Book Character: Emily by Adachy on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

I find it strange that instead of focusing on other projects and leaving this for later, you go on and on with it.
I too am a Romanian writer, but I renounced writing in Romanian a long time ago because I think it unnecessary in a country that does not promote modern literature, let alone fantasy or sci-fi. People I've encountered tell me I am a snob for writing in English exclusively and consider me sort of a traitor for despising the rustic feel of the Romanian language. (By the way, I am writing in English to you now, even if you are of my nationality, because I have the feeling that people writing in their own language on this site (specially Russian and French people) have something to hide that they don't want others to know about)

I too have written my fantasy novel originally in Romanian, about 8 years ago, but I felt as if with Romanian I wasn't really going anywhere, plus there was this cultural boundry between other countries and Romania and I thought to myself: "Who would read this novel if it's written in Romanian aside from Romanians, which don't actually care about fantasy written in their own language?" So I said: "Why not?!" and I rewrote the entirety of my novel in English - entirety is an overstatement, because I'm at halfway through what was originally the Romanian version of the plot.
As a consequence, my sense of documentation and style changed, I haven't read as much literature as I had in the past but in these past years I read mostly critique and essays which helped a lot and the plot has changed from something I did not initially like all that much to something I cannot even know what will happen. I have a few thresholds: A, B, C etc and the characters have to pass through these, but in what way and what happens to them, I don't know myself. That's they beauty of thinking of what events occur and not how.
Also, I chose to keep the novel fairly short and not make it in a series, thus lingering on it too much because as there is the Romanian saying: "Prea mult strica."

However, that does not mean that I am stuck with only this project. I have a list of ideas and developed plots that may turn out to be novelettes or short stories and I am currently writing a historical novelette which needs a bit of tweaking, but it's a breath of fresh air and a novel about belief and God based on my life experiences. Making a fantasy novel does not mean that you have to ground yourself in that universe you have created FOREVER! like Tolkien did >.>

Also, there are a lot of Fantasy novels out there because most are written by Americans who have been taught how to write, not how to read and analyze and this they think they can just publish every piece of crap that comes out of their heads *coughPaolinicough* But if you sift through it, there are some great fantasy novels and there are recommendations which to read.
Fantasy from Eastern-Europe is very rare and don't put your hopes so deep that your novel will never get acceptance in your lifetime. You just need to make it the best it can be!