Tonight I asked myself why.
Something in my writer’s introspective nature requires me to explain myself; this isn’t necessary, it’s more of a personal indulgence. It’s been almost a year since I began writing Ocean of Dreams, and it’s hard for me to even remember the frame of mind I was in when I created it. The characters I can trace back to their roots, in other failed projects dating back almost three years. They are the products of evolution, as is the plot, which is still evolving in my mind.
There is a plot, though; and this borders upon amazing, to me. The evolution of a plot that works requires a great deal of thought and tweaking, but for some reason, Ocean of Dreams has run together with very few bumps. The bumps are there (they grate on me when I read through older episodes of the story) but they will not be hard to work out. Eventually, I hope to produce an Ocean of Dreams manga, that could (heh, in my wildest dreams) lead to an Ocean of Dreams anime. But, at the moment, that’s not important.
Ocean of Dreams represents my adolescence as an author. I have always been a writer; according to my parents, I was trying to write books at the same time I was learning how to write. At the age of five, I was terribly proud of a "book" I had written (about a duck who burned her beak because she drank soup that was too hot, even though she was told not to). At the age of eleven, I first attempted to write a novel, making several more attempts that culminated in my atrocious 130-page monster "The Danean Power".
It was utter crap. Anything I wrote before the age of fourteen (with a few notable exceptions) embarrasses me to even look at. I tried to imitate the style of the science fiction-fantasy authors I read, but with my own lack of experience, I could only crank out regurgitated drivel. The exceptions that I mentioned are three stories that I was only a co-writer on--the Play (a story written in play-format, but where anyone could drop in and anything could happen), abba.wri (in which ABBA finds a time machine, drops in on my lunch table, and everyone ends up in a new world), and Sucked In (where my friends and I are sucked into the television). Each of these reached a length of about two-hundred pages, and none of them made a great deal of sense, but they were a lot of fun to write.
Oh, yeah, I was talking about Ocean of Dreams. You’re still there? Good. Sorry about that--you really don’t care to listen to me rattle on about my evolution as an author. Suffice to say that I am seventeen years old, and I consider this one of the more mature pieces I’ve embarked on, but I’m not done growing. Therefore, it’s my adolescence as a writer. I would also put my Crystalline Heart saga in that category. Thank you. Moving on.
I was thinking about self-insertion characters, after reading Lyn’s Claris Project, and if anyone in Ocean of Dreams is a self-insertion character, it’s Merene. She and I have the most in common, but really, all my characters are, to a degree, me. I can identify with Lainnys, Lucine, Adrin, and Jeremy--even Raen.
I trace Merene back to Audrey, a character that really was based on me. Two other characters in this story, a boy--whose name I don’t recall--and his sister Kate can be traced to Adrin and Lainnys, but very little remains the same. Jeremy could also claim the boy in this story as an ancestor, but in reality it was a project that never got off the ground. It was a case where I had an elaborate setup and beginning, but didn’t think it through.
That’s the embarrassing thing. I never let myself do that anymore--write without some sort of plan. The plan may change as the writing progresses, but I’ve always got some destination.
I don’t know what else to say. Thank you for reading this entire deluge of pointless thought. It’s nice to pretend someone out there cares--or at least hope someone doesn’t have anything better to do than read my ramblings.