Semi-Annual Blog Post
Havemercy by ______. Why not? It’s Nano, anything goes. And I’m pretty happy with that too. Two of the characters have distinct voices, I think, and the third one’s coming along. I can whip him into shape in revisions.
So I’m right on schedule: it’s been about six months since I blogged here. What’s that? Other people blog every day, sometimes more than once a day? Well shit.
I think I suffer from boxitis. What is this blog for? I ask myself repeatedly. No one answers, so it becomes a blog about nothing except crickets chirping. The lonely, lonely crickets.
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It’s December, which means last month was November, which means NaNoWriMo. I love NaNo with all my heart, because no matter how bad my writing slump is, I know I’ll be able to abandon all my self-criticism and just pour something onto the page. And I’m usually shocked at how good it is. I mean first-draft good, not publishable good. I am not one of the people on the NaNo forums who is “publishing” my novel at CreateSpace or torturing agents with my rough draft.
Instead, I use NaNo as a way to push myself. This year I tried an epic fantasy for the first time since I started writing seriously. I was a little nervous about that, because NaNo is not the best time to stare into space and worldbuild. But it worked out well. I planned ahead enough but not too much and the world grew by itself.
I also tried a structure I enjoyed in Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett: multiple first person narrators. Why not? It’s Nano, anything goes. And I’m pretty happy with that too. Two of the characters have distinct voices, I think, and the third one’s coming along. I can whip him into shape in revisions.
Last, I made my goal 80,000 words for the month, not just 50,000. And I made it. The book’s at about 95,000 now, with just a couple of chapters left. But it’s harder without the NaNo momentum to keep me going. Also, this will make a grand total of three books finished with an actual climax and resolution. So I’ve not had much practice at endings, and it’s hard to tie up all the plot threads without letting the story sort of drift off into space.
But I’ll get through it. Because this one I want people to read. Every rough draft I write gets a little cleaner. Even with all the story problems, I’m at least not ashamed of my prose. And I really need some feedback. I need some validation that I can tell a decent story, that I’m not wasting my time polishing turds.
What if my beta readers tell me it’s crap? I don’t know. I’ll cry, I imagine, because I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life and finally feel like I’m getting there. So if I’m wrong about my progress, it will be hard to hear.
But even that wouldn’t be the end of the world. I’ve started reading again at Absolute Write, one of the best writing resources on the web. Whatever my problem is, I can find advice on moving on and give it another shot. In my NaNo novel, I gave one of my characters the line, “You don’t stop learning until you’re dead.” I always want that to be true for myself.
1Rob
wrote on 11 December 2009 at 7:15
I look forward to reading it when you’re done.
2Voyagefan
wrote on 11 December 2009 at 17:21
Okay, this sounds TOTALLY ridiculous, but this post inspired me – writing-wise – to just go ahead and do it. Oh, really random, but I have problem. I start a million stories without an idea or a plot or real characters, and I never even look at them. Any advice? Should I save them for later, or get rid of them?
3CSS
wrote on 12 December 2009 at 11:12
Glad I could inspire :)
Short answer: I’d keep those bits of story, especially if they’re on your computer, because you never know when they might be useful.
Long answer: I have lots of bits and pieces of stories collected in an “ideas” folder on my computer. I imagine some of these will never see the light of day, but others I go back to and work on when something reminds me of it or I have a new twist.
Something that’s fun is to read through my notes and see which ideas fit together. Would this character I made notes on in December say this line I wrote in June? What if this character is in the predicament I came up with in February?
In one of his writing books, either Characters or How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, Orson Scott Card says that all his best stories came from the confluence of two ideas. So maybe try mashing some of your ideas together and see what comes of it.
Hope this helps :)