Change Happens

From a novella to a novel

WESTERN FICTION

John C. Prejean Sr.

6/19/20262 min read

Sometimes, you start off with a project in mind and get so far off track that you have to reel yourself back in and start over. That's kind of what happened with my novella. My initial intentions were to introduce my protagonist, Elias Robichaux, and launch the series with the novella. Once I got nearly 40 chapters in, I noticed that I had far too many characters, which started to blur the plot of the story. That led me to stop writing and to think about a solution.

The solution wasn't easy, but it was obvious. Go back to the original idea. Originally, I wanted the novella to revolve around Elias. Who is he? What does he do? What is he doing in El Paso? Etc. I decided not to go with a novella and instead create a novel. Some of you might be saying, "That's a lot of chapters for nothing if you're not going to use them for the novel." But that's where you'd be wrong, sort of. I may not be using most of the material that I've written so far for this novel, but that doesn't mean that it's gone to waste. What I've written so far can be pulled into the novel here and there. The rest of it will be used for the follow-up novel in the series.

Life can be that way at times, too. We have one thing in mind, and we get way off track and have to come back to the beginning. If there's anything that I've learned in the 59 years that I've been here, it's that it's ok. I didn't always have that attitude, and at times I still don't, but I try to look at things from an optimistic point of view. Instead of looking at it as I screwed up and wasted time, I look at it as I did some productive work that I can utilize at a different point. Or, that I had the opportunity to learn something from this mistake. But most importantly, I ask myself, "What was Jesus trying to show or tell me?"

The journey continues my friends. Buen Camino.