Qhami.net

I’m facing a dark and confusing time with this project.

I finished the second draft of the third book in the Fate of the Qhami trilogy on May 31, 2022. My complete second draft journey spanned 51 months and over 400,000 words. Finishing felt like a triumph and I was sure I could carry that momentum into the next phase: editing and revising Book One.

Only I didn’t.

The first book needed substantial revisions. I mapped out a refreshed outline and even though I was now behind my intended schedule, I knew where I was going. Now I just had to keep meeting my daily word count.

Only I didn’t.

I spent weeks struggling with two opening scenes. I fell asleep at my keyboard numerous times. I pivoted and wrote those scenes from a first-person POV instead of close third, hoping that mixing things up would break me out of my funk.

Only it didn’t.

Now it’s been five months and my production has plummeted. In fairness, other obligations ate most of my summer and sapped my available brain power and having a small child at home makes me much more likely to fall asleep at night when I want to be writing. But even now that my proverbial plate has less on it, I’m still struggling to move forward. For the time being, I have moved to a different project not set in the Qhami at all. It pains me to postpone a project I love and believe in but I’ve got to make a change. Is it the right change?

Only time can tell.

I’ve finished the second draft of the second book in the trilogy. My new plan is to finish a second draft of all three books, get them to my writing group for critique (they’re currently about 75% done with book 2) and then go back to book 1 and edit the crap out of that thing.

I’m finding that, for me, having the whole trilogy set before I get any one book completed is invaluable. I’m not yet skilled enough to see into the second and especially third books without having written them.

I was working on the Qhami Wiki and I realize that Dasnal’s story is much more rich than I originally thought. She is a terribly complex character and I think I need to write her story. No, I know I need to write her story. It’s like true love all over again. I thought I could only feel this way about writing the Fate of the Qhami trilogy and maybe the Lokan trilogy. It has some potent themes to it.

My interest in writing has been waning lately. I’ve been falling asleep at the computer while trying to write. Not a good sign. In this instance–perhaps only in this instance–creating Ezai has helped me get back to writing. I’ve been adding new words (basics from Noll’s 3000 words like “this” and “who”) and that has been spurring thoughts about the Qhami and the first trilogy. I also figured out how to form the punctuation today.

After 50 months of writing, I have finished the first draft (discovery draft) of each of the three books in the Fate of the Qhami trilogy. I’m currently revising the first book to get it ready for beta readers and eventually publishing. I plan to have it out to beta readers by the summer of 2018.

“You can’t make babies on one idea.” -Alan Ayckbourn

The story of the Fate of the Qhami has come in bits and pieces. It has percolated for a long time (almost a decade at the time of this post) so I can’t necessarily recall the origin of every single bit. At the same time I have tried very hard to make the story and characters unique and original. People will probably say when they read this that, “Oh, he was influenced by this book or that movie.” That’s not the case. I’m sure it carries traces of the many things I’ve read and seen but if so, it has not been conscious borrowing. Here’s what I can remember:

In early 2008 I started with a few germs of ideas–snippets of story lines and vignettes. Originally Davi was the main character. Elkasu (originally called Cyrus) had come to the First Erq before the main action took place. He had been converted by an itinerant minister and joined the Exiles. The main story line was what now happens in Book Two.

Tansul was in a fishing village on an Unseeing world where he was being cultivated by a Noble in stasis as a replacement for her long dead husband. The whole sequence was originally going to start with Tansul and the Noble’s steward (I never did name her) fleeing the village, getting picked up by Volkas and somehow ending up in the First Erq. So there was going to be one book for Tansul, one book for Davi, one book for Amjia (originally called Dema), and one book with all of them together. I’m not sure how much I had about Bodin (but he was first called Bodine).

In March 2009 I started writing what would later be Ezai on an index card that I was using to study for the GRE. I started out with just sa, ma and a couple other word pairs.

That summer I started creating Ezai in earnest. I started by brainstorming new letter combinations (words) alphabetically. Then I matched words to them in binary pairs at first (light-dark, happy-sad, full-empty, etc.). Trying to figure out how to tell time in the Qhami brought about the Dawn of Order and the Primarqs. (That might have come earlier, I’m not sure.) I had a few vignettes of Bodin’s story.    

I got this big grin on my face and I thought, “Yeah, that could really be something.”

