-- A Post-Mortem for Holly Seneschal.
Birth
Here's an advice I used to hear frequently: Don't start your writing journey with your dream novel. You don't have the experience, you don't have the tools, you don't even know if you're going to enjoy writing as a craft six months from now, you won't do your hyper ambitious hundred volume epic any favors by rushing it into existence.
It was with those words in mind that I first wrote 3Tri, the story that would one day become Mariwa: An Ivian Tale. Back then, I was already on the planning stages of a completely different novel, but upon coming face to face with the sheer amount of work I needed to make it work, I cowered. "H-hey, this is a little too big for my britches, maybe I should dial it down?" I asked myself.
I don't actually remember if the image of a cloaked stranger arriving to a village at the brink of annihilation came to me in a dream of the day or the night, but I put that scene to paper and slowly built the story around it. Here was my in: It was going to be simpler, snappier, and best of all, a lot smaller than my then current project.
You never got to know 3Tri. I barely got to know 3Tri. As perfectionism, procrastination, and fear of rejection balloned the once simple concept into this colossal monstrosity, a beast known as "Severe Social Anxiety" came to me in the night and forbid me from posting until we were both satisfied with the work (read: never), forcing my poor, helpless hands to shut it inside the cooker until it was ready (read: for eternity).
Got help, dealt with stuff, and suddenly I could do it. Ironically enough, MAIT was my third go at 3Tri, and I felt excited! I poured blood into this novel, it was the best I ever wrote, it was going to be fun and going to be loved and I was going to be so proud of myself!
LOL
Life
Where do I start?
How about a question: How do you do organic Worldbuilding?
I thought I had a good plan. I have such a bone to pick with webnovels that stop dead on their feet to spend whole chapters saying "hey, did you know mages channel their mana from the air?" in as many words as possible. I just had to do something different. I was going to reveal things gradually, I would keep cool mysteries afloat, leave creepy implications for the viewer to ponder!
I fumbled the bike. I learn that MAIT's first arc, God of Lesser Hollow, was actually pretty confusing, not only in ways I intended but also ways I didn't, and start to second guess myself. I learn that there are concepts that would be extremely difficult to introduce without some lore dumping. Then my memory blanks and I forget if I wrote this or that or neither. Finally, I look at a thing and decide: No way I can bring up this very important element without exposition.
My pacing anxieties didn't help at all. Maybe you noticed them before, either at Children of the Lake or Butcher of Heron Road, the times I yanked the plot by the leash. I know, knew, that serials in general pend towards humongous, but GoLH turned a lot longer than I expected word wise, and I got nervous. Was I going too slow? Or maybe I was actually going to fast, considering how much I cut from CoTL to keep it "reasonable"? Who knows? Not me!
A affects B affects C. Am I giving my characters enough attention? Am I developing them well, or I am rushing them, or are their arcs flopping around like fish in dry land? Marquise's agents I think suffered it the worse, when a lot of the scenes I had planned to develop them and their relationships got shoved the way of the abyss.
And don't ask me about the names! Fucking hell, I hate naming things. Made entire (bits of) conlang to help me name things and I still feel like I suck!
Anyway, every stumble is a rolling stone, so when you start to forget to write down your chapter summaries it knocks into the fact you can't keep up with the writing place you planned which knocks on the important lore names you leave for later but you need to mention this figure NOW which knocks on how you don't know how to finish this chapter at all which knocks on—
Wait, it's over? We made it? Since when?!
Death
We did it! We reached the end of Book One! Kind of? I think I've said as much, but originally the whole Book One: A Post-Mortem for Holly Seneschal thing was just an idea I had toyed with but didn't pay that much attention to until I realized the way things were going, I was going to completely burn out of the story before I finished it.
To reiterate, but hopefully word better: MAIT was a great learning experiment, but feels unfeasible to continue when the experience is, on the emotional side of things, equivalent to writing to myself alone in my room but with nameless, silent beings casting judgement on my work before vanishing into the dark, leaving no trace of their passage.
Which to say, it's not exactly popular and makes me very nervous. If there is an audience for MAIT, I think it exists almost entirely offsite from RoyalRoad, and that's fine, but they have no way to communicate what they like or dislike or if they are reading at all. A small blessing maybe, considering some kinds of interactions I see between authors and fans, and a small curse for the exact same reasons.
The reality, of course, is that it's all my fault. I'm poor at self-marketing, worse at networking, and arrogant to boot. MAIT was always going to be niche, I thought I understood, but I guess I never actually let it dawn. (Also, my earlier style kiiiiiiind of made for a rough read, kind of).
Call me a petty bitch, call me a greedy bitch, I just need you to know one thing: I'm a whiny bitch chief above all, and despite spending the last thousand words complaining, I don't think it was all negative!
Hell, MAIT's existence itself was a huge positive on my life. The ways it kind of structured and guided me through this last year you will never known, but it was a huge step towards a way of living I sincerely never expected myself capable of trying. I don't even like thinking on the alternative at all.
It made me better aware of my flaws and idiosyncrasies in a way just hammering away entirely in / for the privacy of my computer never could. It made me more sure of my style and tastes than any social media self-assuring post ever could. It made me interact with people well outside of my comfort zone! Which is eeeeeehhhh, but I know it's necessary for my personal growth so I truck on.
Holly and Agare and Marquise are now permanent fixtures of my mind the way only... one? Character I previously created is. It's a weird sort of love, neither the kind for a person nor the kind for an object, but something else entirely. I don't wonder how my precious laptop would play Minecraft by itself, after all, and if I did to a real person what I had planned for my blorbos' backstories I would be writing from the Hague.
Standing here, despite how sour I felt at times, I know I'm probably going to see MAIT as one of the most important phases of my life, and only cherish it all the more.
Post-Mortem
The Closure to Butcher of Heron Road puts us at roughly 40% to 45% of the story complete by my estimates. If Book 1 was long, than Book 2 will be a leviathan.
Sadly Book 2 won't be coming for a while, and when it does, it won't be as my main project. I have something else on the works, which I won't spoil because teasing things is guaranteed to make me not finish them, but suffice to say: if you enjoyed MAIT's horror, gothic fantasy-adjancent atmosphere and thematic, you are sure to like it.
If you are reading this and you have read MAIT, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, I hope I have brought you as much pleasure as I have terror, and know that there is even better to come! I also wish to thank the people who supported me through this journey, and the fellow authors who review-swapped with me and gave me a lot of criticism to ponder through. I'm still figuring my way through all this stuff, and your help has been invaluable.
And if you think an afterword for a novel with literally 8 followers at the time of writing is a little cocky— Hell yeah, it's cocky as fuck! But if there is a second thing you should know about me, is that beyond a whiny bitch I dream of being a proud, confident bitch too one day, and how do I get there if I can't be a little self-indulgent?
Well, out of the top of my head, I think this is it. I'll probably be posting a lighter blog post soon (ish, you know the deal), but until then:
Stay safe! Have a nice week! And let us all meet Mariwa again when she comes face to face with one of the most complex obstacles of her odyssey: the Saintess in Elm.
See you!