A Cycle of Reflection
Writing an entire epic fantasy saga, start to finish, and not in one-book increments, while working a day job is…maybe a bit harder than I expected.
Actually, it’s a lot harder than I expected.
Being a perfectionist doesn’t help.
Does that math work? Could Tobias and Lothor have met while they were both at Ellard? Did Nigel have enough time to travel back from Tallu and arrive in Wodi? Wait, how old is Charley?
Do the magic rules work? Is one of every chalyn pair either a mindrider or an empath? Are Redan and Mouse an anomaly in the pattern? What happens to Ava and Lam’s clothes when they shift to and from their ayohotulee forms? Is the First Mother omnipotent or does she have limits, at least in what she can perceive of prior cycles?
Is Rootstock’s “echo of ourselves” setting conveyed clearly enough? Will readers recognize the saga as a future projection of our world, and not our present or past? Have I portrayed the cultures that inspired me with enough sensitivity to evoke real world analogies and not be confused with historical portrayals? Is there more I could do to avoid being perceived as misappropriating cultures I find so compelling I wanted those to be our future?
Has our exhaustive, repeated, and painstaking editing caught every omission, every comma, every inconsistency of capitalization or hyphenation? What mistake will a reader find that none of us caught? Will that single mistake taint the storytelling?
I’ve done my best.
I could go back over it all a hundred times more, and I’d still not be satisfied.
It will never be perfect, but “Perfect has no reason for being.”