It Took Me Eleven Years to Write My Book

Illustrated by Jasmine Burkes

Ethan Moon: Remembering Obscura is a story that I have pieced together over the span of eleven years.

The idea has played in my head over and over again nonstop even until now. It came as a daydream and then morphed into a little movie that I can see in my minds eye every time I think about it. And I imagine it will continue to play in my mind until I have completed the series. (Which by the way I'm extremely excited for).

I must have been in 7th grade when the daydream began. And at the time I really struggled with focusing on reality. I would daydream nearly every waking moment. Imagining anything and everything. People would often call my name to snap me out of a daze or ask me what I was looking at, and although I would answer with "nothing", they could never know the vivid imaginings that would surround me clear as day.

My own head was an escape. And maybe it was because I hated where I was. But also whatever age you are in 7th grade--twelve or thirteen or something, it is a time of transition, you're about to become a teen, you're preparing to start high school, feelings and thoughts were confusing and or frustrating. I try to remind myself when I cringe at the memory of those times to be kind to myself because I was only just beginning to learn...me.

(That doesn't stop the cringing tho)

But during my time at the school I was in, everyday was a new annoying battle of being punished for things because of a small handful of students that treated class time as play time. My school thought it was a great idea to punish us all as a whole rather than isolating the disruptive ones. Most of the time we were not learning, or being taught anything, but instead being yelled at or left alone completely because a "teacher" was having a meltdown (which I do understand as an adult but there are proper ways to handle situations like this that was not at all done well by the teachers that I had). And it wasn't just punishments but every week--every day was a new rule of something completely made up and unnecessary to further restrict any form of self expression. No headbands allowed, it's a distraction. No hair pins, no colorful socks. Girls are no longer allowed to were pants. I will never forget when I went to the principal and directly asked him why would you take away the ability for girls to wear pants? The boys like to pull up the girls skirts for fun. Also it being cold in the winter. He looks me dead in the eye and says that it's proper for girls to wear skirts and dresses. Women don't wear pants in formal settings.

.....Oh, okay, so every single woman working in the front office and every single female teacher working here must not be "proper" because 90% of them are usually wearing pants. Yeah, said principal who I will not name should probably never work in any academic setting ever again.

Even to a twelve year old it was one of the most ridiculous responses I had ever received from an adult. I'm pretty sure I didn't even respond and just walked away because there was simply no point in trying.

These experiences played a large role in how I learned to cope with my every day. And that included daydreaming in order to separate myself from the chaos and ridiculousness of my every day.

And then the idea came to me.

---

The concept of a story

As I am daydreaming a vision appears of an unending wheat field, blowing in a gentle breeze. I look around, trying to see more, wondering why the vision has come to me. I see trees, I see sky, and I see white linen blowing in the wind.

A small house in the middle of nowhere.

A young girl hidden away from everything by an old grumpy grandma.

This concept remains in my story today, a grandmother who loved her grandchild so much that hiding them away in order to protect them became all that was important to her. Even if it damaged their relationship.

The young girl lived a secluded life, just outside of a hidden world she had no idea about. Only to find that she and her grandmother had come from there and she holds a devastating power that could liberate the world from the emerging evils corrupting it. Only she had to start from scratch and learn who she was in the process.

The concept still remains although slightly different.

These concepts came to me all at once, and I could already see the girl running away at night as soon as she understood she had been lied to her whole life. Her feet bare and muddied as she bullets her way to the entrance of the world concealed by a protective forcefield.

It was quite cinematic in my head. And of course I needed to whip out my binder full of loose-leaf's I hardly used for my actual classes and started to write everything down.

I remember in one particular math class where we were grouped up to do an assignment that we had already finished, my friends and I had started throwing off ideas for stories we were personally writing. I told my friends about a girl called "Leila". She had shoulder-length sandy brown hair and green eyes. The vibe was giving a sort of live-action Tim Burton or Ella Enchanted if you know a little something about that '04 movie. She could shoot purple from her hands and maybe had a bit of romantic banter with a male companion and so on and so forth. I had a lot of fun with it and continued to dream up more elements I could add to Leila's story.

And then...I stopped writing.

I believe I started and stopped writing Remembering Obscura at least four different times.

School got in the way and I was busy in my transition to high school. Oh and I have mentioned in a previous blog post a very special flash drive I kept that I LOST one day that had tons of stories and other writings on it. Including my very first draft of my book.

