Isn't Expansion Amazing?

What began as a short story written for a Year 7 Fantasy English Assignment has become much much more. I'm not sure if I've ever posted here the journey my novels have taken, but here it is. In Year 7, our class was asked to invent a fantasy story with certain genre specific elements built into it. I decided to make a hybrid of fantasy and science fiction, and ended up with an 1800 word story. The teacher had specified it need to be 600 words long, and despite my requests, I could no submit the story I had written. So I wrote another, crafted in such a way that it was set in the same world, but had a different and more compact story. About this time I found that I enjoyed writing these stories very very much and continued to do so, finishing with about thirteen short stories of varying length, by the time I'd finished Year 7. But the journey didn't stop with those short stories. I had another story idea which I had been continually dabbling with since the last part of Year 6, and turned on that, writing a significant amount on that before returning to the original fantasy/sci-fi story and expanding it in an attempt to convert it to a novel form. Now, you must know, back when I was writing all this, I had no plan when I started writing, I wrote what I wanted when it came to me. As a result, structure was not high on the requirements list. But, as things turned out, I didn't need structure then.

I decided to revert to the other plot line for a while again, not liking where I'd taken the fantasy/sci-fi one but not wanting to scrap it entirely. Then I came back to it again, writing what I thought would be the final novel form, as I had established a rudimentary plot structure and knew where the story was eventually going. I got to about 80,000 words on that one I do believe, and decided AGAIN that I didn't like it, so began again, writing another thirty pages for a fourth version of the story. By this time I was in Year 10 (having skipped Year 9) and life was becoming busier, so writing seemed to wane a while, although I never stopped thinking about it, planning or doing what I could when I had time. Then the 'college years' began of Years 11 and 12, and time was not something of abundance, so the writing sat dormant for a very very long time, with only small chunks done here and there along with planning and idea crunching. It was during this time that I realised that the story I was making was too big for a single novel, so decided to expand it to a trilogy. And thus far, that's what I've been working on. But, things have changed...

The story is larger than I ever dreamed possible when I first started writing it, something I am both happy and proud about. And so appears the next annoucement in regards to my novels. It is not going to be a story, nor a series of short stories, not even a novel. It is no longer going to be a mere trilogy, a collection of three books. The story, the length, calls for nothing less than a saga of six books. Yes, it is now going to be six books long. Obviously this requires some adjustments on my part, but I have the material, so this is the direction it is now taking. This way I don't end up with ridiculously huge novels that no one will dare try to publish due to their length, and it divides the story into distinct stages for the reader. I had always played with the idea, but I never thought it would be possible. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed possible and it's got me excited. Hopefully you're excited too.

So, it's off to the drafting boards for me, and sifting through plot holes, surprises to throw at you all, and character developments. I only have one thing to say right now about it all: WOW!