Writing Update #3: Teehee I threw it all away
Current WIP: Project Butterfly
Draft: #2.5
Today’s word count: 40,321
Anticipated release: Unchanged
It’s fine. Everything is fine. I promise I’m only using “teehee” ironically.
Oh, the book? The one that I just kicked out and told never to come back? Yeah, that’s, um, gone.
It’s fine. Everything is fine.
Okay, I’m done being annoying.
If you’ve been keeping up with my extremely fun and overwritten blog posts, then you’ll know I’ve been working on a new duology. Project Butterfly, the trendy youth are calling it.
It’s hard to say when I started working on it. The inspiration began with a dream I had back in 2023, which gave me a crystal-clear vision of the ending I wanted for this book—and literally nothing else.
I’ve never written a story backwards before. I’m very linear when it comes to storytelling, and having infinite possible starting points that eventually have to narrow down into something specific was a new challenge for me.
I had a twist but no premise. An emotional gut punch but no characters to hit with it. Since my subconscious presented me with this iconic dream, I feel like I’ve been speed-dating worlds and star-crossed pairings, desperately searching for where this story wants to be.
Gothic fantasy? Witchy fantasy, high fantasy, apocalypse fantasy? I’ll admit I even let the trends sway me for a while, because Veilfall’s cross-genre vibes have been hard to market and an enemies-to-lovers dragon fantasy sounded so comforting.
Thus, I dabbled. And earlier this year, I finally found a good premise. Really good, actually. When I look at the pile of storyboarding sticky notes I just took down from my window, I still see an amazing book, full of magic and adventure and heart-stopping romance.
The problem was that this theoretical book never felt like it was mine.
A Confession
I kind of hate writing enemies-to-lovers dragon fantasies.
I know! I’m sorry! They really are wonderful to read (please refer to my ToG obsession as proof), but writing is different.
I have to live in my books for years at a time, and, for the sake of my sanity, I need that world to include cellphones. I want my characters to enjoy falling in love, because then I get to enjoy it. I want the world to have enough magic that I get to be creative, but not so much that I have to build everything myself.
I’m saying this all in retrospect, of course. For months, I wasn’t consciously aware of my deal-breakers, but that didn’t stop me from trying to fix stuff. The premise got messier and messier. The setting became a weird mix of compromises. I landed on an art nouveau-inspired world, but it still wasn’t right.
Fortunately, you can always rely on the gym to knock you over the head with an epiphany. Mine came to me in the form of an opening scene: a silly conversation between a disgruntled woman and a blundering guidance counsellor. No dragons. Just a modern office and a gal with a mundane magical problem that spirals totally out of control.
It turned into the easiest 1000 words I’ve written in some time, because I wanted to write it. More than I wanted to work on Project Butterfly. And before I could freak out about conflicting projects or lost time, my husband fortunately suggested something rather groundbreaking:
The new scene is Project Butterfly.
I’ve workshopped it a lot since that fateful day. The comedic scene in question has been replaced with something grittier, and my original second draft (RIP) has been forever condemned to my google drive.
But the heart of the book remains. It’s the same love story, with the same characters and twists that I’ve been developing these last few months. It was shockingly easy to slot everything into this new premise, which is why, despite the clickbait title, I don’t feel that I’m starting over.
I already have 40,000 words down on this draft, and guys, it’s good. I mean, statistically, some of you will hate it, but most of you won’t! Yay! It’s so Veilfall, but totally different. The romance has just the right amount of awkward yearning, and the setting is that cozy kind of dreary, with hints of magic and science. It feels unique. It feels like me. I love it.
And more profoundly, I’ve realized that it’s probably the book you guys want me to write, too.
There’s a lot of work to be done on Project Butterfly, but my timeline hasn’t changed. I hope to have this new draft done by the end of September, then another ready for editing in January. Anticipated release is still mid-2026, though I commit to NOTHING.
Whatever happens, know that an awesome book is on its way.
And maaaaaaaaaybe … themostpsychoticcliffhangersinceEmpireofStorms.
Okay bye! ❤️
— Annika