I can remember the moment when I first knew I had to write the book. I was doing my student teaching at Dobie Elementary School in Dallas, Texas, USA in Pre-K classroom in June of 2009. I was doing math with a little girl one-on-one and then in the middle of the activity this little vignette came to me where Korla says to Bodin after he’s almost been killed, “You’re a damn fool for staying.” And I got this big grin on my face and I thought, “Yeah, that could really be something.” I was stuck there for probably fifteen seconds just grinning and not doing anything. That little preschooler was probably wondering what was wrong with me. 

That was when I knew I had to write this.

Only I spent about two years not writing.

I call this phase, Percolating.

I thought about the stories much of the time but wrote very little. At first I mentally sketched out the different story lines—Tansul, Bodin, Davi (later Davia), Amjia. I still wanted to start with Tansul at Athkenozi (the little fishing village) but I couldn’t see how telling each of the separate stories in their own book and then bringing it together with Davi as the protagonist would work. 

Eventually I realized that I was most compelled by Bodin’s story at Narben with Korla. I cut Tansul’s story because, although it was good, I couldn’t figure out how he would contribute to the greater story. I made Bodin the central protagonist instead of Davi as the reluctant hero.

I continued to work on Ezai (mostly for character names) and the Encyclopedia of the Qhami. I wrote a bit of the Doctrine of Isolation and the start of a short story—a film noir/police procedural about a detective named Masde who was investigating a serial killer who turned out to be a retired Kitazr assassin—”Practice Killing”.

Then in mid-2011 I entered a new phase–Serious Outlining.

At this point I still managed to be scared of screwing up the beautiful thing I had in my head. I did buckle down in April or May of 2011 and wrote the first page or so of Book 1 just as pure, stream-of- consciousness pre-writing. Then, aided by a birthday gift (Scrivener) on my 27^th birthday I started Serious Outlining. Paired with this I was still doing heavy percolating, only now the story was occupying virtually every unoccupied thought that I had and giving me a great deal of pleasure. I started carrying a tiny notebook everywhere so I could jot down ideas. 

I continued to work on the Encyclopedia and the Ezai dictionary. Nikal was at this point, almost exactly like how I describe Zufra. He was the original pure-evil villain. But I couldn’t figure how a clever girl like Amjia would fall for him.

In late 2011 I entered the penultimate phase–“It Fits”.

The percolating and outlining resulted in a distillation of story that was finally workable. I embraced crapiness and started writing more regularly. Bits and pieces here and there. In no particular order: Bodin became good guy #1; Tansul rejoined the cast as Bodin’s right hand man; Nikal became more conflicted and less evil and finally, more or less good; Ahlbes became Undesirable #1 and the series’ uber-villain. The action is condensed into three books (3 acts to the play) with a possible 4^th (which is tangential but interesting). 

By this point I could see a path for every character and how it would all come together. I cut Narihkzai and Yloehk Pakr from the Encyclopedia and made just one hybrid language: Ezai. In March 2012 when I compiled this “backstory of the story” I wrote this fitting line that captures my writing experience for the last five years:

“Now I come to the hardest part: getting it from my head and safely on paper.”

I’ve averaged a little less than a page a day for the last two years or so. Some months have been better than others. I’ve finished a first draft of Book One and I’m about 50,000 words into a first draft on Book Two. I did start a second draft of Book One but stopped in favor of going ahead on Book Two. I’ve realized that my best weapon for fighting perfectionism is to make my first draft a “discovery draft.” It allows me to go places with characters just to discover what might happen. It doesn’t have to be good writing and it doesn’t even have to have a chance of making it into the final work but freeing myself to discover is a great way to move forward. I like the analogy someone made of the first draft being putting sand in a sandbox from which I’ll later make castles.

I finished a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type book (I loved those as a kid) for my nephews. Originally it was supposed to be a Christmas gift (I started in November 2012–one month for a novella? Who was I kidding?). The story revealed some very interesting characters. I’m convinced now that this can be its own trilogy or series set after the events of the Fate of the Qhami series.

I’m amazed at how much of what the story is has come from just a question of setting: when does it take place? That makes me ask, “how do they measure time?” Well, there must be some kind of important event from which they measure time. That spawned the Dawn of Order. And from that we get Soledon, the Bakásbole, the Protectorate, the Primarqim and so on.