The following is a re-upload of an article posted on Medium.com, as I have lost my login and have no desire to keep writing there, I have reposted it in full (with some corrections) below. This same post can also be found on Ko-Fi

Why Some Stories Should Take Time

My Dad is ultimately the reason why I write. As a kid, I wanted nothing more than to be like him, and in many ways, I think that’s still the case.

He acted in High School. I acted in High School. He got into Real Estate, I picked up a camera to capture it. When I was little, I knew that he was a writer, and though I didn’t know what all that entailed, I wanted to be one too.

He used to sit by my bedside and tell me stories as I drifted off to sleep about frogs who went on mighty quests, and fish who were afraid to swim (they overcame it, not to worry). But as I got older, my Dad’s stories grew bolder, darker, and I wanted more and more of them.

I was fairly sheltered as a child, my mother looking to preserve that childhood sense of innocence for as long as possible. I was kept away from ghosts, vampires, El Cucuy, and the works, her primary concern being that my fear would consume me.

Keeping me away ultimately had the opposite effect.

A Haunting in Maine

I have never really loved the horror genre as a whole, but there’s just something about a ghost story that makes me want to keep writing them.

My Dad started telling me stories about a haunted town in Maine, the location of a story he was writing at the time, and it sparked what has become a lifelong obsession. I asked him if I could write about that town too, and of course, he told me yes, watering that seed from the moment I had picked up a pen.

I’d been writing for a bit by then: short stories about inter-dimensional travelers, guns for hire, and you guessed it... ghosts.

But even after getting his blessing, I think something was holding me back. Call it God, fate, I don’t have any idea what name to ascribe to it. So for now, let’s say it was my characters waiting in the wings, begging for me to have some patience with them.

I didn’t write about that small town in Maine for a long, long time. My first real attempt at it was my freshman year of high school, and while from the first draft I knew I was on to something, it just wasn’t there yet. My Dad had his notes on it. There were conflicts in lore. Places where our ideas on things didn’t fully line up. So we sat down and had a few days of solid conversation about the place.

“Where exactly was the police station?”

“What was the name of that lake?”

“The girl running her mom’s old café, what’s her name?”

By the end of it, I had the first version of what would become an evolving story bible for the town, and the tales we wanted to set within it.

He started the draft for his first proper book in this universe in 2014, and while an incomplete copy of it is seated on my shelf as I type this, I have no doubt that one day it will be finished. Stick with me on this train of thought a bit longer, and I’ll tell you why.

A Journey of Iterations

As my Dad went off to write his book, I turned and wrote a screenplay set in that town.

And then another screenplay.

And then a novella.

And when I decided those weren’t up to par, I went and rewrote the entire thing as a show. Satisfied, I cast my friends in it, and over the next couple of years attempted to bring it to life. Of course, it didn’t work out. Nothing did. The project was too big, and in the end it just sort of collapsed under its own weight.

Then COVID hit.

I was devastated, and just wanted to quit the entire thing. At that point, this town had been haunting me for all too long. Fifteen years of dreaming leading to a grand... nothing.

But, again, you’ve read the headline above all this text, so you know this isn’t where the story ends.

In 2019, (you know, the before-times) I reached out to Josh, (an acquaintance at the time who has now become one of my closest friends), and asked him if he would join me on this writing project. I got my Dad’s blessing. We knighted him, the whole shebang, and he got to work on an idea he had for the town.

Then life did what it does, and I didn’t hear from him for about a solid year. Cut to the middle of 2020, I get an email from him explaining how life took some unexpected rocky turns, but that he was now back on his feet, and with a finished script to boot.

I read the entire thing in a single sitting, and it was one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had. To see characters I had created written by another author, and done in such a respectful, beautiful, and invigorating way blew my mind. I knew then had to have Josh in on everything I was doing from here on out, and he has been a constant writing partner ever since.

It is 2023 as of this writing, and I have continued to grow and expand the world with a singular goal in mind: write all five books and finally share with the world the town I’ve been dreaming of all my life.

There is a refined idea of this town that never would have existed had I tried to publish it back in 2014. Had the show worked in 2019, I would have created, at best, a somewhat incoherent web show about a weird town in Maine, shot mostly in New Mexico.

Every iteration had to fail so that I could have the beauty I have now, though I was too heartbroken and upset to see that truth for a long time.

Beauty From Patience

Stephen King has voiced the belief that if you’re going to take on a writing project, you should try to finish it within a year, as after that, the magic is gone, and it’s likely to sit unfinished. I think that is true for plenty of writers, and the last thing I’m going to do is knock Stephen King, but I think that life has a lot to do with the when of a project as much as the why.

What you’re doing will emerge when it’s ready to. You have to trust your characters to tell you when they’re ready, as much as any other process while writing. If they’re asking for time, listen, don’t force them out into the world ill-equipped.

I’ll close by saying this: if there are ideas that have been bugging you for a long time, and you just can’t quite get them down, there’s a reason. If you’ve got stories where you feel like you don’t know what a character wants, ask them. If they don’t tell you, take a walk. Go see a friend, watch a movie, dance, let yourself live beyond the story because one day you’re going to realize what they always needed.

You just need to allow them the time to show you.