There’s a bit of an interesting story behind “Winter Stories and Rum Pots”.

I wrote the story about a year ago, driven by a desire to get a feel for what winter holidays would look like in Illithiust.  This time last year I had purchased the domain for the website and started writing some stories but due some health reasons didn’t actually get around to starting the website until February of this year.  By that time it was too late for a winter holiday story and I figured I would end up using it this year.

So, here we are but when I went and read the story it needed quite a few revisions.  It wasn’t that it was bad, all the core aspects of the story were there, but the way that Quartes and Keto conversed, and how they behaved, felt off.  They weren’t completely wrong but reading through the story they didn’t feel right, things like what they focused on and style of sentences weren’t how they should be.  Given the span of time the Fey and Bard spend together the nature of their relationships, and thus how they interact around one another, can vary quite a bit.  However, rereading the original draft of Winter Stories felt less about having them in the wrong time and more having the wrong voice.

The answer to that I think is rather simple.  It’s been essentially a year of writing stories.  I will end up writing close to two-hundred thousand words by the end of this year (it’s worth noting that this number includes credit I give myself for editing).  While compared to last year where I wrote 156k it’s not a massive increase.  However, past years often involved a large amount of simple things, such as Skyrim journal entries.  While counting as writing practice for sure, they aren’t as significant as what I’ve largely worked on for over the last year.  With most of those words being about the Fey and Bard, the two characters have changed as they have gained depth and I’ve grown more proficient in writing them.

So, the dialogue in the original draft felt off because to my current standards it didn’t read like Keto and Quartes.  It’s a valuable lesson that going back and reading some of my older pieces can be informative in seeing how the characters have developed, and how I’ve grown as an author.  Though I don’t plan on “remastering” any of the older ones from the site.  I’d rather spend the time writing more stories.  Still, it was cool to be able to see the difference and I wonder if it’s worth writing something now and holding onto it for a year to get a feel once again for how I’ve changed in my craft.

Beyond that, if you’ve never made a rum pot throughout the year it is a fun tradition and one I hope to get back into when my career stops requiring me to move every couple of years and I can get back into gardening.  If you’re wondering if we’ll see Keto and Quartes at Cedarspoke…I don’t know.  Writing songs is not my specialty, I literally have a thirty-thousand word novella where the only unfinished bit are a couple of songs.  Furthering the tale in Cedarspoke I think would be incomplete without songs and I kinda like ending on the upbeat note of Keto taking Quartes there, and of course thoroughly embarrassing him while also helping the old Landian to find joy.

So, we’ll see where the stories take us this week.  Until then…

Go forth and do good things,

Sean