I started actually publishing Vattu in July of 2010, and planning and development around a year before that. So let’s call this an anniversarial thing, but really I just think it would be helpful to collect my thoughts publicly a little around this book that still feels extremely personal and quiet and idiosyncratic to me.
I struggle to think about how big this project has become, and how long a period of my life has been covered by it. While the broad strokes of the plot have been clear from early on, in the last few years I’ve felt myself slipping into a different sort of approach to writing it: less like I’m dutifully recording a self-contained story, and more like I’m using the story I’ve built so far as a way of exploring ideas. The more of it there is, the more it feels like I can live in it, instead of just building an interesting thing. I don’t know how else to say this, and I’ve never felt that it’s a betrayal of the plot-focused approach to the story. This isn’t like anything I’ve made and I have to believe that whatever value there is in it is because I’m doing it my own weird way?
This isn’t to say that it’s been consistently exciting and engaging to work on. This is something I want to be clearer on because I feel like a lot of people approach creative work as something you should only pursue when you’re 100% engaged or “inspired.” For me for practically any large-scale project, the most exciting part is early on, when I’m developing the idea and it’s clear enough to fit in my head, but not clear enough to feel too nailed-down to one particular finite incarnation. My excitement about a project is significantly lower than that throughout the entire rest of the process, but it varies a lot within that. It’s a commitment, it’s not a magical feeling all the time. Vattu has occasionally been a struggle, and I’ve occasionally felt totally out-of-touch with the vision I had when I planned it and started it. And the guiding vision of it has changed considerably, in a way that my previous books never did. But I feel that I still know what I’m doing with it, and I’ve been doing a lot more writing on it lately and getting pretty excited about where we’re going. (Having a couple of other things to jump between usually helps me through this process)
Where we’re going: in the interest of having four books that aren’t of enormously different lengths, I’ve recently decided to change the ending point for Book 3 (the one we’re currently in). This decision comes from a formal place but I do feel it works for the story, and makes Book 3 work a little better as a unit. I estimate now (July 2017, page 847) that we’re around 100 pages from the end of Book 3. I am thinking of the current moment in Book 3 (or the moment starting in the next couple of scenes) as a major turning-point for the story; I’m excited about finally being here and I don’t want to say more than that. And Book 4 will be intense, and even with all the planning that’s gone into it it’ll be the most challenging writing I have ever done, and it may be bigger than I think it’ll be. I am thrilled and horrified to think of what the whole story will look like in a few years when it’s done.
Oh and titles! I’m changing the title to Book 3 slightly (it’s hardly been posted anywhere, but until now it was “The Lantern and the Shadow”). Here’s the titles of all four books of Vattu; finally:
The Name & the Mark
The Sword & the Sacrament
The Tower & the Shadow
The River
I’d like to be getting the third book printed this time next year. I have the cover art pretty clear in my head and I’d like to get that done and visible in the next few months.
I would like to write more about my process in the future; maybe this at least will be an annual thing if I can remember. I know that my approach and my aesthetic and the place of webcomics in the internet have changed dramatically since I started Rice Boy 11 years ago. But I love doing this work and I love that I have an audience that makes it possible for me to pursue idiosyncratic projects at absurd scales. Thank you so much for reading.
