Birth of a Future... Wait for that Moment

Nexus Point took over a year to write. Another year was spent working with a developmental editor, to which I highly advise picking one up if you’re interested in publishing. The Story Grid site by Shawn Coyne, is a good place to start with tons of editors covering all genres to choose from.

But I digress…

So I started with a 120,000 word action story that took place in 1634 France, and ended up with a story just shy of 100, 000 words that involved spaceships, time travel and the future.

How?

I had an epiphany one day while struggling to turn my novel from a historical action/drama into a scifi romp through space. I always knew I wanted to write science fiction, afterall, I studied space sciences at University, attended Adult Space Academy at the Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and I have a tattoo that covers my right forearm of a space shuttle with the words… Second star to the right and straight on till morning (a quote from the Peter Pan movie). Growing up, I was addicted to the original Star Wars movies, the original TV series Battlestar Galactica, and to a degree, Star Trek. To be melodramatic, space has been in my bones since I was a child.

After I wrote the first 120, 000 words, which I will admit were a diluted mess of melodrama and adjectives, I began world building around my story to put it into a scifi setting. I spent months hemming and hawing, creating planets and government systems, antagonists and enemy forces, histories of planets and aliens… and I was going nowhere. Everything was convoluted, messy and confusing. It would take another 100, 000 words to get this world building incorporated into my story, and I hadn’t set out to write an epic space fic with histories and worlds as deep and rich as Star Trek and Mass Effect. Perhaps through the series I will achieve this, but at first I wanted to catch a reader’s attention. Introduce them to my world and leave them wanting more.

As I sat there, fingers poised to type my new world build into my story... for hours, my I add, and with nothing to show, resistance hit me hard. I believe I literally dropped my head to the table and groaned. In frustration I said… “This would be much easier if I could just my my characters time travel…”

And Nexus Point was born.

I sat up instantly and typed my first words… Commander Kai Sawyer dropped his duffle bag onto his new bed aboard his new ship… or something to this effect. Many editing revisions have changed my original chapter.

I believe it was almost eight hours later when I stopped typing. My epiphany hit hard and I accepted it full force. I had found my playground amongst the stars, and it included a historical sandbox. Everything came together by adding time travel, so I knew I had a good story that I was excited about to work with now. It still took another year of development with an editor to make it what it is today, hopefuly a fun, action packed romp through space and time, but that is an entirely different journey for another blog…

So don’t get discouraged if your world isn’t coming together. If it’s a story worth writing, it’s a story worth waiting for.