Memo to any would-be writers out there – never, ever throw anything you’ve written away.

You never know when it might come in handy.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to write a follow-up to a project I’d written that had already been published. That follow-up included a full-length adventure, and some gazetteer-type material giving some history and backstory to both the new adventure and the initial project.

Of course, I agreed to write the follow-up, and was pretty stoked to do so. In particular, I was stoked about writing the gazetteer parts of the follow-up. I tend to write lots of backstory for just about all the adventures I’ve ever written, even though that backstory usually doesn’t see the light of day – I just like figuring out the hows and whys behind an adventure, and backstory is a good way of figuring that out. For example, I’ve got lots of material on the duergar armies and kingdoms for “Dreaming Caverns of the Duergar”, even though the adventurers only meet a duergar advance scouting party in the adventure. I wrote a whole history for the frost giants in "Talons of the Horned King", even though they aren't even encountered in that adventure. It’s a bit overkill, but it works for me.

So the chance to take some of that material and work it into something worthy of publication … awesome. I spent quite a bit of time on that and the adventure (which remains probably the best adventure I’ve written), sent it to the publisher, and … waited.

And waited. And waited. Finally, I got asked to rewrite parts of the adventure. Did that, and waited. And waited. Finally, I got asked to rewrite parts on the adventure again, and to trim it down to about half its original length. Wasn’t thrilled about that, but did it anyway. And then waited, and waited, and waited …

All of the rewrites happened during the first year after I’d submitted the original drafts. I spent another two years simply waiting. During that time, I’d send an e-mail to the editors every few months, inquiring as to the status of the project. Sometimes I got answers; usually, I didn’t. When I did get answers, they usually said something along the lines of the manuscripts would probably go into production “shortly”, and the follow-up project would be published “soon”.

Second memo to any would-be writers out there – when you’re being told “shortly” and “soon” by a company for over two years, and that company is publishing other products during that time … “shortly” and “soon” aren’t quite the answers that apply to your situation.

The real answer is “we have your project, we keep meaning to publish your project, but now we have a ton of other projects in the production line we’d rather publish instead, we really should just cancel your project, but since there’s maybe a 2% chance we’ll actually publish someday, we won’t do that.” Which, on a certain level … well, I appreciate folks that mean well, but I appreciate realists far more. I’d rather that people be blunt and cancel a project that’s going nowhere, instead of trying to be nice, and inadvertently stringing freelancers along for far too long about something that's realistically never, ever going to be published.

So at the beginning of last year, I simply asked to have the rights to all of the material to be reverted to me. I didn’t care about payment, I just wanted my stuff back, and the rights to publish it elsewhere if I so chose. For some reason, the editor was very confused as to why I’d ask for such a thing, but accepted my request. I was left with an adventure and a gazetteer with nowhere to go … but at least they were going nowhere because of me. I could live with that.

A few weeks after that, I got asked by Paizo to contribute to a book called “The Guide to the River Kingdoms”, a gazetteer for the Pathfinder RPG. The River Kingdoms are a rough-and-tumble collection of bandit kingdoms in Paizo’s campaign world of Golarion. It’s the sort of place that’s chock-full of wild adventure, just my sort of taste for a campaign setting … and very similar to the material in the gazetteer I’d already written a few years ago.

No, I just didn’t rename my existing gazetteer material and submit that to Paizo. For one thing, the project had a bunch of specific requirements that I hadn’t covered in my old gazetteer material. For another, I needed to make the material much more specific to the Pathfinder RPG, to the world of Golarion, and more importantly, to fit in with the material of the other authors for the River Kingdoms book. (I got to collaborate with Colin McComb of “Planescape” fame on a bunch of ideas, which was a lot of fun.) For a third … well, I’m not the sort of writer who can let something sit around for years and not tinker around with it. The original material was good, but I knew I could make it better.

So, the material I wrote for my section of the River Kingdoms – the Kingdom of Pitax – was by and large new, written and rewritten more specifically for Paizo. But the core of that material, and many of the underlying ideas, came from the original gazetteer material I’d written years before. Waste not, want not.

I guess Paizo liked what I wrote about Pitax, because I was later asked to expand upon it and write additional gazetteer material for an upcoming Paizo Adventure Path called “War of the River Kings”. There’s also going to be full-blown maps available for Pitax and the other River Kingdoms, which is pretty damn sweet.

I’m very pleased with how it all turned out, and hope you’ll enjoy it as well. Myself, I’m still scratching my head over how my name is mentioned in the credits alongside the likes of China Miéville, Chris Pramas, Elaine Cunningham, and Steve Kenson … but I’m not complaining. Not at all.

So, save what you write, even if you don’t think it’s going anywhere, or you don’t know quite what to do with it. You’ll find a use for it someday.

Promise.