Writing the “Wrong” Book Anyway

For the past two years, I have been working on the kind of story beginning writers are often warned not to write.

Magic.

Time travel.

A world with thousands of years of history.

A planned series with overlapping timelines, hidden identities, ancient betrayals, fractured magic systems, political power shifts, and reveals that have to be planted books before they finally unfold.

In other words: complex. Ambitious. A little ridiculous, maybe.

And honestly?

So much fun.

There is plenty of advice out there telling new writers to start simple. Write one point of view. Keep the world small. Avoid time travel unless you really, really know what you’re doing. Do not build an entire magical history before you have finished the first book. Do not create a series full of secrets, reveals, timelines, and characters whose choices ripple across centuries.

And I understand why that advice exists.

Complex stories are hard to control. Time travel can unravel a plot faster than almost anything else. Magic systems can become confusing if they do not have boundaries. Large casts can overwhelm the reader. Worldbuilding can become a hiding place where we spend years making maps, histories, bloodlines, and timelines instead of actually writing the book.

All of that is true.

But there is another truth too.

Sometimes the story that will teach you how to write is the impossible one.

Sometimes the book you are “not supposed” to start with is the one that will keep pulling you back to the page.

That has been this series for me.

I have tried to simplify it. I have tried to talk myself into writing something smaller, cleaner, easier to explain. I have questioned whether I should save this idea until I am “ready,” as if readiness is some magical doorway I will eventually walk through with a perfectly structured outline in one hand and complete confidence in the other.

But the more I work on this story, the more I realize that waiting to feel ready is just another way of not writing it.

This is the series I have always wanted to read.

I want the ancient history. I want the strange magic. I want the impossible timelines. I want the reveal that changes the meaning of a scene three books later. I want characters who think they understand the world, only to discover the truth has been buried under centuries of fear, power, and survival.

I want the story that feels too big. Because that is the story that made me want to become a better writer.

And yes, writing it has been messy.

At one point, I had a timeline document that was over 750 pages long.

Seven hundred and fifty pages of history, character connections, magical consequences, political shifts, hidden betrayals, and cause-and-effect decisions stretching across thousands of years.

And I remember thinking, Okay. Surely now I have the answers.

Which is adorable, honestly.

Because then I went back into the actual draft and immediately realized I needed more.

More clarity. More emotional logic. More connective tissue. More understanding of what the characters believed in each moment, not just what the timeline said happened. The timeline gave me the architecture, but the draft revealed where the rooms were still empty.

That is the thing about first drafts. They have to exist.

You can plan forever. You can build the world, map the history, name the kingdoms, track the bloodlines, and chart every magical consequence across centuries. But eventually, the story has to become scenes. Characters have to walk into rooms. They have to make choices. They have to misunderstand each other. They have to want things you did not expect them to want.

The draft is where the story starts arguing back. And as frustrating as that can be, it is also where the book becomes real. That is the part people sometimes leave out when they talk about “writing mistakes.”

A mistake is not always a sign that you chose the wrong story.

Sometimes it is a sign that the story is asking you to grow.

Time travel has forced me to think harder about cause and effect. Magic has forced me to define cost, power, and consequence. A long history has forced me to pay attention to legacy—not just what happened, but who shaped the version of history everyone believes. A complex series structure has forced me to become more intentional about promises, payoffs, tension, and trust.

This book did not let me stay where I was. And maybe that is the point.

There is value in learning craft by writing something manageable. There is wisdom in starting small. But there is also value in following the idea that will not leave you alone, even when it is inconvenient, complicated, and wildly outside your current skill set.

Especially then. Because passion does not replace craft, but it can sustain you while you learn it.

If you are writing the “wrong” book—the too-big book, the too-weird book, the book with too many characters or timelines or secrets or magical rules—I hope you know you are allowed to keep going.

You are allowed to write the story you have always wanted to read. You are allowed to make a mess. You are allowed to learn by doing the difficult thing.

You are allowed to care deeply about a story before you have figured out how to tell it perfectly. The rules can be helpful. Advice can be helpful. Craft matters. Structure matters. Reader experience matters.

But none of that means you have to shrink your imagination to fit someone else’s idea of what a first book should be.

Maybe your ambitious story will take longer. Maybe it will require more revision. Maybe you will have to become a much stronger writer to pull it off.

Good. Become the writer who can.

That is what I am trying to do.

Two years in, I am still untangling timelines, still chasing reveals, still learning how to hold the emotional heart of the story steady inside all the magic and history and chaos.

And I still love it.

Maybe even more now.

Because the more I work on it, the clearer it becomes: this was never just about finishing a book.

It was about trusting the story that made me want to write in the first place.