Writing Corner: Shelving Sand and Storm (For Now)

Welcome to writing corner- the corner of the blog where I talk about my works in progress!  Follow this link if you want to find out more about my writing.

One of the two projects that have really claimed my time lately is Sand and Storm, a wild-west fantasy novel about a sharpshooting girl, exiled tribesman, adventurous widow, and powerless god as the work to save their world from the Storm.  It features sand based magic and I created a rather extensive mythology for the world.  I've been working on it for about a year and a half now, but I think it's time to shelve this for a bit.

I didn't get anywhere with it.  I kept trying but things kept getting in the way and I found myself restarting it either because I was unhappy with the direction or because I lost all the files.  I was starting to really get to know the characters and the early chapters, but I never got as far as I would have liked.

It's not as unique as it once was and I need to regroup.  This isn't really a bad thing, since it means people are interested in it, but I was seeing things I wanted to do, big plot points in fact, in other books and I need to step back and consider if those things can be changed or whether it will look the same.  For example, the sand magic in my story is pretty similar to the sand magic in Brandon Sanderson's newly released White Sand.  And the world shares a bit with the world in Rebel of the Sands.  Both are fantastic books that I would thoroughly recommend, but they share a little too much with my novel.

I'd rather work on other projects.  I'm hard at work on a small novel called The Queen's Ransom that is going so well, I don't want to have such a massive world like the one in Sand and Storm sitting over my head.  I like keeping it in the back of my mind to tweak with but I don't want to give it all my attention.  I've also been pre-planning for another series, one that has been around much longer than Sand and Storm and returning to it, just to sketch out characters, is like getting in a warm bath after a very long day.  I missed it, and I like how well things are going.

So, for now, Sand and Storm is being pushed to the side.  I made this decision rather unconsciously a few months ago, and already I can tell it's sort of healing the fissures that were in the book.  If I take time away from it and let it figure itself out things will turn out much better.  I have every intention on going back to it (maybe sooner than I originally thought) because the story is important to me.