You wouldn't believe how angry I was. Completely and utterly defeated after spending so much time, effort, and research that I put into it all for it to be gone forever. And at the time I didn't have my own computer/laptop, so it wasn't saved anywhere except for on that little blue flash drive. So, naturally I didn't write out of spite.

Then a couple years later in my freshman year of high school I finally sat down to try again. I couldn't forget about my idea. The daydream, the visions, all of it would not go away. So, I knew I had to give it another chance.

It was either some random "Bring Your Kid(s) to Work Day" or I was just at my mom's job for whatever reason that I decided to start again. My mother had a desk job at Ford Motor Company, and if she was too busy to take me to sight see around the labs or whatever else was going on at either one of the three(?) buildings, I had to sit quietly at an open space near her desk until she was finished. This time I brought my laptop. And I sat at the vacant desk in my mother's cubicle, I thought that now was the best time to start writing again. Only I had other ideas, and since I was forced to start from scratch anyway, I would overhaul the initial story I began in middle school.

This is where "Leila" became an "Ethan". The name came easily simply because Ethan has always been one of my favorite male names. It just seemed to fit anyway. It was his last name that I had trouble with and it went through a number of changes before it finally settled on "Moon".

I viewed the original vision in my head again as I got started, and although I still liked the idea of "Leila", there were certain aspects of her and the story that I kind of "grew out" of. Within what I could remember writing about her, she came across as "too whiny", "too emotional", "too moody". And at least during the year of 2014 and around that era, the topic of the "moody woman" had been something constantly brought to my attention.

For me, a Cancer (the zodiac pls), I relate a lot to shifting moods and bubbling emotions, and I believe that aspect of myself very much shows itself in my writing. I knew what I didn't want and it was like I could see the future. I didn't want this character to come across as all those things I've stated. I didn't want her to be a stereotype or fall into less favorable tropes of writing. So, I decided for this story to scrap a female protagonist.

With lots of contemplation I felt that it might be more interesting to write in the perspective of a boy. A boy who is very clear about his emotions (even if they were confusing and he couldn't even be sure what all of them are). A boy who's a bit moody, brooding (for obvious flavor reasons), and comfortable being outward and open about what he is feeling. Especially because of the fact that men are taught to bottle all that stuff in. I appreciate those who are comfortable in feeling, and I wanted that for Ethan.

It was perfect, and I felt far more comfortable with what I was creating. With some other tweaks to the original story: a boy named Ethan who is living alone with his Grandmother in a small house not in the middle of nowhere, but instead in a very small (made-up) town that harbors a secret entrance to a realm in which Ethan and his grandmother used to belong. He had been lied to about his true origins and so on and so forth. But the difference between Ethan and the original character "Leila", is that Leila never knew she was from this magical world in the first place. She had been taken away as an infant to live on the outskirts of the world in the middle of no where to stay protected and to keep her rare abilities controlled. Ethan, however, had time to grow up some in his magical world, until eight years old when he was taken away in order to protect him and keep his rare abilities under control. This is how I went the "wiped memory" route.

At first I thought it was a little cliché, but honestly I don't regret doing it this way at all. There is a lot of reason to why this happens to Ethan that gets revealed in the first book. But it goes a bit deeper than that. And I do believe (unless something changes because as of writing this I have only been working on the second and bits of the third book) the reader will be able to understand why it was a good idea for things to happen this way in some crazy twisted horrible explanation that I am PUMPED for everyone to see (Mwahahaha).

After this decision, my characters Carson and Rose were birthed immediately (yes I said birthed). That exact same day, sitting in a cubicle at Ford Motor Company, Ethan's best friends just seemed to appear in my head. I hardly thought about it at all. There characters have always been the same since then until now, and I am still very proud of them and what they will become. Carson's personality was a no brainer for me. The moody, brooding Ethan who's wondering why has the universe forsaken him so NEEDED a carefree upbeat "bestie" that knows exactly how to push all his buttons as well as keep him from diving too deep into existential depression. I feel their relationship is an opposites attract kind of thing. They balance each other out quite well and I think it is important for a character like Ethan to have someone to remind him that everything doesn't have to be so serious all the time. Especially since everyone around Ethan is....serious....all the time.

