The sun set in the Land Beyond, and as the desert dust hung thickly, the sky became a fiery red.

That was going to be the first line of my first published novel, written at 16. I was an aspiring writer back then, and all I wanted to do was write novels, nothing but novels. I was going to have a string of them, one right after the other, sequels to sequels and prequels galore, part ones and twos, then threes and fours. My name was going to be uttered in the same breath as Tolkien, Brooks, Eddings, and Donaldson.

Boy, was I full of myself.

But I had maps and diagrams, the layout of the various lands, leagues of them, across which my characters would trek, epic journeys made in the name of good against ultimate evil. I had family trees sketched out to help me keep track of the generations, for each series would span at least several of them, and names. There were a ton of names, most of them made up out of thin air because I wanted them to sound completely exotic and new and otherworldly.

Mine especially… my name was going to be the next big thing in fantasy and science fiction, the name of some young and upcoming writer with even more promise and potential beyond the critical acclaim.

I don’t know what made me quit that dream, what made me drop it like a hot potato. I kept getting older, reading and writing less with each day, getting bored with all the story ideas I’d been tossing in my head all those first years.

I still have all those ideas. They are sitting in the back of my head. The only difference is that I’m much older now, and I have a better idea about the kind of writing I like and about the kind of writing I want to emulate. And that first line in the first novel? I wouldn’t use that any more. It’s too purple and too trite, and even with the studied use of active verbs the whole thing seems to lie there like a doormat.

If I undertake the task of rewriting it, though, I may just be forced to write the entire novel from beginning to end, and I don’t know yet if I want to do that. Maybe in November. Or maybe never.

Anyway… I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

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