Progress so far

When I set the deadline for February the 14th I thought it was a reasonable one. I saw the novel I was working on rather clearly and thought with dedication and a lot of hard work I would nail the outline in three weeks.
That didn't work out, for one I had to babysit three of my nephews for a week which left me falling asleep in the chair in their living room around eight-nine every evening. I had a couple of hours to work on the novel a day but no much more. Then when I got back home, the flu hit me.
Two weeks of my three had gone and there had been very little work accomplished. I tried to make the most of the week I had left but it proved not to be enough. I think even if I had the other two weeks to work it wouldn't have been enough.
It is now almost a month later and I have to admit I am still working on the outlines.

I have realized that I though I was writing one series centered around a character that I barely knew but was obsessed with keeping as a main character. There was a cast of characters that I new where going to be in the series and I had the plot somewhat nailed down. The only problem for the last ten years that I have tried to write this story is that the story goal was never that clear to me.
I knew that I wanted to write a story about epic magic and a world filled with wonder. There had to be some great power that the characters where after and trying to stop.

I blame both laziness and fear for not pushing harder to define what the story goal really was. While I didn't narrow it down my daydream of becoming a writer was still intact without screwing the story up spectacularly. This is the worst cop out ever and I know it. I can't very well sell books without ever writing it. I knew this but still fear and maybe a small self-disciplinary issues kept me from really digging deep.

It took me a while but finally I have got down the story goal and the plot. I got a little sick and tired of not knowing what the story was really about and with out the story goal I  was going to keep on changing the story a thousand times without ever getting any closer to finishing it.

What happened though after I narrowed down the story was that I don't have the one series I though I was going to write but two connected one's (with a little room for standalone story's in the same world). The story I was focused on writing all these years can't work with out the story that comes before it. All this time I thought that was just back story but it turned out to be equally or even more fascinating and exiting story there than I had originally thought.
Characters I thought were only secondary or even villains have taken center stage and I have to admit I am having more fun working on the story now than I have had since I had the first idea.

I have no idea if this will work or not, or that these series will ever get published but I have finally found out how the story is supposed to be. If that isn't a small victory in this long journey I don't know what is. ; )