How I'm Birthing My First Novel "The Source of The Wind"
or... Get This Novel Out Of MEEEE!
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I love a good origin, behind-the-scenes story to creative projects.
If there is an album that I adored, a book that I deeply connected to, or a movie that inspired me - I go on a research binge, learning everything I can about how it was made. Not just the practical, how-to of the craft and skills necessary, but also the why of the creation itself. Why did the creator of said album\book\movie create this beautiful piece of work? What was in them that was needing to be expressed? How did they receive their inspiration? What was their process for bringing their ideas into reality? Were they methodical and strategic, planning their route towards their end goal? Or did they go with the flow, uncertain of where they’d end up or what the details would consist of?
As someone who can't help but create, one of my favourite things to recall and reflect upon for myself, is how I created something. How did this particular song, essay, poem or creative project make its way into my consciousness and ask me to make it? Just the fact that a human has the capacity to bring an idea into existence and make it a part of reality, is very cool to me. Which is why I'm always fascinated by how other creators have made their creations.
If you happen to have received or landed on this post, after reading my debut novel The Source of The Wind - oh my god, hi!! That's so exciting that you read the novel and cared enough to learn more about it. Maybe you read the afterword where I shared a bit about how the idea for this novel came to me and also why it was important for me to write it. In this post, I will be delving deeper into that story and share with you all the of the meaningful details of my journey with this project.
If you haven’t read The Source Of The Wind yet (I mean, this post is being published before the novel is, so if you’re reading this before early June 2025 - most likely you haven’t read it yet), then you’ll get to read why this novel matters so much to me and maybe you’ll be inspired to read it.
First off, I will say that I never thought I would write a novel. EVER. I’ve always had the need to create, since I was very young, but my form was usually music. Singing, playing instruments and musicking (definition = to engage with music in any capacity), was a necessity for me since as early as I can remember. My childhood dreams were about singing on stages, creating albums and using music to empower myself and others. It was not writing novels. Or even writing, in general.
But as you may have read in my previous post, writing came knocking on my door in the form of a travel blog in my early twenties, which became a surprisingly satisfying creative endeavour. I discovered that I loved sharing stories. Actually, the posts where I recounted my travel stories and shared my musings, personal experiences and what I learned, were my favourite to write. I loved the craft of creating a story and experience for the reader. Even if it was a true story and used 3000 words at most.
Now. let me paint you the picture of how the inspiration for The Source of The Wind came to me.
I’m 25 years old, the aforementioned travel blog is making its way out of my life and I’m in the throes of some serious mental health issues. Childhood was something that I survived and years of trauma lead me to being diagnosed a couple of years earlier with Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Dysthymic Depression with major episodes, and eventually C-PTSD. But even though I had been receiving very good help for 2-3 years up until that point, I was still distraught by some past traumatic situations and I couldn’t shake them off. One night, I was laying in bed and overcome with distressing memories, causing my nervous system to go haywire. Once I was finally able to regulate myself, it bothered me that situations from the past were still harming me, even though they were over. I realised that other than singing from that wounded place, I had never really successfully shared those parts of my story. Certainly not using actual words. Self-expression has always been important to me and a way for me to heal and process my toughest emotions. I recognised that if I didn’t actively get my experiences out of me via telling my story, then they will always be hurting me from within. But I didn’t know how to go about this. I’m a very private person - I’ll talk about something, but not want to get into too much detail. I want to protect some of the people that are involved. And I do not want to feel so vulnerable and exposed. I needed a way to get my story out of me, whilst still allowing myself to have as much privacy as I need.
I went to bed that night with this unresolved question, and I woke up the next morning with a very unexpected answer. The answer was this: a novel, two main characters, one is aware but the other isn’t, and a message: "there is always help available". I just woke up, and there it was, sitting in my consciousness.
