Jarth-tastic New Year's Resolutions

Dear faithful readers,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! As part of my self-imposed holiday hermitage, I engage in a good deal of Jarthen writing and reflection around this time of the year, and thought (perhaps) that some of those musings are worth sharing.

First, the history of this epic story. As many of you are aware, The Tale of Jarthen began as a Jon's winter term project at Oberlin during his freshman year (2003). He read a bunch of fantasy novels - most notably The Chronicles of Narnia and The Wizard of Oz - and proceeded to regurgitate an oddly compelling mix of off-kilter narration, convoluted syntax, and plagiarized concepts in the form of a 6-page document which then languished in his desk drawer for 2 years before he revealed its existence to Van and myself.

We took the original story, used it as starting point, and have been working on it various degrees of seriousness ever since. Over the last 6 years (a shockingly long time to me, quite literally a quarter of my lifespan) Jon and I have forced just about everyone we know to endure dramatic readings of the prologue, and generally natter on about it as if it actually matters to anyone.

Since we moved ot Michigan, though, we've really started to write the story in earnest. Now, there are hand-drawn maps, a large bulletin board in our living room full of plot outlines for the entire story, and an accompanying compendium of knowledge we use to more fully flesh out the Jarthen-verse and keep our writing internally consistent. We have published nearly 12 chapters totalling roughly 160 pages on this blog, and we have a good 40 or so pages more currently in the editing process. We are getting dangerously close to end of Book I.

Crazy right? But there's still a lot of work to do yet. Recently, I went through the blog and compiled a manuscript of the story using the published material (because, you know, that's literally the kind of thing I do for fun) and noticed some issues with it. So, here are my Jarthen-related New Year's resolutions:

1. Finish Book 1! WOO! We can so do this. But there's a second, much trickier task: name Book I. Any and all suggestions are considered helpful and greatly appreciated.
   
2. Yeah, so, rereading the entire book I noticed that we don't really ever go into what people look like, beside Jarthen himself being blond and skinny or Rethnaki being generically 'handsome' in some unexplained ways, do we? I mean, do you even know what color Jarthen's eyes are? I don't, and that probably shouldn't be the case. Expect more detailed physical descriptions of the characters in upcoming chapters. Better late than never, I guess.
3. Along with that, some sort of better indication of the passage of time should probably be worked out. I mean, what season is it now? How many months have passed since Jarthen and co. were hanging out in the City of Mages? I know the answers, but probably not because they're clearly elucidated in the text.
4. I hope you can't tell this from what weve posted here, but the first drafts of my sections often reads more like a script than a novel: some brief description of the set, then a lot of unadorned dialogue to move the plot along and some vague stage directions. There's no real narrator or any internal monologues until Jon gets ahold of it.
   
5. Honestly? I can't write Jarthen himself to save my life. He's just so....blank. I'm always at a loss as to how to use him in scenes because he just goes along with everything in that slightly confused way of his. I'm hoping that the events at the close of the first book and through the second half of the second book (cause yeah, we know where we're going with that) will give him more character and a bit more personality.

So that's what I'm going to work on. Jon likely has things he's planning to improve, but he hasn't discussed them with me, and god knows if he'll post them here. He's a man moved on whims and not exactly prone to making lists. And besides, he's got less to work on than I do in this respect anyway.

Wishing you dreams as lovely as the color of Jarthen's as-yet uknown eyes,

Melissa