Songbird

Author's Note - 9 Years Later

Hello all, 'tis I. The author.

I began this project when I was 16 and I just freshly turned 26. In a couple of months, this project will have hit its 10th anniversary. Wild! Absolutely wild. In a strange way, Songbird is an absolute snapshot of me at the time. I was very clearly in AP World and taking French III. It's kinda funny.

In the meantime, I've done many things. Finished high school. Got a degree. Started taking my writing more seriously. In the last couple of years, I've pumped out manuscript after manuscript. Still not published, but hope to someday be. 

Right now, I'm in sort of a weird point in my life where I don't have the normal amount of time to dedicate to my writing. I thought I'd be silly goofy and go on some sort of writing side quest, and after some deliberation, I realized I must return to my ancient hunting grounds, Wattpad, and finish what I started. The cover art for this story is original art my friend did on the grounds that I must finish the book. Well. Lmao. (Since then she's read two of my unpublished books, one of them twice, so don't worry about her.)

So, yeah. I will attempt to finish Songbird. This may prove challenging for a few reasons. One, I kinda forgot what I was going for. Like, I never actually outlined what was going to happen and I can only remember a beginning and an end. So, I'll have to do that. Unfortunate.

But first, some changes. First of all, an all white cast is boring. Wren can be half Arab on her dad's side since, you know, all Abrahamic religions have their roots in the Middle East. Bae is half South Asian on his mom's side because I say so. I'm not going to go back and change anything because this is an artifact, a perfect snapshot into my 16 year old brain. Just I'll describe their features differently going forward.

Other things I considered changing were their ages, Bae's name, Bae's lineage, etc etc I'm not going to do that, I don't think. We're most comfortable writing around the age we are now, so it'll be a fun little challenge to write a younger protagonist. A fun little constraint. As for Bae's name, I don't know why I was so adamant about picking it because I never really could divorce it from the term of endearment "bae". I think I was trying to beat the association out of myself. It didn't work. And yet, I cannot let go. Just like I can't let go of my original vision for the end of this book.

The current plan is this. I will create some sort of outline. What was I cooking? Who knows? I will figure it out. In the meantime, I have the next chapter of Songbird saved on my Google Drive. I also have half of the next chapter after that. And then, nothing. In the spirit of honoring my 16 year old self, I will edit none of it, and instead, just pick up right where I left off. Yeah, there's gonna be a jump in writing quality in the middle of chapter 10. Will it be big? Will it be positive? I hope so! Wouldn't it be a waste if I didn't get better at this in the last 10 years?

I don't know if anyone will find this message, if any of my original meager readers are still on the site, but if you are... thank you!!! Love u guys <3 To new readers who have managed to wade past the first 8 chapters, thank you too!