The Moment I Met Sapiens for the First Time

It was a November night ten years ago. Sadly, I can’t remember the precise date. I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep like I did every night. As usual, I couldn’t. My thoughts went to my best friend at the time and how we both adored Christopher Paolini, the author of Eragon. She and I had often discussed how impressive, to say the least, it was for someone who was only fifteen to write and publish a book as big as Eragon.

And then I had a crazy thought. The one crazy thought that changed my life.

I thought to myself, How is Christopher Paolini better than me? Why does he get to publish such a huge book and I don’t? And that was the moment I decided to write a novel just as huge, a high fantasy. 

I was fifteen at the time.

High fantasy has always been my favorite genre. I can’t even express enough how much I love reading or watching or writing high fantasy! The thing is, I never thought, even that night, how big it would turn to. I mean, I only had a basic, basic plot. I didn’t even know the hero’s name. Just out of sheer stubbornness, I decided to create a novel as big as Paolini’s. Instead of a simple farmboy, Eragon, and his dragon, Saphira, I went with a royal prince and a unicorn—and no, not the colorful unicorns that produce rainbows and have tiny, cute wings. In my story, unicorns are the most graceful creatures you’ll ever meet. They are more like pegasi, but with horns on their heads.

I didn’t know the names of any of the characters. I didn’t know the name of the city. I didn’t know anything except that the story would have a prince and a unicorn for a friend. I decided on the sort of magic to be in use. Instead of spells, uttered spells, I chose the magic of nature: the four elements. Along with those, I chose two elements to complete the picture I had in my head: the heart and the mind. I decided there would be six gods, one responsible for each of the six elements. And that’s how At the Gates of Alstroemeria began.

I wrote the first chapter in March. The time between November and March had been mainly research. I decided on the characters’ names and I worked a bit on the plot, tried to figure out who was gonna do what, that sort of thing. I hadn’t tried to write a single story before this one. It was the first and biggest project of my life. It still is.

I chose the characters’ and places’ names based on their color. I had images for them in my head, and I chose names that conformed to the color of the person or the place. (I have grapheme-color synesthesia; this makes perfect sense to me.) I chose the hero’s name: Sapiens. In my book, Latin is the language of magic. I needed a Latin name for him. Sapiens is yellow, which is not among my favorite colors, but … I just couldn’t look away. The name stole my heart from first glance. It just clicked.

Next, I wrote.

The feeling of writing the first word in the first chapter was … magnificent. It’s indescribable. That blank page that had stared me in the face for months finally had the first virtual blot of ink on it. It was a brilliant feeling, overwhelming, fulfilling. I found myself writing more smoothly than I thought I could. I was slow the first few months, then I got faster than normal for anyone who’s writing. I wrote like my life depended on it.

By the time I went to third secondary (the last year of high school in my education system), I was already past halfway through the third and final part of the trilogy. Unfortunately, two things happened at once: I ran into a dead end in my story, and the national high school exams started nearing. Big time. For those of you who don’t know, third secondary (second and third, in my days) is the year that decides your future. Its score decides which college you get to go to and what sort of job you’ll get later. It’s crazy, and it’s damn tough. I had to stop writing if I wanted to get through.

But that’s when I ran into my biggest problem: writer’s block.

I just couldn’t go back to what I wrote. Six years passed with me still in writer’s block. I read and reread the chapters I wrote, but I just couldn’t write one new word. I was still stuck in the ending of the third book.

And then when I was twenty-three, I started rewriting the whole thing from scratch. I did not copy-paste from the old version of the book and edit it, for instance. I sat down, opened a new Word document, and I started writing, all the way from chapter one.

It was crazy. It was amazing, and sort of liberating, even. I knew my characters a thousand times better. I was a lot less naïve than I was at the age of fifteen. I knew much better grammar, much better vocabulary. I had a stronger plot and much more developed characters. And as I wrote this time, the book exceeded my own expectations and became the best version of itself that I ever thought possible.

I redrafted the first book seven times. Currently, I am writing the second part—past halfway through. It’s amazing and fun and challenging and brilliantly satisfying and exhausting at once. I love it, just like the first day. Now I know it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I tried querying literary agents in the US, because that had always been the dream from that very first night: to publish my book in the US. I queried fifty agents. So far, I got thirty-three clear-cut rejections, and I’m waiting for the rest. It was depressing at first; now it’s more of a game. How many rejections can I collect before I get an email asking for the full manuscript?

I’ll let you know when it happens.

But one thing I am sure about: that night I met Sapiens for the first time … that was the night my life changed forever.

P.S.: The reason Dylan O'Brien's picture is here is because I found out about a year ago, by sheer chance, that he exists. And guess what ... he looks just like Sapiens.

August 19th, 2019