My very first online novel- Alandra Whistle

 In one of my previous entries, I made a mention of an online novel I started back in 2015. That novel was originally named Alandra Whistle's Lessons in Magic, but I hated that name with a passion, so I changed it to Alandra Whistle: Witch In Training. Today, I want to talk about how "the tale grew with the telling" helped define, for better or worse, my debut as an online novelist.

When I first conceived of Alandra Whistle, the idea was simple: make a short novella and sell it online for profit. By short, I mean 10 chapters long at most, with the chapters being three thousand to five thousand words long. Every chapter was to be a quick lesson in magic for the character, and at the end, she'd be a fully fledged witch. THAT idea lasted four chapters, before I found myself with the itch to tell more story. By the time I had reached my sixth chapter, I knew my original idea was not going to work; this story clearly needed more than ten chapters.

Of course I did eventually reach ten chapters, and I found myself with the reality that I had about a quarter of the total story I had in mind. I also found myself with quite the dilemma, because I also only had about another quarter of the story fully mapped out, which meant I had a HUGE chunk of story that needed to either be planned in advance, or made up as I went along! Unfortunately (or fortunately?) at around this time, my life got way busier, so I had less time to update my novel.

I didn't find a groove, so to speak, for updating the novel regularly until around the year 2018, when I decided to do one chapter a month. Many of my readers didn't quite like the idea, but in all honesty, it was the best I could do.

One of the realities of being a writer is that only the lucky few can do it full time and make a living off of it. The rest of us have no choice but to treat it as a hobby; something we do in our spare time, if we have it. And that is me, for all intents and purposes.

Anyway, as I wrote each chapter, I found myself mapping many, many more. By the time I was done with chapter twelve, I was mapping chapter 20. By the time chapter 20 was written down, I was already planning chapter 30. And so on, so forth. At the same time, I found myself having to change, and even discard, some ideas as I continued writing.

One major problem with being a plantser is that the pantsing part of your nature can overcome the planning part. And that's something that happened to me too often. I had many planned chapters that ended up scrapped just because I found a direction I felt was better. One such chapter, involving a golden moon, would have helped Alandra discover her love interest. This plan was scrapped in favor of four chapters detailing how Alandra dealt with an international incident.

At fifty chapters (and yet to be finished), Alandra Whistle has become my best reviewed story on Inkitt, maintaining a 4.6 score on the site with 28 reviews, including one troll review. It is also a story I'm dying to finish, which I plan on doing this year.

When I do, I'll have mixed feelings for sure. On one part, I'll be feeling relief at FINALLY finishing this novel. On the other hand, I'll be feeling a twinge of regret for not doing better with it.

Alandra Whistle has taught me that consistency is key to writing, especially if you're a plantser like me. I think that, with Alandra, I was not consistent enough with the updates. This was a lesson I learned the hard way, but one that helped me become a much better writer.