The story of my story

Today marks a very special anniversary, for me personally anyway. This was the day that, 3 years ago, I got the idea for my own imaginary world and caught the writing bug. It all started when I was sitting in the car coming back from the beach with my family, and I had only just recently finished reading this big omnibus with all the books of the Chronicles of Narnia in it. I was 14 years old at the time. I thought the series had been really cool and I started fantasizing about magical countries.

When we were nearly home, I suddenly got a burst of inspiration and I knew that I had to write my ideas down before I forgot them. At first I thought of a round continent divided by colors, with 7 human girls who were actually princesses in that world. I started making up names that reflected their respecitve colors (from Rose to Violet), but then I thought it'd be too girly and confusing, and besides, I figured I had to write one book before I started thinking of a series. So I started thinking of the name of my magic country. I started toying with the letters in the word Imagine. Imagic, Imazine, imazi... finally I decided Imazia would be the name of my world.

I don't know what happened to me, but I was suddenly writing in notebooks like crazy. I took out as many self-help story writing books from the library as I could. I wrote outlines, thought about characters, wondered what they were supposed to be doing there. A few days later my heroine, Magenta Roberts, was conceived. I largely based her on the girl I'd previously wanted as my orange girl, Tangy or something like that. Her name was perfect to me. (Duh, pink's my favorite color.) As Magenta (or Maggie as I like to call her) grew in my mind, I then started basing her on myself, or a version of myself I wish I was like. She became my alter-ego. She could do things I wished I could do, like go to Imazia.

Characters started springing in my head like wild-flowers. I had a whole bunch of talking animals and mythical creatures at first, most of which I took out, but I still have a mole, twin squirrels and an evil pack of wolves as well as a Unicorn (central to the plot) and elves and gnomes and other stuff. I'll probably tell you about them some other day. I especially loved giving my characters great names. I wanted my villain to be so evil that he didn't even have a proper name, so I called him the Warlock. His servant, Gris, I named for the spanish word for gray/grey (I can't tell which spelling is right for the color), because I knew that his heart was mostly black, but there was a hint of good in him.

My plot was always changing for me. Right now, I'd say my story is pretty unrecognizable from the original idea I had, but that's a good thing, because it's so much better. At first Maggie was 14, like myself, then when I turned 15 she became a year older too. I stopped there, however. 15 sounds like a good even age. (even though it's an odd number!) Now I can hardly believe that 3 years have passed since that magical, or majikal, night, or that my story is comprised of nearly 68,000 words now. Granted, I haven't been working on my Imazian story for a few days now, but it's still fun to reminisce about my humble beginnings.

I hope you have enjoyed this post about my novel-in-progress. It still needs a ton of work. I'll need a lot of support to keep this thing rolling. If you want to know more about my story, I wish you'd comment, or email me. I think it would be better to email me, because if you want to know something I don't necessarily want to be blabbing it out to everyone. Like any writer, I am very protective of my work. But I need more feedback than just from my family. Who knows? Maybe you guys will be able to help me with some parts. Just show your interest, okay?