Vince Tubbolardi Blog the Sequal!

Hello Bonded friends!

More than once while I was writing Bonded The Arena, I found someone that claimed they had many ideas for novels or stories and they felt like they could sit down and bang that out in a few days or weeks.  There are people who are dedicated to their craft and could do something like that.  But for the majority of writers that's at best a dream and a prayer.  

Now that The Arena is done and being printed, I am frequently asked how long it took to complete it.  And I am sorry to say that it took a lot longer than I hoped.  The truth of the matter is that I began the process in the fall of 2018.  I had just lost my business and started working for a large company.  The weight of the world had settled on my shoulders and I was being crushed by it.  So during my breaks and lunches at work, I began an outline.  I brainstormed ideas, came up with characters and events, even a handful of quotes that would be fun to place in the story somewhere.  

After a few weeks I had a story that might be worth the writing, and began it.  I wrote a few thousand words, placed my setting and a few characters, and felt pretty happy about the progression.  Taare is the main characters name now, but for months I couldn't find a name that I liked.  I went through hundreds but nothing fit and like many writers, I became lost in my research for the perfect words or in this case, a name.  

Then it happened.  Work life took over.  At the end of a shift I was too tired to write, and on my free days I couldn't bring myself to write anything because of the dreaded writers block.  Like many I struggled and forgot all about the story.  I lost my notes and outline.  There was no title, no name to the main character, and little drive to move the story along.  The therapeutic aspects of writing had moved me from failed business owner to dutiful employee and I was content.  

A few months later I was playing a mobile game that had thousands of people playing together as a team.  I had a friend name Kai who encouraged my writing.  So I wrote a story.  It was only a few pages long but with that one story I was renewed.  Kai and many of the players on my team loved the story.  I can't ever thank Kai enough for that because I was writing again and fell in love with the process.  I began to write more stories.  Some at the request of friends.  Sometimes ideas sprang up and were so intriguing that they had to be written.  I found ways to challenge my writing in short stories.  Stories using only dialogue, others detailing the actions of a song, until I wrote a twelve page story filled with twists and surprises.

Over 2019 I wrote enough stories that my writing changed, my process grew differently, and my focus to writing became steadfast.  I was ready to restart my novel.  I recreated the outline as best I could, and wrote almost daily in 2020.  I hit multiple waves of writers block and distractions in that time, but I always came back to Taare.  I finished writing The Arena before the end of 2020.

The majority of the book was written in roughly eight months, but the process took two full years.  The editing process took another four months due to delays.  Some outside my control, others easily my own fault, but I cannot be happier with the time well spent becoming a writer. The lessons I learned both in life and in writing can be found in Bonded: The Arena.  Sometimes we just need a good bond before we can move forward.