As I had wrote in the afterword of The Source Of The Wind, I was so genuinely surprised by this answer, that I had to sit with it and contemplate it. And what was even more surprising, was that I was incredibly excited by this idea. This ‘random’ idea of writing a novel, that I have never thought about doing. Yet, here it was, presenting itself to me on a silver platter, waiting for me to take it. It seemed random to my rational mind. But… Well, I guess I don’t really believe in ‘random’. Because while my mind was scratching its head, confused at the relevance, my body’s intelligence was signalling the way with full confidence. It was like every cell in my body was singing, “Do it! Do it! Do it!”.
I was still doubtful about the whole idea. How am I supposed to craft a full length story and write around 80,000 words? It felt way too daunting. But the excitement didn’t let up and my curiosity got the better of me. What is the main character like? What’s the inciting incident? How does that make her feel? What does it make her do? Who are the supporting characters? What are their biggest fears? What do they learn? How do they learn it? I kept asking questions and receiving a flood of answers and ideas that would only prompt even more excited questions. After two weeks of feverishly plotting, letting the characters tell me who they are and crafting scenes and dialogues, I had to admit that I needed to write this story. It was lighting me up in a way I’ve always hoped to be lit up by something, and it wasn’t diminishing. Only getting stronger. And that two week period of intuitively plotting was so... much… fun!! I had to write the first draft.
So that’s what I did for the first year.
Writing the first draft of The Source of The Wind, was a secret project that carried me through an intense year of my bachelor’s degree, a three week trip to India (where I wrote for a couple of hours every day), and the start of the pandemic lockdowns in early 2020. I would sit at my computer for hours when I could, and tap away at my phone for 20 minutes on the bus when I couldn’t. Sometimes I’d only manage to sneak 50 words in the notes app on my phone. But I was committed to writing. I wasn’t thinking about what I’d do with the story after finishing the first draft. I certainly wasn’t thinking of ever publishing the novel! I was really only writing it, because for some reason it excited me greatly and I knew that engaging in this creative project was going to provide deep healing for me. Which it did. It was incredibly healing and liberating to use my pain to create something, and in a way that I never thought of before. It was very therapeutic. It was only while I was in India, nearing the end of the first draft, where I started toying with the idea of maybe publishing the novel after all. Publishing also felt daunting, because the thought of having others read something I created, that came from some of my deepest, darkest wounds, felt vulnerable. And I had so much work and research to do before embarking on that journey. But my time in India left me feeling open and inspired to the possibility.
After finishing the first draft at the start of the pandemic, I took a break from the project. I was following the trusted advice of experienced novelists, who said that you should give yourself time away from the project, so that you can come back to edit it with fresh eyes. Which worked for me, because I was still in the middle of my busy bachelors degree.
I truly don't remember if I took 3 months, 6 months or a year off from working on the story, at this point. But after my break, I printed out a copy of the story, assembled my markers and pens, and sat down to kill my darlings.
My first round of editing was… illuminating. Mercifully, I knew that writing the first draft was all about simply getting the story on paper (or on the document, in our day and age) and it didn't matter if it was messy or ‘bad’. This was comforting and liberating when working on the first draft, but now I had to confront the mess and do my best to clean it up. Though this part of the process was still satisfying, I found the editing phase much harder than simply writing the first draft. I was not a professional novelist with years of practicing this craft under my belt. The Source Of The Wind is not just my first novel that I'm publishing. It's my first attempt at writing a novel! I saw my messy first draft, and would compassionately cringe at the awkward phrasings and botched attempts at conveying emotions. But, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I didn't hate it. In fact, I actually quite liked it! I found that it stood upright on its own two feet. Sure, it was still hobbling about, insecure in its steps, when I needed for those legs to run. But it felt like a promising start.
After a couple of rounds of edits, I was craving some professional eyes on my manuscript. I needed someone in the know, to tell me what they thought. Is this a piece of garbage, or could this actually be something?
I went shopping around for a developmental editor (and yes - it was here when I learned the difference between developmental, copy, line and proofreading edits) and paid her to put scaffolding on my story, inspect it and offer ways to improve the foundation. She was immensely helpful in spotting the problem areas that I needed to work on and how, but she also gave me reassurance that the foundation was solid. This crazy idea of mine will work!