As for Rose the idea of her was easy and the concept of hers and Ethan's relationship seemed to also just come to me. I won't get too detailed about it but just the knowledge of their dynamics as well as backstory came to me in visions. For some reason, a wheat field came into view again. And I could see two children running, carefree, playing tag, and losing themselves in their own little world. This very vision that I had is the same one I give to Ethan as the memory comes to him in fragments and out of context dreams. It all fell into place that way.

From then I wrote for hours every day at home and at school, during my free time, during classes. I also used excerpts from my book to pass creative writing class assignments, as well as testing out of required English and writing courses. I got back into re-researching everything I had lost before and then some. I wrote so many chapters. And OH at this time I had the PERFECT name for ROSE. As you will know her now as Rose Ncuti, I am actually not satisfied with her last name and I will never be. Ever. I'll come back to this.

I stopped writing again.

I was depressed, and having a hard time in school. And at this time I was really struggling with loneliness. The next year I ended up changing schools which was great but it didn't leave me any room to write anymore.

Honestly I think I simply forgot about my book entirely for a number of years. Now that I think about it, it was during the time I became interested in the Korean language and I was hyper-fixated on learning and teaching myself both the language as well as the culture. Instead of writing during my classes I was actually studying Korean.

...Always during math class specifically, lol.

It became my passion, and for the first time I finally knew what I wanted to do as a career. I hoped to become a translator/interpreter. I spent a lot of time looking for colleges that would have Korean course's so I could stop teaching it all to myself (all an entirely different, super long story of Krystem's life). I welcomed an exchange student, and then I did an exchange program myself for a summer.

I may have looked at my book at some point during this time, but not enough where I can remember. It may have just been finding the dedicated folder I had full of notes for it and thinking "oh, this is a cool idea........I'll deal with it later", and never come back to it.

Three or four years go by, I've done my first year in college, broke up with my first ever boyfriend, my grandpa passes away, and covid is going on (2020). I'm sad, struggling with loneliness, super bored, stuck in the bedroom of my shared apartment when I decide to scroll through old files on my computer. And what do I find? My book.

I read through it, I'm scrolling for an hour or so reading (--and quietly correcting mistakes) and I'm left sitting there thinking....this is great! Why on earth did I stop??

I get up and find the folder I used for all of my notes and I look through them all, blown away at all the detail and work I had put into putting this story together. I was astonished that I didn't even try to finish it after so long.

From that day I continued the story. I had to. Although I ignored/forgot about writing my book in general, I never forgot the daydream that I had that started it all. And sometimes, in fleeting moments, it would cross my mind until I was distracted by life again pretty much. But I had a deep love for the story, and it was all still there in my head. I started writing again, and it all flowed out as it was meant to (until I would get stuck for a spell, but I digress). I finished the book two years later. My classes and extra curricular activities took time away from me focusing on it, so I ended up taking a year from school to finish (and to also never go back 'cause yeah).

When I finished it was like a huge load off my shoulders. It felt so good to finally have it all pieced together after a crap ton of revising, being annoyed that I LOST ROSE'S AMAZING LAST NAME THAT I WAS NEVER ABLE TO RECOVER, second guesses, story directional changes, etc. etc. I reflect on everything I went through to put the story together. And although I know it isn't perfect, I worry that the wording doesn't get what I want across well enough, I cringe at some thing's I said, and I feel like if you already know and are looking for it, you can tell my age difference from different sections of the book due to writing it over the course of 11-ish years in adolescence....I am proud of the accomplishment.

So yes, it took me about eleven years to complete my book. And I know that there are many others like me that have writings that they haven't finished or projects in general that they may have sitting around waiting to be completed, but I am hoping that my little condensed story of how my book came to be can serve as a reminder that it's okay to take as much time as you need to get your personal workings done. Life is weird, things get in the way, and most importantly our creative juices aren't always flowing when we want or expect them to. Don't be hard on yourself and remember that everything happens in their own time.

I am no round-about, experienced, well-spoken, degree having author by any means. And there is soooo much left for me to learn. But I am happy that there are people out there who genuinely enjoyed my story and are looking forward to the sequels. My hope is to improve and learn from past mistakes I made last time, in order to bring an even better addition to my growing audience.

I appreciate all of you, and as I have said before, I can never say that enough.

If you are interested in checking out my book, you can click the button below

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Thank you for reading my dramatic retelling of my experiencing the conception and birth of my book from my brain womb. Tell me, are you able to play little movies in your head too? Or am I weird?