Breaking Point

I recently had a conversation that got me to think more critically about my writing.

I love telling the story of Chie and her friends. And even though "1 More Chance!" is quickly coming to an end, there is a much larger tale that I can tell about my oft-maligned trio of protagonists (that being Chie, Yousuke, and Kuma). But this recent conversation made me start to rethink that larger story.

Not the plot of it, or where the characters are going, or what's eventually going to happen to them, because all of that was decided a long, long time ago.

But if that particular story should even be.

Basically, I was told to get my ass out of the safety of the fan fiction game and return to the professional circuit, shopping around spec chapters and writing letters to agents and editors who can possibly get my name on the shelves for real. I admit the thought is tempting, and I think I'm a much better writer now than I was when I first swam in that pool, almost ten years ago.

But I would miss this story. I would miss these characters. I would miss all of the wonderful and terrible things I've thought up and stressed over and plotted over the last two years. I've never felt such a connection to these people as I have with any other characters, before. Maybe it's because so much of me is in them already. But I feel as though dropping them now - with their stories only half-told - would be a shame. Perhaps not to you (because who are you, anyway? I don't even know), but to me.

Then again, I've fallen in love with some of my original characters, too, and the tales they had to tell. Maybe those stories deserve a return look, another pass by the editor.

Maybe it's time for me to grow up, to leave Chie and Yousuke and the rest behind.

Maybe I just need to look at all of the charming stories I've yet to tell for them - the stories of love and happiness, the stories of pain and heartbreak, the stories of life and of death - and just...give them to someone else. Because when it comes down to the words on the page, who are these people, except for figments of my imagination? Beautiful and wonderful and terrifying figments, figments I've come to love writing and love sharing...but figments nevertheless.

There have always been other stories about this particular universe that are more easily accepted, more universally loved, more simply appreciated than mine. And maybe I should have seen that writing on the wall a long time ago, should have realized that all of those lost readers was a sign that my time is done.

I don't know.

I would have enjoyed writing Yousuke's story, though. I would have enjoyed writing Kuma's story, too. And, who knows? There might still be time for them, some day.

But I already knew that the stories I want to tell with these characters aren't what people are looking for. So maybe I'll get lucky, and I'll find an audience out there for my own characters, living in those same stories of family and love.

I hope so.