I took her notes to heart and began working on drafts 4 & 5. This was also a lengthy process, but taught me so much about the craft of novel writing. I was winging it before, trusting my intuition and years of reading. But the developmental editor asked me questions that were hard to ignore, and it helped me strengthen the story. After implementing her edits, I decided to give querying agents a whirl.
Now, I have ultimately chosen not to traditionally publish this novel and instead self-publish it. The flip-flopping between both options is a huge part of my publishing story, but I won’t get into that here. This story is a whole post all onto itself and includes some delicious moments of divine guidance that I’m so excited to write about. But I will say that after I made a couple of attempts at querying agents, I put the whole process on pause for a year and a half, while I figured some things out.
If any of you are creators too, you’ll know that creating something and giving it life, isn’t all fun and magic. Sometimes, you’re floating in the abyss, uncertain of your steps and lacking all faith and direction. I’ve learned that radical faith is key, when you hit these moments (or months) in the creative process. Plateaus in energy or motivation happen. Sometimes, the ‘muse’ is nowhere to be seen. Sometimes, you hit wall after wall when trying to get the creation out into the world. But I think it’s possible to tell when the spirit of a project has simply been put on pause, maybe asking you to recalibrate before it returns, or when it’s gone forever.
The energy and motivation for The Source of The Wind started trickling back to me, after a year and a half, and with it the knowledge that what I wanted, was to self-publish it. It was June of 2024, and as well as realising that I wanted to self-publish, I realised when I wanted to launch it: 6th June 2025. The story of how I picked this exact day, is also a magical one that I’ll get into, in a future post.
As I’m writing this post, it’s December 2024, which means that I’m half way through the year I gave myself to prepare for the launch. There’s a lot to still take care of, but here’s what I’ve done so far:
I hired a copy editor to spot any mistakes that I couldn’t see and clean up my prose. (If any of you are working on a spiritual fiction or non-fiction, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND hiring Robin Fuller, She was phenomenal to work with and specifically loves working on spiritual topics.)
I hired a book cover designer. Literally just a few days ago we had our first conversation about my ideas and I left the meeting feeling really heard and understood. I’m so excited for this process. I also plan to write a post about the lengthy journey I was on to finding and hiring her, and share more about the process of working with her.
I bought book formatting software to format the eBook and paperback versions. I believe it’s possible to format and publish with a Word Document. But to me, it felt too unclear how to do that and I had a very specific vision for the book’s interior. (Again, I might do a post on all the software I bought and used to self-publish my novel, so stay tune for that.)
I opened accounts on Amazon KDP and IngramSpark, via which I will be selling my novel. If you’re not sure what these are, these are platforms through which you can self-publish and sell your books. The beauty is that they take care of the manufacturing and distribution, only taking a cut from the sale when you make a sale. I might also do Draft2Digital, but baby steps.
What’s left is to continue the process of the book cover design, create marketing materials (and a marketing plan!), and figure out how to create a launch event. I also have other plans up my sleeve, but like I said… baby steps.
So, how did I birth The Source of The Wind?
With an inspired idea that was brought to me by the universe; following my excitements and letting my intuition lead the way; diligently plopping my bum at the computer to write, even when it was a struggle; and never giving up on the spirit of this project, even when it was nowhere to be felt for a time.
For reasons that I think I understand, the spirit of this novel wanted to be birthed through me. I had to trust that it wouldn’t ever actually leave me. even when it left me hanging for a time.
The idea came to me in May 2019 and I'm officially publishing The Source of The Wind on June 6th 2025. The whole process of creating this book, from conception to publication, is taking six years.
As I’m writing this in December 2024, I still have some time to go and the process isn’t over.
But I’m so excited to birth The Source of The Wind into the world. I hope you will share in my excitement :)
What have you been creating recently? How do you see your creative projects? What’s your creative process like?
*13.3.25 Update:
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Speak soon,
Love, Ella x