Progress Going Into 2025 and Goals

Hi, I’m Harrison. If you’re reading this, you likely already know me, but I’m an aspiring writer working on a novel called The Trail. I wanted to cover my progress so far and my goals for 2025 for this project, and I want to use this space to give updates on my progress to both help with accountability and share my writing process and thoughts and ideas.

I have a really hard time boiling The Trail down into a summary, a genre, or even basic themes as a big part of this novel, for me, is rejecting genre and a lot of basic story-telling conventions. But people do seem to really want to know what books are “about.” So I’ll say The Trail has elements of the following:

1. Those stories about people hiking the Appalachian Trail for personal growth

2. Urban fantasy/magical realism

3. Horror, mostly akin to Edgar Allan Poe, but with the uncanny/liminal feel of Welcome to Night Vale or The Twilight Zone and some demons and creatures that evoke Lovecraftian stories and also playing with the cryptozoological folklore of Appalachia, while also trying to highlight how some of that folklore is a product of racism (i.e. Bigfoot, “wild” people, cannibals, etc.)

4. A very central focus on queerness, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, socialism, anti-racism (especially police brutality) and anti-fascism

5. A landscape in many ways born out of the existential horror that has been the Covid pandemic, which served as inspiration for the plague-ridden City consumed by the forest and the isolated feeling of The Trail, as well as the theme of impending death

The story follows three main characters and several secondary characters. The main protagonists are three strangers who meet on The Trail:

1. The Woman (She/Her), a woman (at least mostly) without a name who is wickedly tall but has very little else in the way of an appearance. She is not white. She has just escaped a loveless marriage, has driven all the way across the country to The Trail, has just thrown her phone off a bridge, and starts hiking The Trail on more-or-less a whim, joined by her pet teacup pig, Orlando.
2. Mars (They/Them), a non-binary teenager from near the southernmost point of The Trail. They are escaping abusive parents. Their mother is Korean and their father is half Italian and half Latino, so they have a lot of layers of pressure on their identity. Their parents are fundamentalist, right-wing evangelical Christians and they grew up in an oppressive church, constantly chastised by their pastors for their relationship with gender.

3. Therese Defarge (He/Him), a Black gay man from Louisiana, who ran away from his old life many years ago and found himself at Unrequited Love Lake, a location on The Trail, where he met his future husband, Kane. The two lived together in The City for many years, as political activists, fighting against the fascists and the milquetoast liberals and “centrists” who let fascism thrive in their city. Therese was a gardener while his husband was a university history teacher. Eventually, as the fascist Mayor rose to power over The City, things became more and more dangerous until The Mayor killed Kane and then eventually everyone else between his biological warfare and militarized police force. Defarge now travels The Trail, with his pet monkey Slurpee, looking for The Mayor to get revenge.

I write my novel primarily in Campfire’s writing software (not sponsored, but I love it). I currently have just over 50,000 words completed. I have about 70 characters created in Campfire. My manuscript currently has 34 chapters, though most of them are small, as I like small chapters that change perspective a lot. I try to write in a very close third person that sometimes blurs the lines between first and third person.

I have created a whole map of The Trail, overlayed over a real map of the Appalachian Trail, with locations that my characters will visit. I have also created a timeline to keep track of exactly how many miles and days are between each event and are covered by which chapters. It’s important to me that readers are not taken out of the novel by me not knowing where/when my characters are at all times. That being said, considering the magical/liminal nature of The Trail, time, distance, season, weather all may be bent some, but I want to only be doing that with intention and not accidentally.

Although 50,000 words is sort of the low end of length for a novel, I would say I’m no more than a third of the way done with a first draft, so I do worry it will be too long.

I’m trying my best to limit editing-as-I-go and focus on finishing a first draft, but I know there are some things I want to drastically change in editing. I want to make the narrator more defined and blur the lines between an omniscient narrator and a character more, like Lemony Snicket in ASoUE, though not quite to that extent. This is exemplified in the very first sentence, where the narrator slips into first person for a second. I want to add much more of that in editing.

Furthermore, I really want to perfect the language and dialect of some of my characters, but as a white person attempting to write from many diverse perspectives/cultures, I’m hoping to work with sensitivity readers who can make sure I can create authentic dialogue grounded in how real people speak without over-reaching or promulgating stereotypes. I’m really hoping to have conversations with sensitivity readers about code switching and how different characters might speak in different contexts. So that’s going to a big challenge and a big change in editing.

So, of course, my main goal for 2025 is to self-publish my novel on Halloween 2025. I think Halloween is the perfect time for a story like this. I am pretty confident in this goal and feeling pretty motivated.

The biggest unknown for me will just be trying to get sensitivity and beta readers to help me in the editing process and hopefully trying to get some money together to at least compensate them a little for that.

Anyway, I want to work on writing every day in 2025. The past year-or-so, I haven’t made a ton of progress on my writing, but I have started new mental health meds that do help with my executive function. I also have purchased a desk that goes over my bed so I can be productive in bed, and I don’t just have to sit in my desk chair for hours.

I also want to continue to update this blog with my progress and make YouTube videos going over my progress and my process, which could also serve as the start of marketing for my book.

I want to self-publish because my book does not fit clearly into genres and is hard to market to a mass audience, so I don’t think traditional publishers will like it. I’m not sure how effective traditional advertising will even be for it. I’m more thinking that leveraging social media and spaces with lots of queer people might be a better direction, because I think that will be the main group who would enjoy this book. I do not think this book will appeal to a mainstream audience, but I don’t want to write something people will like. I want to write something I think is good.

If you want to keep up with me, check in here or follow my YouTube channel which I plan to post content surrounding my progress to as well. Maybe I’ll make an email list or something too, not sure. Any advice on like marketing and growing an audience who might be interested would be appreciated.

Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this.
Best wishes,

Harrison

Edit: Comments now enabled, so feel free to share nay thoughts, advice, ideas, stuff about your WIP, etc! <3