius-level misdirections and prophetic fullfillments to get all these characters in one place" and more "why can't I get these bratty teenagers to do what I want?" (Unless we're talking about Dany, amirite?)

Things that have inadvertently happened:

• I keelhauled everything I spent months working on for my senior project. It kills me to know that what I slaved over for eight months is literally irrelevant. (Literally literally irrelevant?) It also kills me to know that I'm pretty sure there's a typo in my final copy down in the records. Anyone still on campus, have fun going to go find it. Feel free to instagram it and mock me. I'm a creative writing major who can't grammar check.
  
• In the aforementioned keelhauling, I accidentally did what I had been trying so hard to avoid: the creation of the tropey love triangle. When I had been younger, of course I had been all over that shit. In the early drafts of the stories, Neil, the surly, confrontational elf Ranger that ends up finding Rena, had actually been the OG love interest. A sort of, "oh-ho, they hate each other! BUT DO THEY REALLY?"  Ebb, her best friend and hawk shapeshifter, had been added in as a throwaway scene, and then suddenly took over as the resident hawtie. For several years. He still holds the throne, according to polls. (Polls being, sometimes I get bored and draw them and this is all personal opinion anyway.)
  
  Naturally, when I was fifteen, she had a choice to make. Naturally, when I stopped using anime as a frame of reference for my "super awesome plots," I realized that was contrived and lame and totally used in every single book ever. It went out the door, Neil became very much a brother-figure and all was well.
  
  And then I made the mistake of making Alex, the mysterious, mentally scarred (literally) half-elf (or human, or elf, depending on whatever file you have open because fuck continuity) psychic boy who ALSO WAS ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE IN ONE SCENE AND THEN SOMEHOW MANAGED TO WEASEL HIS WAY INTO BEING A KEY CHARACTER WITH A SIDE OF CORE PLOT DEVICE. And then somewhere along the beginning and ending of that first draft I finished earlier this year, he also managed to throw his hat into the ring as a love interest. WHY? HE IS LITERALLY CRAZY. I CAN'T CONTROL THESE GUYS. I THROW UP MY HANDS IN DISGUST AT ALL OF THEM.
  
• The direction of my story shifted. It went from being about a girl trying to get home, which never made sense because she never had any intention of NOT remaining in Fyorea to me, to a war, to racism and prejudice, to a war ABOUT racism and prejudice, back to a girl trying to get home, and then finally to a girl simply trying to figure herself out. With a war in the background. As she tries to get home.
  
  When I type it out like that for you guys, this progression in storylines sounds a lot better than it did in my head. Mostly in my head, it's a lot of an imaginary me running around in circles, throwing papers up in the air and howling. I don't know what I'm doing and sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one.
  
• This all has caused problems. With the change in the storylines, it's no longer as centered on Rena and Ebb being together as it used to be. With the introduction of Alex, it's hard to maintain a focus on Rena and Ebb being together like they were supposed to be. Do any other writers ever have a preference in their characters? If things that have been integral to the story for so long, suddenly not seem as vital, how do you cope with that?
  
  It's like making a salad, and tossing in lettuce and tomatoes and onions and croutons and suddenly you toss in Parmesan cheese and olives and you realize you're starting to make a caesar salad...do you take out the tomatoes and onions? Or do you just mix it around and hope it tastes just as good?
  
• And for the select few of you who know the actual ending of this story, the outcome, the death list: how many of those deaths are still important to the story? But they've all been around for so long, I'm not sure if I could not kill the characters that have always died. And if they don't die, what do I do with them? What would have changed in Harry Potter if very suddenly Rowling decided that she didn't really feel like killing Sirius at all? (Besides save me a few boxes of Kleenex?)

I'm stuck. I'm stuck trying to rewrite scenes to flesh things out. I'm trying to tackle a story that has been tackled so many times before, trying to reinvent a wheel that was chipped and dented and only seem to be chiseling more and more bits away from it instead of getting it to roll. I am frustrated. I would throw my laptop out the window if I thought these scenes could write themselves.

Moving to Korea did not help. As expected, I did not finish NaNo. I think my word count actually went backwards. Did you guys fare any better this month? Do you have anything that frustrates you about your projects? Do you know a cure for uncontrollable fictional beings? TELL ME BEFORE I EXECUTE EVERY ONE OF THEM. I'VE ALREADY KILLED SOME OF THEM ONCE, I'LL DO IT AGAIN IN A HEARTBEAT.

If you read this entire thing, I apologize. Have a crazy Korean Koala.